Sex flyers target of gov’t crackdown

At night on the streets of Gangnam Boulevard and other Gangnam areas, including Nonheyon-dong and Yeoksam-dong in southern Seoul, flyers with half-naked women and phone numbers cover the pavement.

By simply picking one up and dialing the number, people can turn a trick.

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family said yesterday it cracked down on the distributing of these flyers in Gangnam and areas in Gyeonggi, including Suwon, Siheung, Ansan and Bucheon.

It worked in cooperation with the Seoul Metropolitan Agency and Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency on May 29 and 30, arresting 14 people for distributing those flyers and offering prostitution.

It added that they also confiscated a total of 6,470 flyers as evidence.

If a person dials a number printed on a flyer, a manager who connects prostitutes with customers picks up the phone. Those managers explain where customers should go.

The ministry explained that it is hard to target people involved in this prostitution scheme because owners of the prostitution business, middlemen who produce flyers and flyer distributors work together.

Allegedly, they do not know each others’ faces and communicate only via mobile. Not many people know where those flyers are produced.

According to the ministry, the prostitution business operators produce flyers and then hand them over to a middleman.

The middleman then hires a part-time worker on the Internet and tells the worker to come to a certain place or a stash box, such as a paid locker in a subway station.

There are different ways the flyers are distributed.

One classic way is using a bike similar to that of a delivery driver.

While one person drives, the other sits on the back and throws them onto the street.

Some distributors put flyers in their backpacks and just distribute them indiscriminately while walking down the sidewalk.

Others even go to lengths to modify their cars, making a big hole in the floor and tossing the flyers through the hole while the car drives down the street.

The ministry said those flyers are mostly distributed from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. and target areas such as men’s restrooms, parking lots, public phone booths and, of course, areas near adult entertainment venues.

Some of these flyers have recently been found in residential areas and school zones, forcing children to see these lewd ads.

By Jang Joo-young [sakwon80@joongang.co.kr]