All across East Asia,
a demographic crisis is looming. Birth rates are declining and couples are getting married later
or not at all. Faced with the prospect
of a dwindling workforce, governments from Japan to Singapore are
spending billions of dollars on programs to spear their nation's fertility rates,
with little success. But nowhere is this more pronounced
than in South Korea. In the 60s, Korea's birth rate was so high, that the government curbed
population growth with propaganda and sterilization programs. But the process worked too well. And Korea saw the average amount of
children per family dropped from 6.6 to 1.2. Now, with one of the lowest birth rates
in the world, the South Korean government predicts its entire population
will be extinct by 2750. As Korea struggles to catch up with
huge demographic changes, it seems like the nuclear family
is being left behind. The question is, what will replace it. It's like 5:30 AM. I've had about like 3 and a half,
4 hours sleep. Yeah, I'm just really tired, I've gotten up this early to go put on
makeup before a K-Drama style wedding shoot. These days the fashion for
young Korean couples is to arrange for a pre-wedding photo shoot
before they get married. The latest trend was to get your photos
taken on the set of the hit Korean TV drama 'My Love From The Star'. The premise of the series is that an immortal
alien falls in love with an actress. But in our re-enactment,
it would be me and our Korean fixer. We've had to get our fixer Sydney
to be the bride. I don’t how she feels about that.
But she doesn’t get a choice so… It's gonna need a lot of work to get rid of the dark circles of
tiredness out from underneath my eyes I look so much healthier now. I mean I don't really like
what they've done with my haI. It looks a bit weId but whatever. I feel very stiff. Like, kind of a 'Ken' doll
but not attractive. So, the haIstylist just told me
never touch my hair today. -Oh really?
-Yeah, like don't even touch! Should we get this wedding on the road? Where should we sit? -He will direct you. Same pose. Okay. Something really natural. One. Two. Are we looking at the camera
or at each other? Just like Romeo and Juliet. Good.
Can you go like this? "Really, you're giving them to me?" New season shoes. "Oh my God! I am so happy." This is so weId. Next scene. Look at the camera. One, two. OK, can you look at each other? It's working. At bit closer. OK, smile! OK, next scene. Move on to the next scene. Oh nice, I like this. This is where I sit? Oh! Mr. President. OK. Can we go with more serious,
grown up feel? Like James Bond. This is great. Wow. This is good. Closer. Mouth to mouth. Go a bit closer. This is the weIdest thing
in the world. I know. Smile. Smile, please. Please! OK! Thank you. Despite getting fake married to
our translator on a K-Drama TV set, I still hadn't grasped the nuances
of Korean dating culture. To get to the bottom of it, I headed to
the most romantic place in the country. Jeju Island. Jeju Island is like the Hawaii of Korea. Since the 50s, its dreamy landscape has made it
the number one holiday spot for newly-weds. Earning it the nickname, Honeymoon Isle. What is it you guys like
so much about Jeju? Next month, we have one-year anniversary
for our marriage. So to celebrate, we visit Jeju again. It's a fantastic place to have a date
with your boyfriend or girlfriend. One of the main attractions in Jeju is a place called Love Land,
that was erected in 2004 to break apart cultural taboos about sex. We're at the Jeju Love Land theme park. It's a giant, vast garden
filled with sculptures. But unlike most sculpture parks, every sculpture here is about sex. So when I first came to Korea, I would've never envisaged that
I would be walking on a giant penis shaft. And look at the view! You've got your wooden penis, Your robot penis... It takes the word dickhead
to a whole new level. There's no shame in any of
these sculptures whatsoever. There's no subtlety at all. This is just
pure pornography in sculpture form. This is called 'Awesome Threesome' and it's one of those ones
that does what it says on the tin. I like this one.
I'd say this is my favourite one so far. This is a sculpture called 'Turn Me On'. So I guess you crank it and... It's quite vigorous.
I think sometimes it's more better to just... You know it doesn't have to be... Love Land is one of the stranger things
you can do on Jeju Island and I guess it kind of
comes out of there being a serious stigma around
sex and intimacy. For a lot of young Koreans,
sex is a big secret. It's something you're not supposed to
know about until after you're married. It's difficult to imagine a giant penis
park existing in Korea 20 years ago. The average marriage age in Korea is
now 31 years. One of the highest in Asia. And attitudes towards casual sex
have had to change fast to keep up. We want to have sex,
but at home are our parents. At motels, it's just two of us, so we can express ourselves more freely. As we are young,
we don't have our own place. So couples like us go to motels to spend more time together,
away from home and our parents. Most young Koreans
still live with their parents. This has given birth to
a booming industry of themed motels that you can rent by the hour. This street’s filled with Love Motels. Now in my experience, the words 'Love'
and 'Motel', don't usually go together. But when you're in a culture where most
young Koreans still live with their parents and even university dormitories
are gender segregated. This is kind of the only opportunity they
get to avoid the prying eyes of parents and basically have pre-marital sex. Hi, how's it going? Welcome to Hotel Yama. Come this way. We created a Moroccan themed space,
where people can enjoy some holiday vibes. Can you hear through the walls
or are they sound proof? Yes, all the rooms are soundproofed. Do you provide safe sex materials?
Condoms, that kind of thing? Yes, we have them at reception. 25,000 Won.
That's about 25 dollars an hour to have sex. How many Love Motels do you have? We have about 40 branches in Korea. This branch is Moroccan themed. Other
themes include Cafe, Travel, Kitchen, Old. Our travel branch comes with
different country-themed rooms. For example, in our Spain room, we have decorated it with
Spanish football memorabilia, such as Barcelona and Real Madrid
football uniforms and boots. We have another room for England as well. We have a big Union Jack
hanging in the middle of the room. Fake exposed brickwork
and double-decker buses. It’s exactly like London. There are guys who decorate the
whole room to wow their girlfriends. But they end up arguing
with them at the last minute and have to leave the room alone
without making much use of it. Do you get single people, who come
and rent rooms just for themselves? Yes, sometimes single guests check in
to have some quite time by themselves. So, what's in here? Oh, wow, OK. You can go in.
We can warm up inside the tent. So, it's like a camping themed
love experience. It's kind of like a festival,
camping vibe in here. Kind of like place, most people
don't really like making love in. Actually yeah, I’ve just realized that
there must've been 100's of couples who have had sex on this bed
that I'm currently lying on. Maybe we should go. Even though this is your job,
don't you think it's a bit extreme, the measures that young people have to go
to, just to be intimate with each other. I think young people in Korea are
still suppressed by their parents. It's a different mindset to
Europe or other Western countries where most people leave home aged 20 or so. I would like to think we are giving
young people an opportunity. I sill feel negative
towards motels in general. It doesn't feel natural. It feels like
people go there purely for sex. Because I'm a woman,
if the room is pretty, I will like it. Love Motels present a challenge
to the traditional family image but casual sex of a more illicit kind,
has always been readily available in Korea. Even after the government made
prostitution illegal in 2004, the country is still notorious
for its thriving sex industry. Okay, so this is Hooker Hill, What we're going to find here... It's going to be hookers. Despite prostitution
being very illegal in Seoul, you can get a prostitute here.
It's very easy. The sex trade currently accounts
for four percent of the country's GDP. Making it about the size of the fishing and
agriculture industries combined. Up to one-fifth of women
between the ages of 15 and 29, have at some point
worked in the sex industry. Prostitution is so common, that in 2006, the South Korean government began
offering cash incentives to companies whose male employees didn't pay for sex
during staff outings. -Can we check your video please? Oh we're being chased, okay. Generally speaking though,
sex workers aren't too happy for guys with cameras to hang around
and ask questions. So, to learn more about the industry, we met up with a local
journalist named Kwon Sang-Soo, who specializes in
Seoul's criminal underbelly. What are all of the different options for
someone who wants to buy sex in Seoul? There are many kinds around. Ten years ago, we used to have designated
red-light districts for the sex trade. But now because the government is strict
on these places, the industry has mutated and we are now seeing sex "officetels." If you look on this side,
you can see big office buildings and at the back you will find
smaller "officetel" buildings. Officetels are accommodations where occupants
can live and work in the same building. Sex trade workers
disguise the officetels as home and they receive and collect costumers
they find on the internet at these places. How do these establishments
evade law enforcement? The information is spreading through
the internet and smartphone. Sex trade workers don't have to
physically hide or run from the police. They keep changing their IP addresses and
domain names to avoid police surveillance. So it's difficult to make arrests. We heard about a disturbing
new trend in Seoul’s sex trade. Elderly prostitutes known as Bacchus
Ladies, were selling their bodies for as little as $10 in some of
the city's parks. This was surprising in a society that
valued respect for elders over everything. So, we met up with Dr. Lee Ho-Sun, an expert
who is studying this recent phenomenon. Where does the name Bacchus Ladies come from? Bacchus itself is simply
an energy drink. You can summarize Bacchus Ladies
as middle aged women who sell sex for money by targeting elderly men. Not only middle aged women
but elderly women as well. Basically, they walk around selling Bacchus,
but what they actually do is sell sex. We followed Dr. Lee to Jongmyo Park,
where she was conducting research. We had to film secretly, so our
producer built a makeshift pocket camera They sit around here all day and try to
make conversation with men walking by. Then they approach him for sex. Every male elder that comes
to this area knows about this. [Bacchus Ladies] usually have a big bag
with them where they keep Viagra. There are not only 'Bacchus Ladies'. There
are also 'Soju Ladies', 'Coffee Ladies', 'Squirrel Ladies', 'Mount Kwan Hal
Mo Po Ladies' and 'Camel Ladies'. which brings us to the conclusion that there are countless women
who sell sex for money. Dr. Lee began to interview some elderly women
selling coffee at the end of the street. I heard there are
a lot of Bacchus Ladies around here. I've been doing it for 20 years without
earning that much money. In the middle of our conversation,
an old man suddenly approached. Sit around here. No, I don't want to sit.
Can I have some coffee? This is the best coffee in the area. Sit around here. No, it's fine.
I’m gonna go around there. There are so many of them down the alley. Can the senior citizens in Pagoda Park tell if someone is a Bacchus Lady
just by their appearance? Yes. You can tell by the way they look at you
and you can even guess the prices. If she's pretty and feels confident
about herself, the price will go up. On the contrary, if she thinks no one
wants her and sees herself as failure, then the price will go down. How much did you say the Bacchus
Ladies charge for their service? I think they are $10, $14, $20 and $50. Where do they do it? They do it at the motels. The motels costs around $5. -Who pays for that?
-The woman. The woman pays for it. So if the charge is $10,
after paying for the motel, she only gets to keep $5 for herself. I feel sorry for them. They are out here all day just to make $5. It's surprising to hear all this, because Korea is a culture that has such a
deeply ingrained respect for their elders. The biggest issue is that Bacchus Ladies are destroying
the traditional sense of value in Korea. The social role of the
elderly is to give wisdom and set a good example for
the younger generation. But social system is the main problem
rather than this generational issue. The government doesn't have any system
to take care of the elderly and they just push them into the corner. There are about 400 Bacchus Ladies
working in Jongmyo Park. Traditionally South Korea's elderly
would rely on their children for help. But as that social structure disappears, the State is only just starting to
provide a welfare alternative. And as the population
continues to rapidly age, nearly half of the country's elderly
are left to live in poverty. Back in their day, this generation
was having so many children, that the government initiated sterilization
programs to lower the fertility rate. We wanted to meet this super
fertile generation, who had witnessed one of the sharpest
demographic shifts in history. So, we're in Endungeoned, which aside from also being one of
the most dangerous areas of Seoul, is also one of the best places
to hang out if you're old. It's filled with these things
called chocolate, which are basically really loud nightclubs,
where people dance all night. So if you're old and you're in Seoul,
this is the place to be. This is a place where
middle aged and elderly people enjoy everything
younger generations can. The Collate opens at 1 pm
and they go home by midnight. The music doesn't even stop for one minute,
from when we open to when we close. It beats anything that
my grandparents do back home. This generation isn't handing down
the torch, they're keeping it. What do you think the grandchildren
would think about the fact that their grandparents are
going out clubbing all night? They would think it's pretty cool. To know that their grandparents can
still have fun at such an age. I imagine when this generation of
elderly people were younger, they were expected to be very involved
in taking care of their grandparents. Do you think maybe,
now that happens less? Yes, it is true. In the past, we used to have big families. Nowadays we have small families
with low birth rates and when we get married
we have our own families. This is making the elderly feel more
isolated from their children than before. So this is one of the
reasons we have places like this and I think it's a
rare culture in the world. Sitting in a loud nightclub, surrounded by
dancing Koreans septuagenarians, I couldn't help thinking,
is this what East Asia's future looks like? Korea's population was ageing at a speed that's
never been seen before in human history Unlike many countries in the region, its economy grew way too fast
for welfare to catch-up. Extinction still seems like a far-off claim. But what is certain, is that Korea's
family structure has changed forever. And in that sense,
this is a very modern issue. In most developed countries
the nuclear family is in decline. With longer lifespans, faster paced jobs,
and a freer attitude towards sex, each generation moves further away
from marriage and procreation. All across the world, the priorities
of young people are changing. And if we really are witnessing
the global death of the nuclear family, South Korea could well be Ground Zero.
