The girl sits and chats with the businessman while he enjoys his coffee. “What about the coffee girls”, I asked.These miniskirt-clad, scooter-riding young women deliver hot flasks of coffee to businessmen all over the country. Who, if anyone, was enforcing these laws my young friend was so in favour of, considering the staggering statistics frequently reported in the press on what (on numbers alone) appears to be a little-spoken national pastime.
I had to ask my young friend what he thought of Korea’s massive sex industry (which 10 years ago was estimated to generate over four percent of the nation’s GDP – more than Korea’s agriculture and fisheries industries combined). I am happy that prostitution is illegal in Korea. If prostitution is legal then that means those people think it is ok to exploit women. Prostitution is degrading to woman and prostitution exploits women. On my trip to Europe last year I visited Amsterdam and I was shocked to learn that prostitution is legal there. I am glad that prostitution is illegal in Korea.
He seemed not to understand the question – what did the content have to do with anything? His topic was prostitution in South Korea and to summarise, it went like this… Then I asked if he wanted to talk about the actual topic of his essay. I told him his one-page paper, whilst a bit repetitive, was fine. We chatted over a beer in the pub, went over a couple of minor grammatical stumbles, tidied up the punctuation and a few spelling mistakes. A young Korean friend asked for a little help with a short essay he had written for his university English class.