South Korea: A Hooch Is Not a Home

SOUTH KOREA

Every evening in Seoul they gather under the street lights for the shape-up: smartly dressed girls in spike heels and hopeful smiles. In the fading light, American soldiers cruise by to inspect the merchandise, pinching buttocks and tilting faces toward the light. The girls, who are known scornfully as "mooses," giggle timidly and plead: "Come on to my hooch."* But a hooch, as every G.I. in Korea knows, is not a home. More often than not, it is a roach-ridden room in a crumbling old house.

Last week, not for the first time since U.S. servicemen arrived in Korea 19...

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