Dark side of rise: older sex workers

SEOUL — As about a dozen elderly men loiter in a small plaza near a cinema, mostly chatting or watching people pass by, several deeply wrinkled women stroll among them, trolling for customers willing to pay for sex in nearby motels.

“Hey, do you want to go with me? I can treat you really well,” a 76-year-old woman with a limp says as a reporter approaches her on a recent sunny afternoon.

Despite a police crackdown this spring that resulted in 33 arrests, including an 84-year-old woman, the so-called “Bacchus ladies” can still be seen near the Piccadilly theater in Seoul’s Jongno neighborhood. The nickname comes from the popular energy drink that many of the prostitutes have traditionally sold.

The middle-aged and elderly women and their customers provide a look at the dark side of South Korea’s rapid economic rise and erosion of traditional parent-child roles. As a growing, ultra-competitive middle class has become preoccupied with getting ahead, many elderly and poor people have been left to fend for themselves.

Also, many older women in South Korea’s maledominated culture didn’t receive equal education and job opportunities in their youth. Widowed, divorced or abandoned by their children, some now find themselves without a social safety net and so are forced to take up prostitution.