Rattibha

Ever since South Korea’s economic rise and development, the country’s ultra-competitive middle class has become preoccupied with success, and now many elderly people have been left to fend for themselves, with old women in their 60s and 80s forced into prostitution🧵🧵

Despite South Korea’s dramatic economic growth, many older women didn’t receive equal education and job opportunities in their youth. Widowed, divorced or abandoned by their children, some now find themselves forced to take up prostitution.

Even though it’s the world’s 13th largest economy, South Korea has 65% of its elderly citizens living below the poverty line, the biggest among industrialised nations. Nicknamed “The forgotten generation”, Korea’s elderly have become victims of their country’s success.

Many retired South Koreans invested their youth and earnings into generating the economic powerhouse the country is today but their country has used up and abandoned them and now they watch as their children treat them as a tax, burden and liability.

The consequence of South Korea becoming a developed and highly competitive society has resulted in a limbo state where young people barely have enough to take care of themselves, let alone their parents. Leaving the elderly to fend for themselves with little state intervention.

In the capital, Seoul, grannies get paid to drink with older men and occasionally have sex with them. Meanwhile, older widowers and divorced men seek out grannies for sex or to fight loneliness because of prejudice against remarrying and dating among senior citizens.

Known as “Bacchus ladies”, the elderly sex workers are pitied and scorned in this conservative country, but they provide a look at the dark side of South Korea’s rapid economic rise and erosion of traditional parent-child roles, which has taught people that parents are a burden.

“I know that I shouldn’t do this, but no one can say that I should starve to death rather than come here”, said one elderly sex worker walking with a limp. She and her husband live with their son, a low-paid manual worker. Her family doesn’t know she sells sex.

The limping granny started by selling Bacchus, an energy drink. A couple of years later she began selling sex. She still does it so she can pay for arthritis treatment. She says all the women keep their activity a secret from their families.

One granny said she needed the money to care for her ailing mother. Another needs cash for her disabled children. One is illiterate. Some don’t talk with their adult children anymore. Some are ethnic Koreans from China who came to Seoul trying to find a better life.

Lee Hosun, a university professor said, “It’s like our mothers are forced to lift up their skirts to make money because their children won’t feed them.” As S. Korea modernised, young people moved to cities leaving their parents in the rural areas and stopped looking out for them.

South Korea has one of the world’s fastest ageing populations, but pension and welfare systems 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 shot up.

One 71-year-old divorced “Bacchus lady” said she spent all her money on her children. She bought a house for her son when he got married and spent a huge sum when marrying off her daughter. “Now, we don’t talk. I’ve been alone for a long time”, she said.

The granny said she had been a prostitute for many years. She said, “The first year, I felt really ashamed. she said. I couldn’t sleep well because I agonised over whether I should be doing this. Even now, I cannot sleep well.”

She said she hadn’t had a customer in 10 days. “Some women here are skipping meals. How can they buy food when they can’t even pay their rent?” She said most women at the plaza earn about $168-252 a month, but the very old women sometimes have to charge as little as $8.

For the old men, it is loneliness. Korean men were taught to sacrifice their lives at their jobs and to keep their emotions hidden. After retirement, they struggle. A 78yr-old man said he often goes somewhere quiet with a “Bacchus lady” to chat and touch her hands and breasts.

“I’ve been living alone for a long time so that kind of thing makes me feel refreshed,” said the man, who has virtually no contact with his two adult sons and their families. He buys sex from the grannies—($25) for the older ones and ($42) for the “younger” ones.

Bacchus Ladies don’t just carry around drinks to lure in customers. They also carry a suppository injection to enhance elderly men’s sexual performance. But those needles are rarely disposed of after just one use. Now up to 40% of elderly Korean men test positive for an STI.

Professor Lee concludes, “No one told me they became prostitutes because they like it. 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.”

Sources:
apnews.com
seoulbeats.com

apnews.com/general-news-9…