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29 Growth began in the 1960s, and the neigh- borhood changed again. A few buildings went up. Foreign embassies, especially from new- ly independent Third World countries, began opening in the Hannam-dong area, and am- bassadors took their residences in the Itae- won hills. But on the ground, the streets still belonged to the U.S. GIs and the women they paid. Tom Casey, 75, was stationed in Itaewon in 1968 with the U.S. Army. He never left. He says Itaewon at the time was still small — maybe 4,000 to 5,000 people lived there. In 1968, there was still a countrywide cur- few. At midnight, a siren would sound, and if you weren’t off the streets by then, the police would lock you up until 5 the next morning when the curfew was lifted again. In 1971, the 121st Evacuation Hospital moved from Bupyeong to Yongsan Garrison, bringing with it about 10,000 associated ci- vilians. Merchants came along with them, and the shopping area began to develop. Tailors opened up, and shops selling leather goods and surplus brand-name clothes. Nightclubs, catering almost exclusively to GIs, started opening around this time, and some of them would manage to stay open all night with special tourist licenses. Oth- ers cheated, with back doors and black-out curtains over windows. The Hamilton Hotel opened in 1973, with a club underground that could stay open all night. It was full every night of the week. “We had a lot of fun there,” Ca- sey says. The nightclubs opened in the area known as Texas Street. Today, it’s the street that leads up from the corner with the fire station, pass- ing Hooker Hill, Homo Hill and ending at Halal Hill. King Club, UN Club, 7 Club, Lucky Club and the Grand Ole Opry all opened in or around Texas Street at that time. All were duty-free — they got the small bottles of beer no one else had, and bought them tax free. “The govern- ment did it after the war to give some entice- ment to the GIs to move off the base,” Casey says. “They gave them a special license that was almost impossible to get.” But there was a catch: foreigners only. No Koreans were al- lowed to enter. “And once in a while they would check,” Ca- sey says. “And if they had Koreans in there drinking, the police would say, ‘We’re going to take away your license.’ So for years, those clubs had no Koreans in there, only GIs. Every night it was packed with GIs.” But there weren’t only GIs, there were also plenty of Koreans — women to service the men. The women at the clubs wore badges with numbers. The longer she had worked at the club, the lower her number was. “They hated to wear them,” Casey says. “Wouldn’t you?” The women served drinks to the men, chat- ted them up — and for extra cash, slept with them. The purpose of the number was, ac- cording to Casey, so a customer could report the woman if he caught a venereal disease. The woman would then be tested, and if she was found to be infected, could be jailed for a few weeks while the infection cleared up. Prostitution was not legal in Korea, nor was it entirely illegal. According to “Sex Among Allies” author Moon, the women were recognized as “special entertainers.” In order to work in the clubs, she had go to a local VD clinic, “under- go gynecological and blood examinations and receive a VD card.” She would then have to go back once a week for an exam and have her card stamped “healthy.” The card had to be carried at all times. If she failed the test, she couldn’t work until she was clean. Juicy bars — so named for the juices men would buy the ladies as they flirted — popped up all over the neighborhood. Moon says the idea was the women would hang out with the men, sell them drinks, and get them to buy them drinks. But their main source of income was sex services. There was little freedom for most of these women. “Owners and pimps generally took 80 percent and gave the prostitute 20 percent of her earnings per trick,” Moon writes. By the late 1960s, it cost $2 (worth about $13 to- day) or less for a “short time” with a prostitute; overnight was $5 to $10. This meant one night with a GI could earn the woman as little as 50 cents, about $3.50 in Korea today. In 1965, a survey indicated that 84 percent of American GIs had been with a prostitute. There were thought to be 13,000 prostitutes throughout the country ca- tering to American soldiers. Women were often indebted to the bar own- ers, and it was very difficult to get out of it. The goal for most of these women was to mar- ry a GI and emigrate, since their prospects for marriage in Korea were very poor, owing to their disreputable pasts. Once they did marry, many divorced and returned to Korea, opening up juicy bars of their own, according to Moon. Casey describes how during raids, police would sometimes check for VD cards. If an American brought his Korean wife in, the po- lice would take her away anyway for not hav- ing a card. “Are they going to take her away from you? Damn right they will. Put her on the bus, she’s gone. You get near the bus, you’re going to get clubbed.” Casey says the GIs were pretty much in the area by themselves. There were no Russians because of the Cold War. The Japanese were still not allowed visas. There were very few American women, and the foreign workers hadn’t started showing up yet. “It was kind of a strange world, just the Korean girls and the GIs,” Casey says. “That’s why there were so many marriages. They were registering 2,000 or 3,000 marriages a year all over Korea.” Nightlife and black markets