| RICARDO MAZALAN/AP |
Who will carry the cup in 2002?
|
|
No Room at the Inn
To make up for a shortage of beds, Korea is looking to its legion of love hotels
By CHISU KO Seoul
December 10, 2001
You do the math: South Korea is expecting 140,000 visitors during the World Cup but has only 40,000 hotel rooms and 10,000 homestays. The government has had to enlist thousands of love hotels to plug the gap. They are called "budget inns" on the official accommodation website, worldinn.com, but most are the kind that rent rooms by the hour—up to a maximum of four hours—and where guests slip in through entrances artfully hidden behind massive potted plants. Worried that foreigners may get the wrong idea, the government recently ordered the hotels to abide by some decency rules: they must eschew such suggestive props as water beds, mirrors on the ceiling and porno posters. Hwang Seong Un, deputy director at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, says that "the only difference is these motels have no lobby." He apparently hasn't noticed the red lights (they are everywhere), the video shelves on every floor offering titles like 'Sex Toy' and 'Shining Lust', and the heavy pink curtains on the windows, drawn 24 hours a day. Don't bring the kids.
|
promotion
|
|
