Elderly prostitutes show dark side of South Korea’s rise
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— both pitied and scorned in this conservative country—provide a look at the dark side of South Korea’s rapid economic rise and erosion of traditional parentchild roles. As a growing, ultracompetitive middle class has become preoccupied with getting ahead, many elderly and poor people have been left to fend for themselves.
In their 60s and 70s
Despite the country’s dramatic growth after the 1950-53 Korean War, many older women in South Korea’s male-dominated 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. Some get paid to drink with older men and only occasionally have sex with them.
Elderly widowers and divorced men, meanwhile, seek out the women to fulfill sexual desires or fight loneliness amid lingering prejudice against second marriages and dating among senior citizens.
In late 2013 and early 2014, the number of Bacchus ladies peaked at about 300-400 in the Jongno neighborhood alone, according to Lee Hosun, a professor at Korea Soongsil Cyber University in Seoul who has interviewed dozens of the women. Now, after the police raid, there are roughly 200, many in their 60s and 70s, Lee said, with about 20 women regularly in the Piccadilly plaza area. Hundreds more Bacchus ladies are believed to operate across the country.
Prostitution is illegal in South Korea. Despite occasional raids, however, the sex business still thrives in the shadows.
Bacchus ladies talk
“I know that I shouldn’t do this,” said the elderly prostitute with the limp, “but no one can say that I should starve to death rather than come here.” She agreed to talk with The Associated Press at a nearby coffee shop after she failed to solicit any customers, but refused to give her name because her family doesn’t know she’s a prostitute.
She started out selling Bacchus drinks about 20 years ago. A couple years later she began selling sex. She still does it so she can pay for arthritis treatment— about $250 a month.
“It’s a tragedy,” says Lee. “It’s like our mothers are forced to lift up their skirts to make money because their children won’t feed them.”
South Korea has one of the world’s fastest-aging populations, but pension and welfare systems for the elderly lag behind other developed countries. The elderly suicide rate has nearly quadrupled over the past 25 years.
“My two children took all my money. I bought a house for my son when he got married and I also spent a lot when marrying off my daughter,” said a divorced 71-year-old Bacchus lady at the plaza. “Now, we don’t talk. I’ve been alone for a long time.”
She said most women at the plaza earn about 200,000300,000 won ($168-252) a month, but the very old women sometimes charge as little as 10,000 won ($8) for sex.