Officials tolerated camptown prostitution as routine troop bonding behavior

Evidence

“Prostitution was obviously a racket,” a U.S. official at the embassy in Seoul told me, describing the time when he’d been stationed in Korea in the early 1980s. “It kind of had a dirty feel to it.” And “even the married guys” were taking part. (Unlike in Japan, Germany, Italy, and many other base locations, 90 percent of troops on tours of duty in Korea have, until recently, been unaccompanied by families because the Korean War has technically never ended.) “It was kind of a bonding thing to go out and bar hop. You’d go from bar to bar to bar.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 488