Openly revealing a secret life July 31, When she was young, Kim Yeon-ja bellowed like a man so no one would look down on her. Kim, now 63, still speaks in a loud, strong voice. Despite the year period of her life she once hid from her friends and family, she is poised and confident. Kim was a prostitute, roaming the towns that developed around the U. Kim said. This includes such job categories as bar hostesses. Kim maintained her equanimity as she spoke of her past. Kim worked.
She said it would be ironic to tell young girls now to not get involved in prostitution, or to get out of the business, since it took her 25 years to return to an ordinary life with her mother, who is now 97 years old. It took another 12 years before she could publish her book. Kim to start selling sex, it was her gloomy childhood. In , when she was 11, a cousin raped her. She was raped again as a teenager. After graduating from high school, she became pregnant, but paid a nurse to kill the child after giving birth.
She said she was unable to abort the fetus because her pregnancy was too far advanced before she realized she was pregnant. She lived with guilt. She wanted to flee her hometown of Geomundo, a remote island in the South Sea. No one knew about her life. She had always been the taller, stronger and braver one in the town. She was chosen to lead anti-government student demonstrations in the early s because of her booming voice.
But having grown tired of the provincial life, she left home in , moving to Seoul, where she hoped to earn a lot of money. But she was fired after she protested the daily physical inspections imposed by her employer, who thought the girls were stealing tokens. She then disguised herself as a man to work as a shoeshine boy near Seoul Station, a decision she made so she would not have to worry about being sexually harassed.
But she was running out of money and had no decent place to live. An elderly woman told her to leave the area because it was dangerous for a woman to meander around train stations alone. Kim go to a shelter in Daebang-dong, western Seoul. Army bases. If she was lucky, she could date a Westerner and get married and immigrate to the United States, her friends told her.
