We are staying in love motels. Learn More. An imitation Banksy seemed apropos at this South Korean love motel. One scholar calls the facilities artifacts of patriarchyโand they areโbut their story is more complex. From the outside, such establishments look much like any commercial lodging. Indeed, many are wholly ordinary in appearance, even low-key: aging faux brick facades, sliding glass doors activated by touch, and an electric sign dusted by carbon pollution.
Inside, the transformation into something special begins. First: The clerk is hidden inside a frosted glass booth. The clerks are usually a man. You must transact business through a wicket, a small opening of the type that guards push meals through in prison doors. The clerk cannot see you. You cannot see him. This is by design: anonymity. Sometimes, check-in requires no human interaction at all. In the dim lobbies hum automated machines. They look like canned beverage dispensers.
You feed them money. They issue your door key. Inside the rooms, more clues appear. Heart-shaped beds. Elaborate hygienic amenities. Sachets of perfume, cologne, and mouthwash, as well as sanitizing alcohol and condoms.
Windows are optional. In one such room, I discover a laminated menuโnot for food but listing women performers available for hire, each photographed attired in the exhausted tropes of male fantasy.
Nun, dominatrix, air steward. Bought love. Hence: love motel. One rents the rooms by the hour. Most love motels provide a place where young Korean couples can enjoy fleeting privacyโaway from the family gaze. There is an exclamation of surprise from behind the opaque glass. And from behind the glass comes an even louder grunt of astonishment.
