Seoul : A dozen elderly men loiter in a small plaza near a cinema, mostly chatting or watching people pass by, about the same time several deeply wrinkled women stroll among them, trolling for customers willing to pay for sex in nearby motels, reports AP.
“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.
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.
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.
Prostitution is illegal in South Korea, and traditional red-light zones have been disappearing as urban redevelopment projects encroach on old neighbourhoods. Despite occasional raids, however, the sex business still thrives in the shadows.
“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.
South Korea has one of the world’s fastest aging populations, but pension and welfare systems for the elderly lag behind other developed countries. Nearly half of South Koreans aged 65 and older live on less than half the national median income, and the elderly suicide rate has nearly quadrupled over the past 25 years.
She said most women at the plaza earn about 200,000-300,000 won ($168-252) a month, but the very old women sometimes charge as little as 10,000 won ($8) for sex.
Lee, the professor, said that most of the women she has interviewed had dabbled in prostitution when they worked at karaoke bars and teahouses in their early years.
Just a few — five or six — were ordinary housewives before turning into prostitution in their old age.
“No one told me they became prostitutes because they like it,” she said. “Is this really these elderly women’s dirty problem or is it a problem caused by the ordinary people who point their fingers at them? I think it’s our society’s problem.”
