The men who arranged You Mi’s trip from Korea, her brokers in Los Angeles, and the madams and taxi drivers who controlled her movements were among those named in Operation Gilded Cage, a federal indictment of 45 Koreans in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Another night they went to sing karaoke at Do Re Mi in Japantown. This time, You Mi skipped the makeup and the sexy clothes. He looked at her in her sweatshirt and baggy jeans, and thought she was simply beautiful. He asked her that night to leave Sun Spa.
In November, four months after her first day at Sun Spa, You Mi had enough money to pay off the credit card debt. She gave $30,000 — plus a $1,200 fee — to a Sun Spa manager who drove to Los Angeles every two weeks with bags of cash.
Once in Koreatown, the Sun Spa manager gave the money to an underground Korean money changer, who called his people in South Korea and told them to deliver the cash to You Mi’s mother.
All the women working at Sun Spa sent money home this way. Within the sex-trafficking ring, the rule of thumb was to trust no one, but there were a few unbreakable codes of conduct. Trusting a stranger to send tens of thousands to your family in South Korea without stealing it was one of them.
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