Chapter 3. The Spread of Prostitution
Widespread prostitution in South Korea
In this chapter, I want to pose the question of why society accepts the existence of
prostitution in spite of it being an antisocial and immoral institution. I will discuss
prostitution and sexual violence during the Korean War as well as present-day coffeehouse
prostitution in South Korea, partly on the basis of the things I have seen and experienced
myself. I hope to make a contribution to explaining the meaning and function of prostitution,and the process through which it evolves.
My hometown may not have been a village of Confucian scholars, but we were a typical ruralcommunity thoroughly steeped in the Confucian traditions of ancestor worship and rites of
passage. Therefore it goes without saying that we also had a strong sense of Confucian ethics
towards sex. In particular, girls were always expected to guard their chastity and have themorals of proper ladies. Nonetheless, these Confucian sexual mores were turned upside
down by the war. I have already discussed the process through which my hometown
confronted sexual violence during the Korean War by becoming a "prostitution village".
Prostitution put down deep roots in towns located near military bases, though sexual violence
has not entirely disappeared there, and then it spread to other areas. This then brings us up to
the even more widespread reality of prostitution in Korea today.
There exists a society of sexual morality, which restricts prostitution as antisocial sexualdeviancy, and at the same time a society that seeks to reduce normal physiological tensions
through the institutionalization of prostitution, in the belief that it is not possible to satisfy thesexual needs of all society within the framework of legal marriage alone. In other words,
even though there are differences of degree, every society will have both prostitution andregulations against it. However, even once-fixed ideas about marriage and prostitution havebeen changing considerably in modern society, and the nature of prostitution has alsochanged. As a result, prostitution has become difficult to define, but if I was to attempt adefinition myself, I would call it a dynamic interplay between normal and deviant sex, arelationship that might be balanced between the two or imbalanced towards one or the other.
Even married couples sometimes use a form of "client prostitution," and often women who
are called "prostitutes" are similar to lovers.
The status and the definition of "wife," "mistress," geisha, "infidelity," and "adultery" haveall changed in modern times and it is thus not mere sarcasm to say that a fine line exists
between marriage and prostitution. Korea has had its own traditional system of kisaeng
entertainers, who could variously be lovers or prostitutes, and although modern society has
officially suppressed the sex trade, it flourishes behind the scenes.
After US Army units left my village, they moved into a permanent base in the city of
Dongducheon, about four kilometers away, and most of the prostitutes in my village1accompanied them. It has been said that the total number of such prostitutes, known as"Western whores," is two or three times the number of soldiers in a division. In the area
where American soldiers are stationed, the economy relies on them and when they are
forbidden from leaving their bases the local economy quickly slips into recession. The sameis true everywhere there are US Army camps, including some in spots well-known acrossKorea like Daegu, Itaewon in Seoul, and Paju and Osan in Gyeonggi. These districts have thelook of American towns and they are known to be outside the jurisdiction of normal Korean
laws.
I once saw a sign just outside Daegu's US military bases of Camp Henry and Camp Walker
for a shop dealing with international marriages. In South Korea today, there are also a lot ofhigh-class women who enjoy going to restaurants and golf courses frequented by US soldiers
in order to get exposure to American culture. In the aftermath of the Korean War, if a Korean
woman was walking with a white man, it was simply assumed that she was a prostitute. Now,
international marriages are common and there are apparently many cases of prostitutes
formally marrying American soldiers. Researchers have shown that American soldiersserving in Korea look for a wife while shifting between one lover and the next, whereas
Korean women stick with one partner and do not separate from him. Such differing views on
marriage seem to be one of the pitfalls of international marriages for Korean women.
However, in Korean society, many women believe that if they lose their virginity they haveno chance of getting married, and that is the reason why prostitutes view American soldiers
or Western people in general as being ideal marriage partners. A similar sort of tendency also
exists among Korean women working in seedy nightclubs in Japan. According to Oh
Seon-hwa's book Skirt Wind, some Korean women who lose their virginity and cannot get
married drift to Japan and become hostesses.
In Korea, there is also prostitution around where South Korean soldiers are stationed.
Red-light districts have been formed near train stations used mainly by soldiers, and until
quite recently prostitutes used to congregate in great numbers around Seoul Station andCheongnyangni Station. Such things were a widespread phenomenon.
Prostitutes in Korea usually rent private houses which they redecorate to give them ahome-like atmosphere in order to attract American soldiers as regular customers. They seemto serve as "comfort stations" to provide solace to homesick American soldiers who want tofeel as if they are back at home. Many prostitutes dream of getting an international marriage
that, if they are lucky, might lead to a new life in the United States. International marriage isthus a possible escape route for women cast off by society as morally depraved. Whether or
not they are seeking a regular customer who will marry them, the prostitutes' primary goal is
to earn money and obtain the capital needed to establish a business.
A woman who I will call "Lady C" had become a prostitute and was raising a child she had
had with a white man, but she had been together with an American soldiers who she wasplanning on marrying and who was even sending her support money. Ultimately she ended
up later losing contact with him and had to give up on any plan for an international marriage.

2

She became a coffeehouse manager, using the money she had saved up, and recently died ina traffic accident.
Although depraved acts like prostitution are deviations from the straight path known asmarriage, the prostitutes themselves may see prostitution as being their own path to marriage.
These ironic occasions when prostitution leads to marriage can also be seen in South Korea's
coffeehouse prostitution industry. Likewise members of the general public might consider
prostitutes as people protecting society from sexual violence, but prostitutes view themselves
as people trying to work their way up to normalcy from the lowest rungs of society. Though
the government may attempt to suppress prostitution, the people’s opinions on public
prostitution vary widely.
Next I will give my thoughts on "coffeehouse prostitution" in Korea.
Coffeehouses
Though I had been a frequent visitor to coffeehouses, I had not known that they were centers
for prostitution. I stopped by coffeehouses habitually when doing field studies of farming
villages and fishing villages. I ended up becoming interested in the functions andcharacteristics of coffeehouses, and that is how I noticed for the first time the presence of
prostitution.
A full-fledged coffeehouse industry in Korea did not start until Japanese colonial rule.
During the reform period in Korea just prior to the colonial period, black tea and coffee
brought by Western diplomats spread amongst Korea's upper classes. Korea's firstcoffeehouse was attached to a hotel in Incheon, and the first such hotel-affiliated coffeehousein Seoul was established in 1902 by Russian citizens of German descent. Modern-day
coffeehouses began to appear following the March 1st Movement of 1919. It was after thatthat Japanese citizens took the lead in setting up Aokido coffeehouses and in the Chosun
Hotel, followed by the opening of a modern-day coffeehouse around 1923 on Mount
Geumgang. Coffeehouses next sprung up as cultural spaces for Korean entertainers, andprior to World War II, they had also become sites for hosting exhibitions and bookpublication parties as well as gathering places for unemployed people.
After the end of the Korean War the pre-war role played by coffeehouses as centers for
cultural activity shifted. From 1960 and onwards, the coffeehouses, which were once run byintellectuals, expanded due to the appearance of a new business model based on a "madam"and the waitresses known in Korean as agassi. It was then that the coffeehouse businessreally took off.
In 1944, there were 60 coffeehouses in Seoul, but by 1955 there were 286. That number
reached 1,041 in the year 1960 and then rose to 3,359 by the year 1977. The general setup ofthese coffeehouses involves one manager, two waitresses, one delivery man with a moped,
and one male cook. When the manager hires a waitress, he first pays an employment agency
a placement fee amounting to ten percent of her salary, and then upon bringing her to the3coffeehouse, he pays the waitress in advance for her first month of work. I was told that thecoffeehouse waitresses are paid 1,200,000 won monthly with free room and board, and thefee paid to the employment agency is therefore 120,000 won. A Korean professor who I wastravelling with mentioned to me that their salaries alone are somewhat higher than thestarting wage of a university professor but are even more impressive when you take into
account the free room and board.
The manager is responsible for bringing a madam and waitresses to the coffeehouse, but it is
the madam who takes care of the waitresses. The madam plays the role of a big sister for the
waitresses, giving them guidance on things like customer service, makeup application, andtheir on-duty hours. The madams also serve as emotional support for the waitresses, and I
have been told that a madam may resign if she does not get along with the waitresses. Still,taking care of customers remains the primary duty of the madam.
The madam of a coffeehouse dresses in the traditional Korean women's garment known as
the chima jeogori and her job is to entertain and chat with her regular clients. Madams with agood reputation will attract a great many customers. The madams and the waitresses are also
sent out to take orders and deal with customers who want credit. This "madam system" hadspread quickly throughout Korea, but now coffee shops similar to the ones in Japan havebecome popular in urban areas and madams are gradually being replaced by waiters. Even so,
the madam system still persists in the countryside.
Nevertheless, coffeehouses remain important as places to rest or socialize, both in cities andthe countryside. Their usual adult, male customers often visit coffeehouses several times
each day, and those who become the regular client of a madam can freely take advantage of
all the coffeehouse's services. Many people select one coffeehouse as their regular haunt, andin provincial cities the lineup of customers at any given coffeehouse is more or less fixed.
One challenging aspect of running a coffeehouse is competition with other stores. To prevent
business from being taken by other coffeehouses in the neighborhood, coffeehouses do extra
services for their customers and cultivate many regular clients. Even more troublesome is thefact that they must insist on on-the-spot cash payment rather than credit or else they won't
make any money at all. Coffeehouses have had to expand above all into the field of direct
coffee delivery in order to stay competitive. Direct coffee delivery was made a successthrough the use of delivery men on mopeds who carry the waitresses all over town. In somecircumstances the waitresses themselves might drive the mopeds, and seeing them do theirdeliveries in the city is not unusual. It was the introduction of the moped into South Korea
which made this new field of service feasible.
A coffeehouse that I will call "Coffeehouse R" told me that it does direct coffee deliveries to
130 locations in a day. The waitresses jump onto the back of mopeds driven by delivery men
while carrying a coffee pot and coffee cups in their hands. In order to cover as much groundas possible, they plan out a route through several locations near to one another. Afterdelivering coffee to the first customers on their route, they continue through the rest of their4

rounds while the first ones are still drinking, and then backtrack in order to collect up all theircoffee cups on the way back to the coffeehouse.
Such delivery orders come from many places including government offices, inns, eateries,and even individual homes. Sometimes single people at home or at an inn order enoughcoffee for several people, and I was told that the waitresses take special care for thoseoccasions. It was then that I learned that some of these people were included in the "ticket"
system. These tickets are a trade secret known only to their most trusted regular clients.
Photo Caption: A coffeehouse waitress (unrelated to the women described in this book)delivering coffee to a customer.
Listening to the waitresses' stories
When I tried to speak at length with a coffeehouse waitress for the purposes of my research amadam mentioned to me the "tickets," known informally as bong, and told me to use one.
This is how I first discovered the ticket system.
Under the ticket system, a customer may have a waitress all to himself on an hourly basis.
When a customer wants exclusive access to his favorite waitress or madam, he calls up thecoffeehouse to order a ticket, and then the madam weights the merits of the request based onthings like whether or not the employee has enough time. If the madam approves the request,
the customer is charged by the hour. The price varies somewhat between coffeehouses, but it
tends to be roughly 20,000 won per hour. It was explained to me that, officially, the tickets
exist to respond to those customers who want a chance to eat and drink with their favorite
waitress or madam, but in practice the system has attracted social criticism for being
connected to prostitution.
This matter would later become widely known through the popularity of the 1986 movie
Ticket, directed by Im Gwon-taek, which takes up the subject. In this film, Ji-suk (played by
Kim Jee-Mi) was the wife of a dissident writer but is now involved in the sex trade and isbringing waitresses to a port city in Gangwon Province, where she runs a coffeehouse. Oneof them is Se-young (played by Jeon Se-young), who has never worked as a coffeehouse
waitress before and is scolded by Ji-suk when she refuses a request from her customer.
Se-young's boyfriend Min-su, who is a university student, visits her and tells her that hecannot pay his tuition and will have quit university. Se-young tells him that she will find themoney, and while searching for some way to do so she becomes intimate with Captain Pak.
Min-su ends up finding out about Se-young's relationship with Captain Pak and breaks up
with her. Ji-suk meets with Min-su, but does not succeed at convincing him to reconsider.
Coffeehouse waitresses prostitute themselves during coffee deliveries because of theirmoney worries, which sometimes stem from the need to support their families.

5

When I was walking through the islands of South Jeolla Province, there were a lot ofcoffeehouses with signs stuck on their entranceways reading "Our coffeehouse does not
accept tickets." I decided to investigate several of these places.
"Coffeehouse T" was reputed to treat its employers better than any of the nine coffeehouses
clustered around the local town hall. The madam was paid a salary of 1,500,000 won and thewaitresses were paid a salary of 1,400,000 won. It did not have any delivery men withmopeds, so it didn't do long-distance deliveries and instead just had the waitresses dodeliveries on foot to locations near the coffeehouse.
Although this coffeehouse also had a sign reading "Our coffeehouse does not accept tickets,"
I was told that, in fact, sales of tickets, priced at 10,000 won per hour, accounted for twenty tothirty percent of their sales. I heard that on one day the coffeehouse ultimately made 200,000
won, of which about fifty percent were from deliveries, thirty to forty percent from in-store
sales, and twenty percent from tickets. The cost of a ticket is paid entirely to the madam andis later received by the waitress as part of her monthly salary. Still, the waitresses are able to
make good money from tickets. Depending on their own skill, waitresses may also receive
tips completely independent of their regular salary. I was told that the tips known as"bathroom charges," which waitresses get directly from customers in exchange for sexual
services, amount to a hefty sum of money. On deliveries, the waitresses told me that they do
not have any set regular clients, but instead take orders from anywhere they receive them.
One woman of twenty-nine years, who I will call "Lady G," had become a coffeehouse
waitress and, after only two years, came to "Coffeehouse T" for a 1,400,000 won advancepayment received via her employment agency in Gwangju. The manager of the coffeehouse
had paid her employment agency a grand total of 1,600,000 won which was her advancepayment plus a 200,000 placement fee. What's more, "Lady G" requested an additional
5,000,000 won advance on her salary so the manager loaned her the money. Because there
are so few people willing to work as coffeehouse waitresses, the manager complied with her
request, and giving her a loan was also a form of security so that she would work there for along time.
Despite this, there are various reasons why most coffeehouse waitresses do not stick to any
one job for long. In cases when a waitresses quits within three months, the next employer
simply ends up assuming her debt. In Seoul, there is a system where coffeehouse waitresses
start work at 9:00 AM, go home at 10:00 PM, and then get a day off, and these waitresses
might make a monthly salary around 850,000 won. In addition, even though coffeehouse
waitresses make high wages in the countryside, they can still run into problems here as well.
For instance, if they do not undergo a physical examination for things like STDs every six
months then they will not receive a certificate of good health and will not be able to continue
working.
The ticket system generally applies to times between 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM and waitresses canmake good money during this period. I have been told that the waitresses do not want to work6

outside this period, especially between 11:00 PM and 1:00 AM, when they would have toservice drunk men from bars and restaurants.
These restaurants do not hire their own coffeehouse-style waitresses because their labor costs
are already high, but often make transactions by borrowing such waitresses fromcoffeehouses. When the coffeehouse waitresses receive an order from a restaurant they aresupposed to take it whether they like it or not, but the normal number of ticket requests theyreceive are more than three times what they can handle. Some of their customers do
disgusting things to them or make unreasonable demands, and at those times the waitresses
respond by refusing tips even when offered them. There are some customers who refuse to
pay at all even after they have had sex with the waitress, but as troublesome as that is thewaitresses cannot report them since prostitution is illegal, and they have no choice but to put
up with it. Some customers are also delinquent in their payments when ordering coffee, buthere the waitresses have legal recourse and can resolve the problem.
Coffeehouse waitress "Lady K," age thirty-one, at first went by her real family name, but inYeonggwang County she used a different name, as well as another different name in"Coffeehouse T". In this business there are very few people who go by their family names, as
is normal in Korea, but rather they often use just their first names. Coffeehouses waitresses
stick with one name once they select it, changing it only if another person with the same
name comes to their coffeehouse or if they are rejected in love. In the former case, I am toldthat the new arrival will switch to a different family name and use that. Almost all the
waitresses keep either their real first name or their real last names, and few will adopt anentirely fabricated alias.
"Lady K" spent ten months in a coffeehouse on an island in South Jeolla Province and thenwent on to work in the South Jeolla counties of Jangheung, Yeongam, Gurye, and Jindo
before coming to Gwansan. Like "Lady G," her transfers were arranged through an
employment agency in Gwangju. There are numerous such employment agencies in
Gwangju, seven to be precise, but "Lady K" has done all her work with just one of them. In
the past, "Lady K" had relied on a woman who sold cosmetics to take care of her job transfersfrom coffeehouse to coffeehouse, but now she almost invariably uses an employment
agency.
The women who get into the coffeehouse business as waitresses come, by and large, frombars. Girls from the countryside who have run away from home or women who have been
involved in prostitution start out working in bars and then later switch to coffeehouses in thehopes of finding somewhat more respectable work. Coffeehouses are their preferred form of
employment because, unlike bars, a coffeehouse is a daytime job and their customers wantnormal relationships with them, possibly even marriage. In other words, it's said that a job asa coffeehouse waitress might even evolve into a marriage into a good family. Each and every
coffeehouse has its own stories, passed from one person to the next like folklore, about
waitresses who succeeded at finding a husband at that very coffeehouse. I was told at one
coffeehouse that a waitress got married to a rich and kind man just a few days ago. He had left

7

his home when his wife had cheated on him and left home. Then he found at this coffeehousea woman, skilled at housework and was good with children, who he married, and now they
live happily ever after.
Seeking marriage
There are many coffeehouse waitresses who aspire to get married but there are not very many
suitable partners for them. A "suitable partner" needs to be both rich and kind. The waitresses
do not want to continue living in a farm town. They would like to marry a businessman. The
danger that they might become victims of human trafficking does exist, but it does not
extinguish their dreams of marriage. There are indeed many people who will enjoy a good
married life, but, by and large, marriage for coffeehouse waitress is not easy. Even if they dofind a suitable partner, objections might come from friends and family and terrible arguments
might occur. The percentage of such marriages that actually go off without a hitch isextremely low. Because of this, there is a general tendency for people to look down on thecoffeehouse waitresses who walk about with their coffeepots in hand.
One waitress joined a coffeehouse after divorcing her abusive husband and was paying
someone else 300,000 won a month in child care expenses to raise her children.
A talented waitress with many years of experience might become a madam, but being amadam is a difficult job with considerable responsibilities attached, so many people remaincoffeehouse waitresses even into their thirties. "Lady K" is also still working as acoffeehouse waitress, though she mentioned that she wouldn't mind becoming a madam. She
stated that she does not want to get married because all men are two-faced and unfaithful. She
insisted that no matter how well-behaved a man looks, he will show his beastly side sooner orlater.
According to "Lady K," seventy percent of the customers who come to her coffeehouse areold men, many of whom want to grope the waitresses. She said that it is rather tiresome
dealing with their many stock questions like "How old are you?" and "Where are you from?"
She added that younger men are honest and do not usually act like that, so they are better
customers. Women also come to the coffeehouse, either together with a man or with other
women, but they never come alone.
"Lady K" told me that the best customers bring a lot of friends, talk quietly, and leave in ashort period of time. Those who do the opposite cause inconvenience, such as people whocome alone, sit around for a long time, and do things that get on the nerves of the waitresses.
Some customers say crude things to the waitresses, but the ones who are basically
good-natured do not leave a bad impression even if their language is bad. What the waitresses
really hate are people who speak kindly but have cold hearts. In small villages, somecustomers use coffeehouses as their set meeting places due to their friendships with the
manager and might bring in a lot of other people with them, but there are other customers
with no fixed loyalties who will pop into any coffeehouse.

8Even though their salaries are fixed, coffeehouse waitresses strive mightily to raise their sales.
As their line of work has many challenges, being able to improve their sales gives
coffeehouse waitresses a sense of job satisfaction.
However, "Lady K" had a few bitter experiences in her job. There were a lot of violent men at
the port near where she worked. They had vulgar mouths and vulgar hands, often trying togrope the waitresses. When they got a ticket some of them thought they could do whatever
they wanted to the waitresses and demanded sex right away. One day a man twenty-sevenyears of age bought his own ticket and then closely watched her reaction as he poured liquor
onto a watermelon and tried to force her to drink it. When she refused and went back to thecoffeehouse, the man angrily phoned up the madam and told her that "Lady K" was not agood employee. When things like this happen it is customarily the job of the madam to standup for her waitresses, and it is also a test of the madam's authority, as the verbal abuse that she
can dish out to an adversary is proof of her experience. A good madam will give her customera real tongue lashing in order to settle the situation.
Some have even said that in coffeehouses, it is not the customer, but the waitress who isalways right. Even so, I have been told that when a coffeehouse waitress has no work shegoes back home, naturally telling her parents that she is on leave from the factory, and in thisrelaxed atmosphere might doze right off for twenty-four straight hours. At these times thewaitresses sometime also meet up individually with people from their coffeehouse and form
a mutual finance group with them.
"Lady A," thirty years of age, did not tell me her family name. She was a madam who neverlet her guard down. When I asked her if she made a monthly salary of about 1,500,000 won
she replied, "I made that for three years in Jindo and later came here. I chose this coffeehouse
because all the customers who come here are well-behaved." Though she refused outright topermit any photography or answer any questions about the coffeehouse, she did provide mewith some information.
Her coffeehouse sold tickets at 20,000 won for a two-hour block, and she also informed meof the meaning of bong, the slang word for a ticket. The word came into use because when thewaitresses went to spend an hour with their customer they brought five energy drinks called
bong, which were sold for 2,000 won each.
The madams manage the waitresses' time, but they don't have the right to appoint personnel
or other such administrative duties. "Lady A" was also kind enough to offer me theperspective of the coffeehouse manager, who was having problems with the mounting laborcosts of paying for the coffeehouse's four waitresses. She mentioned that they also have tooccasionally deal with the problem of waitresses who take their advance payments and thenrun off. Her remarks were consistent with her role as a supervisor of the waitresses and gave
me a rather different impression from what I heard from the waitresses themselves.

9This brings me to an explanation of the direct coffee delivery service, one of the defining
characteristics of a Korean coffeehouse, which can perhaps also be seen as an extension of
the issues I have already discussed above. The subtext which strongly underlies this service is
not so much the delivery of coffee, but the dispatching of a woman. Very few restaurants inSouth Korea do direct deliveries. Though farmers sometimes bring takeout back to theirplaces of work, the restaurants themselves do not do delivery. There are Chinese restaurants
which are starting up such services, but apart from that it is fair to say that delivery service isvirtually nonexistent in Korea's restaurants and bars. Coffee delivery remains the big
exception.
Coffee delivery in Korea today is reminiscent of its popularity in the Middle East in medieval
times. Ralph Hattox wrote the following in his 1985 book Coffee and coffeehouses: The
Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East.
"The coffeehouse... was in essence a 'take-out' shop, usually located in a commercial area, forthe convenience of those doing business in the markets. It might have been nothing more thana tiny cubicle, where coffee was prepared and then put into the hands of those menials whocarried it to the various shops in the market for the refreshment of the merchants and theclients they were cultivating. The custom, as those who have been in the markets or offices
anywhere in the Near East well know, is still very much alive. It is not at all uncommon to see
young men or boys, employees of the coffee stall itself or, more usually, employees of theindividual concerns, hustling through the streets and alleys carrying cups and single-serving
sized pots on a tray..."10