The sex services industry has been expressed by local patriotic and church women's groups in the host countries. Some westerners have viewed the phenomenon with interest because it seems even more exotic than other popular images of Asia and Asian cultures. Moreover, the group behaviour of Japanese male sex tourists strike many Americans and Europeans as odd, even comical. But the real significance of sex tourism is political and economic as well as cultural : Sex tourism reflects the unequal political and economic relationship between developing and industrialized nations and between the sexes on a worldwide scale.
The continued economic gap between many nations in East and Southeast Asia and the wealthy nations in the West and Japan a gap resulting from decades of war and colonial rule, makes the most valued commodity in South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Philippines continue to be low-wage skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled labour in foreign controlled industries. Asia supplies workers, whether as immigrants or as temporary contract labourers, to Western Europe, Australia, the U.S. and, more recently, the Middle East. |
