Prostitution in Vietnam

[5] The poem's story centers on the life of Thúy Kiều, a young woman living in mid-16th century Đại Việt who sacrifices herself to save her family.

[6] Apart from the depiction of female sex work in The Tale of Kiều, scholars have found scant mention of the topic in other documents and texts from the Đại Việt period of Vietnamese history.

[9] To illustrate, the 1812 legal code promulgated by Emperor Gia Long of the Nguyễn dynasty, the most well-known of pre-colonial legal documents from Vietnam, does not contain any explicit prohibition of sex work, but it does contain a provision for punishing male court officials who visit ả đào singing houses, which have a reputation as historic sites of female sex work coupled with courtly entertainment.

As anthropologist-historian Ann Laura Stoler observes, sex work came to be seen as increasingly permissible when concubinage began falling out of favor with the government in the early 20th century.

[11][12] Concubinage, both in Indochina and much of Southeast Asia, was initially seen in the late 19th century as more conducive than sex work for stabilizing racial hierarchies and preserving public health, because it provided European men in the colonies with an opportunity to build interracial relationships outside of marriage that are stable and do not risk the spread of venereal diseases.

[12] In that context, another historian notes that to colonial authorities, sex work became permissible or even preferable to concubinage, because it was seen as a loveless transaction; as such, it was highly regulated but not prohibited outright.

[14] A clear example of this framing can be found in Lục Xì, a classic reportage of sex work in colonial Hanoi, written in 1937 by Vũ Trọng Phụng, a renowned journalist and author of modernist Vietnamese literature.

[16] This sense of agency also compelled sex workers to ply their trade in the black market, outside of onerous regulatory requirements and the state's taxation regime.

[10] Shortly after the establishment of Tonkin as a French protectorate, in 1888, the Hanoi Municipal Council put in place formal regulations on prostitution in the city.

[14][15] The regulations also establish a municipal dispensary to screen sex workers for venereal diseases and house them for treatment if necessary—the same institution that would come to occupy the attention of Vũ Trọng Phụng in 1937.

[15] In 1907, municipal authorities created a separate "vice squad" or service des moeurs (Vietnamese: đội con gái) in the police force to deal with all matters relating to sex work, including the registration of brothels.

[9] Besides instituting requirements for registration and regular health checks, and mandatory treatment if a venereal infection were to be discovered, the 1921 law also taxes sex workers’ incomes.

[9] (It has also been suggested that the special attention paid to military bases reveals that protecting the health of soldiers in the colonies was a key objective for regulating sex work and preventing the spread of venereal diseases in Tonkin.

[9] The presence of this black market was something that colonial officials frequently worried about, owing to fears about the possibility, in their minds, of an uncontrolled spread of venereal diseases among the buyers and sellers of clandestine, unregulated sex.

There exist provisions in an 1878 ordinance for the regulation of licensed brothel houses (maison de tolérance), the registration of sex workers either as attached to specific brothels or as independent filles isolées, and regular checks for venereal diseases (French: visite sanitaire) at the municipal dispensary, especially in Saigon and Chợ Lớn (which would merge with Saigon to form a single city in 1931).

[16] In particular, clandestine sex workers—who refused to be subjected to registration and medical requirements—were targeted for harsh enforcement, due to the colonial government's public health fears about them spreading venereal diseases, both amongst themselves and to their European male clients.

[19] Perspectives on Japanese women in Vietnam at the time were also possibly affected by the 1887 publication of Pierre Loti's novel, Madame Chrysanthème, which has as one of its main characters a mousmé who marries a French naval officer stationed in Japan.

[19] They were engaged in similar activities as their native peers, but they would typically offer their services in separate brothels and places of entertainment, or as independent workers.

[19] Unlike their Vietnamese peers, many Japanese sex workers would start off being under the yoke of indenture to cover the cost of their journey from Japan to Indochina.

Japanese prostitutes in French Indochina refused to serve Vietnmese (Annamese) men since they held Vietnamese in contempt as a servant race.

Despite this and the government's subsequent HIV/AIDS education program, economic development during the 1990s saw women from poor rural communities taking up prostitution with a new class of professional clients.

Prostitutes would feel safe calling the police to report instances of violence and abuse by clients, traffickers, and pimps to law enforcement officials."

Le Duc Hien, deputy director of a government department tasked with fighting social evils under the labor ministry, crystallized this by telling the media: "It would be a strategic mistake to tap prostitution as an industry to boost tourism revenues.

[3] There is no clear or consistent pattern in how the terms are applied, even though there is an increasing awareness of other forms of sex work that so-called prostitutes may in fact be engaging in, such as webcam modeling.

In Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta, there are reports of women being forced into prostitution after marrying overseas, particularly in other Asian countries.

Vietnamese women and children are subjected to sex trafficking abroad; many are misled by fraudulent employment opportunities and sold to brothel operators on the borders of China, Cambodia, and Laos, and elsewhere in Asia, including Thailand, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Some Vietnamese women who travel abroad for internationally brokered marriages or jobs in restaurants, massage parlors, and karaoke bars — mostly to China, Malaysia, and Singapore – are subjected to forced prostitution.

False advertising, debt bondage, passport confiscation, and threats of deportation are tactics commonly used to compel Vietnamese victims into servitude.

Echoing the plot of Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly, Kim falls in love with and is left pregnant by a client who is a white American soldier with a wife at home.

[66] The 2008 Vietnamese television series Âm Tính is a documentary about Lam Uyen Nhi, a former beauty contest winner turned prostitute and drug addict.