The neon lights lie. At first sight, a typical Cambodian KTV (karaoke club) looks like harmless nightlife — pink LEDs, velvet sofas, a menu of songs. But when the doors close, it’s an economy of desire, debt, and quiet violence. The girls are lined up like products. The men are buyers. And behind it all, in Phnom Penh high-rises, dusty roadside karaoke shacks in Kampong Speu, and the casino towns of Poipet and Sihanoukville, there is real money moving: sex, status, gambling, and in too many cases, criminal control over girls who are still technically “koun srey” (កូនស្រី, young daughters) under Cambodian law.
In Cambodian nightlife language, they’re called “srey KTV” (ស្រី KTV, KTV girls). Officially they are hostesses, paid to pour whiskey, sing badly, laugh at men’s jokes. Unofficially, some are pushed to sell sex or to be “bar-fined,” meaning a client pays the venue to take her out for the night. Studies of female entertainment workers — women working in KTVs, beer gardens, nightclubs, and massage parlors — estimate more than 38,000 of them nationwide, making this one of the country’s biggest informal labor forces. Many of these women started in garment factories for low wages and punishing hours before being lured by nightlife work that promises faster cash, tips, and in some cases that fantasy word: “freedom.” What they actually enter is a system that pressures them to drink with clients until blackout, exposes them to harassment and violence, and ties their income to how well they keep male customers entertained.
The shift into KTVs is not an accident. Cambodia outlawed brothels under the 2008 Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation, which criminalizes pimping, managing prostitution, and running a brothel. But it did not outlaw the act of selling sex for money. The result is an open secret: sex work migrated out of obvious brothels and into “entertainment venues.” Karaoke rooms, massage clubs, beer gardens — all technically legal businesses — became the discreet interface where sexual services can be quietly arranged. A KTV boss can deny that anything illegal is happening, while still enforcing rules on the women, taking cuts, and fixing prices in back rooms. This model has now diffused everywhere. What used to be mostly in central Phnom Penh — in Tuol Kork, Russey Keo, Boeung Keng Kang — is now fully normalized in provincial towns and border strips.
The provinces are where it gets darker. In August 2024, police in Kampong Speu raided Bopha Thmey Karaoke in Samrong Tong district. They said they had gone in specifically to “rescue underage girls.” Multiple “workers,” some younger than 18, were being used to quietly offer sex to guests in a back arrangement the owners allegedly knew about. The girls were detained and questioned; the adults running the venue were detained and questioned; and then the case disappeared into the slow machinery of provincial justice, where local police, local prosecutors, and local business owners all know each other. When raids do happen, authorities like to present them as proof of action. But rights groups say the pattern is predictable: brief show of force, maybe a photo of “rescued minors,” then the girls are sent for “vocational training,” and the venue quietly reopens under a cousin’s name.
Phnom Penh is not clean either. In June 2025, police and anti-trafficking units stormed a huge restaurant-and-karaoke complex in the capital — one of those all-in-one places where dinner, private rooms, and “special services” blend into one seamless customer experience. They detained more than 100 people and said they had identified at least 14 minors among the workers. The scale is telling. This is not one sleazy back alley. This is a known business, with a license, in a city where ministers, military officers, and foreign businessmen all sing the same love ballads on the same wireless microphones.
Who are the girls? They are young, mostly. Many come from rural provinces, or from the garment sector, where wages are low, harassment is constant, and unionizing gets you fired. Some are Vietnamese or ethnic Vietnamese Cambodians, a group historically overrepresented in Cambodia’s sex trade and stereotyped by Khmer men as more “service-minded,” which is a polite way of saying more available. Some are migrants who lost factory or construction jobs during COVID and suddenly had debts — microfinance loans, family medical bills, school fees for younger siblings — and no income. Many tell researchers they want out, and soon, but they can’t yet leave because they owe the mamasan or the venue for housing, makeup, or outfits. Inside the room, the men call them “srey sa’art” (ស្រីស្អាត, pretty girl) or “oun” (ឯង / អូន, little sister/sweetheart). The girls have to answer “bong” (បង, older brother), smile, pour whiskey, and pretend none of this is dangerous.
And who are the men? In Phnom Penh’s upscale KTVs, the clients are government officials, military guys, oknha (អ៊ុកញ៉ា, tycoon with a royal/business title), mid-level businessmen with development or import licenses, and foreign investors — especially Chinese and Thai — who expect karaoke plus sex to be part of any “hospitality package.” In poorer provincial KTVs, the customers are plantation managers, truckers, casino staff, small-time moneylenders, and Cambodian migrant workers just back from Thailand with some cash in their pocket and something to prove. At the border in Poipet, where casinos line the no-passport strip between Cambodian and Thai immigration, gambling, trafficking, and commercial sex sit right next to one another. Human trafficking linked to casino operations in Poipet rose sharply in the late 2010s, and Thai, Indonesian and Vietnamese workers were smuggled in and out to service gambling and online scam operations. Now, due to the recent short conflict between the two countries, the border is officially closed, and the business is – temporarily – moribund. The situation is “better” in Sihanoukville: once a sleepy beach town, then a Chinese-run casino boomtown with more than 100 planned casinos catering to foreign high rollers, now still a magnet for organized crime, money laundering, and forced labor in “call centers” where people are beaten if they don’t produce. In those spaces, the boundary between “karaoke hostess,” “girlfriend experience,” and “trafficked body” blurs fast.
The Cambodian government insists that it raids illegal venues, prosecutes traffickers, and rescues minors, and there are real crackdowns on paper — especially when underage girls are found. At the same time, women working in the entertainment industry say they are still treated as disposable, still harassed by police, still denied basic labor rights like maternity leave and social security, and still blamed for immorality instead of seen as workers trying to survive. They point out that very few of them hold an “IDPoor” card, the document that gives poor Cambodians access to support and free health care. So when a venue is raided, the “rescued” girl can end up with nothing — no wages owed, no medical care, no safe housing — except a lecture about “virtue” and the old chbab srey (ច្បាប់ស្រី, code of conduct for women) that says a good Khmer woman stays pure, obedient, silent.
The songbook still says “love.” The contract says “service.” The reality for too many Cambodian and Vietnamese girls working in the KTVs — some not yet women — is exploitation dressed up as entertainment.
Oh please, spare Auntie the fake shock. Everyone in Cambodia knows who owns the KTVs. The same powerful bong thom (big brothers) who own the trucks, the casinos, the plantations, the construction sites. Ministers, generals, oknha (tycoons with titles polished by donations), and their Thai and Chinese business buddies. You think these plush karaoke palaces sprout magically overnight? No, darling — they bloom in the shade of protection, watered by money, male privilege, and police indifference.
The KTV boss is a smart man. He knows how to hide behind a license, how to put his wife’s name on the business registration, how to pay just enough “tea money” to the right officer so the raids never reach his door. The police visit, nod, smile, sip the free whiskey, and walk out singing. The real show happens after they leave. When you hear about “rescued girls,” Auntie hears “somebody forgot to pay their monthly protection fee.”
And the clients — oh, the bong who come to “relax.” They call it “entertainment,” but everyone knows what’s being bought and sold. These men — officials, businessmen, gamblers, even foreign investors — swagger in, loosen their belts, and demand to be worshipped. They call the girls oun (little sister), but the tone is not brotherly. They pour cheap whiskey into expensive glasses and pretend they are gods of pleasure. In reality, they are just aging boys terrified of real intimacy. Their money buys bodies, not affection. Their power keeps them from shame.
Auntie has befriended many of the girls, when she studied and worked in Cambodia, and she listened to their stories. The men’s jokes are always the same: cruel, drunk, predictable. The girls laugh because they must. They sing because silence is dangerous. Behind the mirror, a manager keeps score — drinks sold, tips counted, fines deducted. It’s a well-oiled system of exploitation, where women’s labor and men’s impunity are the rhythm and chorus of the same dirty song.
And the police? Don’t get Auntie started. The same men who raid one KTV for the cameras own a share in another two streets away. Protection money flows faster than Mekong whiskey. The girls are disposable. The bosses untouchable. And the law? Always asleep when the lights are red.
Cambodia’s KTV empire isn’t about music. It’s about power, profit, and the patriarchy singing off-key — very loudly, every night.