“I was waiting for my bus from the train station in Cheongryangni,
When I met this beautiful girl with tears running down her cheeks.
Yuri.
When I met her she was twenty-seven and I was nineteen.
She smoked Marlboro menthols.
I smoked Marloro reds at the time.
Yuri was remarkably pretty.
She was tall for a girl.
Long legs.
Big, bright brown eyes,
With only traces of crows feet on the corners,
Peeking out of glittered, purple, powdered make up.
She had her arm crossed over her thin waist,
And her elbow dangling over lazily to ash her cigarette,
Fluttering down the streets of Cheongryangni.
Yuri had a son who was twelve years old.
Sang-Hyup.
When Yuri was fourteen she was raped by her step-dad everyday for a year.
So much so that she began to enjoy it.
So much so that she had gotten pregnant.
Yuri’s mother called her a slut, and kicked her out of the house.
Her stepfather gave her a few thousand won out of guilt.
The only person Yuri could turn to was her best friend.
Min Soo.
At the time, Min Soo was seventeen,
During middle school he was a chubby boy,
Who was made fun of by almost everyone,
But at seventeen, he was the tallest kid in class,
The most athletic,
The gentlest boy you’d ever know.
Min Soo’s father had abandoned him when he was five,
And his mother suffered a stroke when he was fifteen.
He worked at a Chinese restaurant day in and day out to keep her alive.
When Yuri was kicked out of her home,
She came to Min Soo and cried in his arms.
He said, “I can take care of my mom. I can take care of you too.”
So he did. For two years.
But Min Soo’s mother passed away,
Shortly after Sang-hyup’s first birthday,
Yuri took Min Soo’s virginity then.
These things happen in a strange sort of way.
As Sang-hyup got older,
Min Soo’s paycheck began to look smaller and smaller.
And the strange little family could stay hungry no more.
They packed their bags and moved from the countryside to Seoul.
And they set up shop in Cheongryangni.
Yuri looked at all the red lights and said, “I guess we’ll set up shop here.”
Min Soo didn’t understand.
Yuri took off her clothes,
She slid her hands from her breasts to her hips,
“This is our shop now.”
Min Soo cried before he became a man.
He turned eighteen.
And never cried again.
He severed his ties as a friend.
And left his heart in a box
And buried it beneath the Han River.
In nine years,
Min Soo found more girls to take care of.
Plenty.
He treated them well.
Customers too.
But he was a different breed of man now.
From tradesman to businessman,
But neither a father nor a lover,
Somewhere in between,
And neither.
In nine years,
Min Soo had made over twenty-seven million dollars for himself.
With that,
He sent Sang-hyup to school.
He bought a building for his girls.
He paid off the police.
He paid off the government.
He was not a gangster.
He was not a thug.
He was still a gentle soul.
It made the town thrive.
Rich men came there to eat, fuck and sleep.
And that fed the mouths of poor children.
It built schools.
And in 2008,
Min Soo had the best fiscal year of his life.
And he was arrested for it.
Not as an act of justice.
Not as an act to “defend the rights of women.”
When the department of women’s rights discovered how much Min Soo was worth.
They decided to make an example.
The police squads came.
They ejaculated pepper spray and tear gas in the houses,
Until the floors were slippery with injustice,
With ignorance,
With shallow, breaths and the screams of young women.
And the female politicians,
Smiled for cameras, posing their bloated bodies,
Sending a message to all other pimps,
This is what happens when you don’t pay bribes.
Yuri laughed.
She picked up a newspaper,
Flicked a cigarette at the front page,
And flipped the bird at it.
’Fucking skanks.’ “
Author’s Note:
So. Back when I was trying to get into Korean politics, I sort of had these strange conversations with random people that I never really wrote down. I don’t know how much of them are true, but I think they are interesting stories nonetheless. I could probably compile the above into a short story or a book, but for now I made it a poem.
Korea has a very interesting history with prostitution as a whole. It’s well regulated and executed with such an intricate system that you would think it was a legal practice, but it’s not. On the surface, it would seem that prostitution should not ever be legalized, and that it results in the mistreatment of women, etc. While that may be true in the countryside, in Seoul, prostitution is practically a well-paid internship. You only have to show up to work three days a week, you make anywhere between three to five hundred dollars per hour on average, and your contract expires every six months. I’ve met numerous working girls over the years, and they really enjoy what they do. With prostitutes in Seoul at least, I’ve never heard of any girl being mistreated, drugged, or being raped or subdued by their employers. They often have traumatic sexual experiences in their past, but not by their employers. One particular district, Cheongryangni, got completely shut down in 2008. It’s become a ghost town. Seriously. Every restaurant, hotel, motel, business has just been closed off. The news media reported that it was due to “international pressures,” but there are quite a few other red light districts that are still fully operational and equally indiscreet. Everyone on the street level knows that it’s bullshit. It’s all about bribery.
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