In Singapore, prostitution is legal but pimping and public solicitation are not. In several government-regulated red-light districts Indonesian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Thai, Indian and Chinese women legally pursue customers in brothels, karaoke lounges and massage parlours and are required to carry health cards and submit to medical checks.
But soliciting for sex on the street is illegal. In places like the Top Ten disco in the early s mostly expatriate men rendezvoused with Thai prostitutes. Philip Lim of Agence France Presse wrote: Singapore has long been perceived as a conservative, even prudish, city-state but it has a thriving sex industry dating back to its beginnings as a key trading port of the then British empire. Brothels operate openly in Singapore in the notorious Geylang red light district, and self-declared prostitutes are required to undergo health checks.
The Singaporean government takes pragmatic approach to prostitution. Instead of closing down the sex industry it aims to tightly regulate the trade to protect minors and ward off criminal involvement. Wong told AFP: "Prostitution was legalised to bring this sector under close government control — for economic, moral, tax reasons The main overarching theme is we keep it under government control.
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, many Japanese women came to Singapore to work as prostitutes known as "Karayuki-san. Japan was a poor country a century ago, and women were one of its major exports, along with silk and coal. Karayuki-san, together with other Japanese women who served as prostitutes elsewhere, including Siberia, Hawaii, Australia and some parts of India and Africa, were said to be the third-biggest foreign currency earner for Japan at the turn of the 20th century.
Former "Karayuki-san," or Japanese prostitutes, are buried under a number of small tombstones at Japanese Cemetery Park in Singapore. Some of the streets that formed the former Japanese red-light district in Singapore remain in a huge commercial complex called Bugis Junction. Malay Street and the nearby streets of Malabar, Hylam and Bugis later grew into a big red-light district.
