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Police have busted 42 prostitutes for using forged documents to get a U.S. visa. Police in Seoul also detained a broker identified as Kim (47) on charges of faking a variety of documents to help them get the visas.
According to police, Kim and his Korean-American accomplice had been mocking up bank account records, job certificates and Family Register documents for their clients and training them for the visa interviews since September 2004, charging W4 million (US$1=W928) per person. The two made profits of W1 billion in all by doing so. Half of their 500 clients succeeded in getting a U.S. visa. Their clients included mostly 20-something women who wanted the visa to work in the sex trade in large U.S. cities. Kim, one of the women, told police the number of customers here dropped after new anti-prostitution laws were introduced two years ago, and word is that prostitutes can earn at least US$10,000 a month in the U.S.
"As far as we know, some 200 Korean women were caught for prostitution in the U.S. this year alone and 100 of them were deported,Ħħ a police officer said. "The number of cases where the U.S. Embassy seizes forged visa application documents rose to 200 a month. This is a serious stumbling block to Koreans being included in the U.S. visa waiver program.Ħħ
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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