South Korea: Court refuses arrest warrant for teenage sex worker alleged to have exposed 20 men without disclosure

A 19 year-old female sex worker from the southern port of Busan was picked up by South Korean police last week after her father alleged she had unprotected sex with up to 20 male clients since testing HIV-positive in February.

However, according to an AFP report in The Straits Times

the court in Busan rejected a request from police to issue an arrest warrant for the woman, saying she should instead be sent to hospital for treatment.

A second report, from Asiaone.com notes that the young woman

reportedly said she suggested using contraceptives but her male partners refused to do so.

Of note, South Korea has no HIV-specific criminal laws.

In 2009 a 26-year-old HIV-positive man became the first person prosecuted under the country's public health laws for having unprotected sex without first disclosing his HIV status. The man reportedly had sex with at least ten women. He received an 18-month prison sentence. The case occasioned calls for tougher laws for such conduct.

South Korea: Korean man gets 18 months for HIV exposure; calls for HIV-specific laws (updated)

Update: October 27th

The 26 year-old Korean taxi driver arrested in March was found guilty earlier this month under South Korea's public health law for having unprotected sex without disclosure and has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Original post: 16th March

The arrest of an HIV-positive taxi driver in Jecheon, North Chungcheong Province last week – originally for "habitually stealing women's underwear" but now charged under public health law for having unprotected sex without disclosure with at least ten women – has resulted in a resurgence of panic around criminal HIV transmission in South Korea, and calls for HIV-specific criminal laws.

The case was first reported in English on March 13th in the Korea Times.

An AIDS patient in his 20s has had sex with dozens of women in Jecheon, North Chungcheong Province, over the last six years, police have revealed. The Jecheon Police Station said Friday that the patient, identified as Chun, 27, had sexual relationships with waitresses and drunken passengers while working as a taxi driver since 2003.

More details emerged on March 14th at Donga.com.

Police said he neither told his sex partners of his infection nor used contraceptives. A police search of his house found packets of medicine along with women’s underwear. Police grilled Jeon on what the medicine was for and he confessed to being HIV-positive. Police sought an arrest warrant for him yesterday for violating an AIDS prevention law and began tracking the women who had sex with him.

On March 15th, the Korea Times reported that the local sexual health clinic had been flooded with requests for HIV testing following reports of the man's arrest.

According to the regional office, 61 people have undergone HIV tests, about 12 times the usual figure, since the arrest of 27-year-old cab driver Jeon, Friday. The official said no one was yet found to have the virus, but it will forward test samples to a higher institute for close examination.

On a positive note, public health officials are being extremely responsible and informing the public that the risk of transmission from a single act of unprotected sex is low, particularly since the man is on effective treatment.

According to health authorities, however, chances are low that his sex partners were infected with the deadly virus. Since he was put under monitoring, he has got counseling and medical checkups 30 times and taken regular medication. This means he is as healthy as an ordinary person, a source at the disease control center said. (Donga.com)

However, experts said the likelihood of catching HIV from unprotected sexual activity with someone who is HIV-positive is a mere 0.5 percent. "Since Jeon had been taking drugs to control the virus, the odds could be even lower,'' a health expert said. (Korea Times, 15/3/09)

Nevertheless, according to Donga.com.

Domestic law only prohibits those who are HIV-positive from working at entertainment establishments that require regular medical checkups of their employees. Calls are rising for authorities to draw up countermeasures to control the jobs and private lives of HIV-positive people.

And a Donga.com editorial on March 16th appears to support these calls.

The news of an HIV-infected taxi driver who had sex with scores of women has rocked the nation. Medical Web sites are being bombarded with inquiries about AIDS symptoms and applications for the HIV test have jumped ten-fold. Generally, HIV/AIDS patients avoid contact with people because contracting the disease is lethal for their weakened immune system. If a HIV-positive person attempts to purposely spread the disease, however, there is no way to block him or her from doing so. In the wake of the news, calls are rising that the 1987 AIDS prevention law is ineffective to stem the spread of the deadly disease. The country’s AIDS control and prevention system should be urgently revamped.

Update: March 16th, 5pm: An editorial today in the Korea Times blames the public health authorities rather than the individual himself.

It goes without saying that prevention is the best way of containing the spread of HIV/AIDS. Therefore, the government and the health authorities should establish a firm preventive system before it is too late.

China: Woman accused of intentionally infecting 30 men (update)

Update: 19th October

News sources from China, including this English-language report from China Daily, say that this story was an elaborate hoax perpetrated by the woman's disguntled ex-boyfriend.

An illicit blog that has swept the Internet and claims to tell the story of an "HIV-infected prostitute" is a sick hoax by an angry ex-boyfriend, police said yesterday. The post, which featured 300 indecent pictures of [the woman], along with 279 cell phone numbers of "former clients", emerged last week and rapidly spread across the nation's Web portals. The post claims the 30-year-old was raped by her stepfather at 15 and had become a waitress at karaoke bars in Beijing, and that the cell numbers were published in revenge against society. However, police in Yan's native Rongcheng county, Hebei province, told China Daily yesterday that the blog had been written by the woman's ex-lover - a married man from Beijing.

The suspect, whose name has not been released, had demanded 5,000 yuan ($730) from [the woman] when they split up but she refused, said a local police officer who declined to be named. The man later told police the woman's brother had attacked him, the officer said. The suspect then returned to the capital and, using the cell numbers he had received at the Rongcheng county police station, began to send indecent pictures of Yan to several officers via SMS. "We have kept those text messages and we will sue him for smearing our reputation," said the officer, whose number was one of those listed on the blog.

Another news report, published in Chinese, says that the woman was tested for HIV by the public health authorities and intial results are that she is, in fact HIV-negative.


Original post: 18th October

A South Korean news website has run a story from their Beijing correspondent alleging that TV stations and other media in China are reporting that a former female sex worker in China is under suspicion of intentionally trying to infect hundreds of male sex partners with HIV and that at least 30 of these men are HIV-positive.

I was alerted to the story by a blog reader, a law professor in South Korea, who points out that since South Korea has created a climate of fear and misinformation around HIV in the country, which has policies that blame foreigners for bringing and 'spreading' HIV in the country, and, have targeted non-Korean national English language teachers in particular, the reporting may well be inaccurate or biased.

The reader has found no other reports about the case, and certainly none have appeared in the English language. Although the report cannot be verified, I do know that in 2006 the Chinese government announced that China was going to start to prosecute individuals "who know they are infected with AIDS or are sick with AIDS and deliberately infect" others.

The report, on nate.com (fuzzy English Google translation version here) claims that the Chinese woman (who is named and pictured in the report) intentionally tried to infect several hundred men in several cities in China by having sex with them and not disclosing her HIV status. She allegedly had the phone numbers of 279 men on her cellphone, which the report suggests is proof enough that she slept with all of them.

It also claims that she admitted on her blog that she slept with men indiscriminately in order to get 'revenge' for having become HIV-positive herself and that her life was so awful she didn't care what happened to her. A relative tells the paper that she was raped by her stepfather when she was 15, and after she ran away from home she became a sex worker in order to survive.

It notes that Chinese society has been shocked by these reports, although it is unclear whether she has been arrested or charged with any crime, since it states that she is currently staying with friends in Beijing.