The Ubiquity of Iniquity in Korea
From Sex business lives on despite crackdown:

Walk down just about any street in any town - from barber shop to room salon to business club to sauna to "sports massage" parlor to neighborhood hostess bar to an out-and-out red light district; it's difficult to find a street where sex or value-added sexual services are not offered in some form....

The government's 2002 estimates say there are about 1 million women engaged in sex work at any one time, mind-boggling until one remembers it would take a high number to support an industry that comprised 4.4 percent of the GDP - more than forestry, fishing and agriculture combined (4.1 percent). The estimate was conservative since it dealt with semi-formal places of prostitution where numbers of workers and estimated income can be tracked.

Considering that there are other forms of prostitution which are nearly impossible to track, it indicates between one-sixth to one-tenth of women in the country at some time have worked in some capacity or the other in the sex trade or on the periphery.

Koreans often ask me what was my first impression of Korea. I recall three things that stood out on my first day in this country, August 30th, 1997: (1) all the cars were Korean, (2) the trees were quite small, (3) there were a large number of provacatively-dressed girls on scooters. I would later learn that these were dabang (tea-room) girls, a type of prostitute who delivers coffee during the day. I'm still amazed by how many of them you see operating in plain daylight on just about every street in Korea. I am equally amazed that most Koreans are in absolute denial about prostitution in their country.