Teenage hooker discovered to be a boy after arrest in Daehangno

The Korea Times had an interesting article today:

A teenage "girl'' arrested in central Seoul in March for offering to sell sex to adult men on the Internet has been found to be a boy, nearly a month after he was taken into police custody.

Before the 16-year old, only identified by his surname Choi, was found out through fingerprint identification, he was held in a lockup cell with five women at a Seoul detention center in Uiwang city, Gyeonggi Province, for 23 days. After finding out his real gender, police immediately moved him to a cell for men and had to revise the case report.

According to police, Tuesday, Choi was arrested along with four others in late March on charges of selling sex to adult men. He was dressed as a girl and used a female name when questioned by police. Because of Choi's feminine physical features and attire, investigators were completely fooled. Police said Choi solicited adult men on online chatting sites. When they met in a motel room, Choi stole the men's wallets and ran away while the men were taking a shower.

Interesting that it took so long to identify him, and perhaps a testament to the thoroughness of police searches. The article adds that

For minors aged under 17, fingerprint identification is the only official tool to distinguish genders. Koreans receive a resident identification card when they become 18 years old.

That should be "17 and under" above (in Korean it says '18세 미만'), though it's not surprising that such mistakes are made when the Korean reads something like '17세 이하'. I was curious what the fingerprints would be compared to, but a co-worker told me that babies are fingerprinted when born and the prints submitted to the dong samuso to be used in case children go missing.

As for dressing as a girl to steal money from men looking for sex with minors (wonjo gyoje), this isn't the first time, as the first news item under December 4 here reveals:

On December 2nd [2002], Busanjin police office issued a warrant for the arrest of a 17 year old boy identified by only his family name, Park. Park, who has naturally long hair, put on some lipstick, pretended to be a high school girl and used a video chatting site to lure men into arranging sexual liaisons for money. The men would send money to Park's bank account, but he would never show up for the arranged meetings. Police were able to track down Park and arrested him after more than 1.2 million won had already been transferred to his account.

The 2006 film Dasepo Girls (which I looked at in depth here) portrays something similar, in which a teenage boy makes himself up like a girl and video chats with a person he believes is a girl - but turns out to be his father in the next room.

The Korea Times provides a few more details about Choi's arrest:

He was taken into custody after a sting operation by Hyehwa Police Station in late March, and then transferred to the Seoul detention center in early April.

It might be worth noting that the first Korean film to deal with wonjo gyoje (which I also examined at length in that post about Dasepo Girls) took place in the same district, as can be deduced from its title: Teenage Hooker Becomes Killing Machine in Daehakro (대학로에서 매춘하다가 토막살해 당한 여고생 아직 대학로에 있다), which was released in late 2000. The translation of the Korean title is even more amusing than the English title: "The High School Student Who Got Chopped Up While Selling Herself in Daehangno is Still in Daehangno." I don't imagine this film was released in any more than a handful of theatres, and as far as I know, it isn't available in Korea on DVD (though it was released on video in Japan). A review can be found here, and some photos can be found here, which is where the photo at the top of this post came from.