Prologue to Day 1

Seoul, Banpo Bridge

It is just past midnight on a Friday night in September, and I am taking pictures of the Seoulscape reflected in the Han River, stretching from side to side beyond the confines of even my widest lens. I focus on the golden lights and struggle with this borrowed camera, trying to capture a compelling image for this blogpost.

“Hello” says an unfamiliar voice near my shoulder.

I swing around in shock, immediately wary. Even before I register the smiling face of a middle-aged man greeting me I have started to move, changing our places so that he is the nearest to the river and not I.

“I want to tell you… you’re beautiful.” I see the alcohol bottle in his hand as his friend steps up to join him…

How many women have been approached in this way, at this place, I wonder? How many more have been put in precarious positions when a moment of focus on the task before them leaves them briefly inattentive to their surroundings? How many countless women are at this very moment just like me, face calm but heart pumping fight-or-flight adrenaline through the bloodstream?

I neither fight nor run, but merely turn around and walk away, back to the lights of the bus and voices of my friends, back to begin this year’s Ride Against Traffick. The irony is too rich to be missed: that when we are poised to depart Seoul on a cross-country trek to raise awareness and money to fight sex-trafficking in South Korea, at that very moment I should be approached by strangers, and made to feel afraid. Yet even in this moment of fear, for me, safety is mere steps away in the company of my friends. For me, at midnight by the river in Seoul safety still exists, and I have the freedom to grasp it.

But what about the countless women who have no such freedom?

It is for these women that we ride.