New High-Rise Apartment Complex Near Cheonho Station in Seoul

A towering high-rise apartment complex now dominates the landscape of Seoul’s Gangdong District, rising over a strip of clinics, cafes, and restaurants just a 10-minute walk from Cheonho Station. While the development represents a modern urban transformation, the project has left behind the women who once worked in the area’s red-light district, offering no clear path for those displaced by the redevelopment.

The area, located in Cheonho-dong, was once home to one of the city’s most prominent red-light districts. At its peak, the neighborhood housed more than 200 brothels before the district was shuttered in 2020 to make way for the residential complex that stands there today.

For some, the physical change to the neighborhood serves as a reminder of their own exclusion from the city’s progress. Park, a 46-year-old woman who worked as a sex worker in the area for eight years, describes the experience of looking at the current map of the district and recalling where her room and a local corner store once stood.

“I’d look at the map now and think, that was my room, there used to be a corner store there,” Park told The Korea Times. “I thought to myself, all these new homes going up and not one of them is mine.”

The redevelopment of Cheonho-dong is part of a broader pattern affecting several of Seoul’s best-known red-light districts, including Cheongnyangni 588 in Dongdaemun District and Miari Texas in Seongbuk District.

Legal Framework and Enforcement

The closure of these districts is the result of long-term legal shifts in South Korea. Prostitution was first criminalized in the country in 1961, but enforcement measures were significantly intensified decades later with the introduction of the Special Act on Prostitution in 2004.

Under the 2004 law, the legal consequences for those involved in the sex trade were expanded to target both the buyers and the operators. People who buy sex can face fines of up to 3 million won (approximately $2,049) or up to one year in prison. Brothel operators face much steeper penalties, including fines of up to 70 million won or prison sentences of up to seven years.

Despite the enactment of the Special Act, some red-light districts continued to operate for several years. However, the viability of these physical locations began to decline as public awareness regarding prostitution changed and the industry shifted toward online channels to connect buyers, and sellers.

This shift in how sex work is accessed, combined with strengthened legal enforcement and urban redevelopment pressures, led to the eventual shuttering of districts like Cheonho-dong. While the removal of the brothels is framed as a step toward urban improvement, the transition has resulted in the displacement of the workers who previously occupied these spaces.

The transformation of the Gangdong District into a residential hub illustrates the tension between the city’s desire to remove undesirable facilities and the lack of social safety nets for the marginalized populations who worked within them. For women like Park, the high-rise apartments are not a sign of liberation, but a symbol of being left behind by the city’s redevelopment.