An imitation Banksy seemed apropos at this South Korean love motel. One scholar calls the facilities artifacts of patriarchyβand they areβbut their story is more complex. National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has been tracing the journey of the earliest humans from our origins in East Africa.
He has been walking eastward β about 15 miles a day β for the past 11 years. As he travels along, Salopek has been documenting his experiences in a project known as Out of Eden Walk. A love motel is precisely what one may think, but it also is not. Salopek shared his experience staying at one of the motels. What is a Korean love motel? From the outside, many such establishments look ordinary: aging, full-brick facades, sliding glass doors activated by touch, an electronic sign dusted by air pollution.
Inside, the clerk is hidden in a frosted glass booth. You transact business through a small opening of the type that guards push-meals through and prison doors.
The clerk cannot see you. You cannot see him. Inside the rooms, more clues appear: heart-shaped beds, sachets of perfume, cologne and mouthwash, as well as sanitizing alcohol and condoms. In one such room, I discovered a laminated menu that was not for ordering food but instead listing women performers available for hire.
Each photograph attired in the exhausted tropes of male fantasy: a nun, a dominatrix, an air steward. One rents these rooms by the hour. Love motels may have been invented as a front for prostitution, but their role has evolved. Today, most love motels provide a moderately acceptable hutch where ordinary young Korean couples can enjoy fleeting privacy away from the family gaze.
