I never went to Itaewon except for one brief trip in day time with another teacher to buy some ties early in my time in Korea (1996).

Over the years, I met some other Canadian and American instructors who’d go to Seoul specifically to go to Itaewon a couple weekends a month or so or even more regularly the closer I lived to Seoul.

It was easy to see Itaewon was a Spring Break type place – like Panama City when I was in high school and college — a place where people went (that wasn’t their home) to go crazy binge drinking and other forms of debauchery. And where people would do (bad) things they’d never think to do – that were even out of their character – because they had entered a morality free zone – a place where you felt like you could not only get away with anything but were supposed to as part of having fun.

Itaewon was also the main place, it seemed, where some teachers I knew would buy their drugs.

I never cared to visit the place.

But, then again, I never particularly cared for the entertainment sections of cities I lived in — areas where everybody was Korean. When I was in college, I didn’t mind such places much, and I don’t look down my nose at people who still head out to those kind of places, but by the time I went to Korea, they weren’t the kind of places I particularly cared to go to.

Agreed! But like I always say, flies are attracted by shit.

I’m surprised that S & S went down the bar-girl route in their profile, being that they’re largely just a USFK propaganda mouthpiece these days. I feel ashamed of my race and nation when all that we can remember about a place are prostitutes and venereal disease. My fondest memories of Anjung-ri are of drunkenly smashing things with my fists, so I am no different. Being drunk and eating a boatful of street-vendor hamburgers in Songtan also stands out.