‘Eden’ comes to campus
More than 550 audience members participated in a discussion about porn, human trafficking, organ trading, organized crime, drug cartels and the movie “Eden” that was made about Chong Kim’s life during Tuesday’s “An Evening with Chong Kim: Surviving Human Trafficking” seminar.
Kim, 36, said her sexual abuse started at the age of 3 when her parents would leave her with a Korean neighbor and her husband.
“He would pretend we were playing then take me to another room, which would be the same type of room that I would see for years to come,” she said.
He looked like Santa Claus, Kim said. To this day she hates the sight of the Christmas icon, she said.
“My boundaries were being ripped away,” she said. “My dreams would not let me rest.”
Kristy Fitzsimmons, a junior communication studies major, said she has been trying to learn about the different aspects of human trafficking and did not know all the aspects of human trafficking encompasses.
“I never thought that the girls in porn were trafficked into it,” Fitzsimmons said. “It was an eye opener.”
Fitzsimmons is currently a member of the Eastern registered student organization SheDances that is designed to raise awareness and potentially eradicate human trafficking in Honduras.
SheDances is an international organization.
“I never really thought of it happening in America, I only thought of other countries,” Fitzsimmons said.
“Eden” is scheduled to be shown at the Sundance Film Festival in January or February 2012; Jamie Chung will be playing Kim.
Kim said she is pleased with the way the film portrayed trafficking and her story.
“I didn’t want a cop that falls in love with me because that didn’t happen I was a survivor and I got out,” Kim said. “What is wrong with having a survivor be the hero.”
Human trafficking is a global issue and it should be treated as such, Kim said.
Woman of all nationalities and shapes are being kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery as governments do little or nothing to stop it, Kim said.
In her poem, “My Real Name” said she was also abused by a principal when she was 8 years old.
All molesters are like vultures they know when someone is damaged and they prey upon it, she said.
“When I told a teacher I was told to be quiet,” Kim said.
Kim said her mother was physically and mentally abusive which stopped Kim from asking for help for the years she was under her
parents care.
Kim began acting out while at school which resulted in her teachers sending her to the principal beginning a new cycle of abuse.
“I began acting out; the head principal called me into the office and gave me a deal ‘call my parents or stay after school and help him with a job,” Kim said. “I was scared of the violence that my mother would (put) upon me-that’s what happens when you rule you kids with fear.”
Kim, who was abducted to Las Vegas at 19, said her abductor that she met in 1995 while studying at DeVry University in Texas sensed her insecurity right away.
“After we went out of state, he destroyed all my identification-he said ‘now they will treat you worse than an immigrant,” she said.
After escaping her initial kidnapping, Kim escaped but said she was then trafficked by a woman.
“She was as vicious as any of the men,” Kim said. “She gave me food and shelter in exchange for selling me into a sexual slavery.”
Kim said the other girls and her were kept in various ‘hubs’ for the duration of her two years entrapped as a prostitute.
“We would stay for a couple months and then we would have what they called a clean up,” Kim said.
Kim said she made the decision to give up two of her children while inside the trafficking industry: once as a prostitute and then as a madame to keep them safe.
The baby, she was pregnant with during her 1997 escape, was the product of a relationship that Kim would later credit to her own Stockholm syndrome.
Her daughter, Angel, was conceived when she had a relationship a high ranking while working as a madame.
“(Angel) was adopted and I cannot get in contact with her until she is 18,” Kim said.
Kim said the legalization of prostitution in places like Amsterdam is not something she advocates or supports.
Kim is currently not working with authorities to capture her traffickers because of the lack of vital information she has.
Kim also said because she has not been guaranteed amnesty and would likely be prosecuted for the things she was coerced into doing as a madame she will not participate in an investigation.
“I am not going to be punished for something that I was forced to do,” Kim said. “I am still afraid but I wont let the fear dictate how I live my life.”
Nike Ogunbodede can be reached at 581-7942
‘Eden’ comes to campus
Taylor Reardon, a freshman elementary education major, reacts to a survivor’s story during, “An Evening with Chong Kim: Surviving Human Trafficking” Tuesday night in the Grand Ballroom of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.(Jocelyn Swanson | The Daily Eastern News)
