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Owners of room salon charged with sex trade, tax evasion
By Korea HeraldPublished : Sept. 23, 2012 - 20:16
Prosecutors said Sunday they indicted the two co-owners of the nation’s largest hostess bar in southern Seoul on charges of facilitating prostitution and tax evasion.
The two brothers, surnamed Kim, were arrested early this month on suspicion of arranging over 80,000 cases of prostitution and evading some 3 billion won ($2,685,000) in taxes.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office also charged the chief manager of the room salon “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” without detention.
Occupying three basement floors of a 19-story luxurious hotel in Nonhyeon-dong, southern Seoul, YTT boasted 182 private rooms and employed some 500 hostesses mostly in their early to mid 20s. It is said to be the largest room salon in South Korea, and perhaps Asia.
The hotel is also owned by the brothers, according to the prosecutors.
After being entertained and sweet-talked for several hours over hard liquor and fruit platters, patrons were ferried by private elevators with their hostesses to the floors upstairs, where 169 hotel suites and the scent of fresh linen awaited them.
The prosecutors’ office estimates that 200 to 300 sexual transactions took place each night on average. YTT reportedly took in more than 65 billion won in sales each year and 6 billion won in profit between July 2010 and June 2012.
The Korea Exchange bank estimated last year that YTT was the “bar that saw the largest amount of money paid via credit cards by foreigners.”
The investigators suspect Kim to have dodged taxes through fraudulent accounting, and also provided tens of millions of won in bribes to police officers when he ran a different room salon from 2007 and 2009, also in the basement of a hotel in Nonhyeon-dong.
Investigations into YTT have been on-going for several months. In July, prosecutors questioned about 500 clients who swiped their credit cards at the room salon. After getting unruly responses from the clients for the summons request, the prosecutors asked if they could send the requests to their home address, which yielded improved compliance and cooperation.
Their arrests comes weeks after the nominal owner of the hotel, the wife of the elder Kim, filed a lawsuit against the government’s tax collecting office to annul a 1.7 billion won tax bill.
The prosecutor’s office is expected to widen the probe of YTT to investigate further charges of bribery involving government officials.
By Samuel Songhoon Lee (songhoon@heraldcorp.com)
The two brothers, surnamed Kim, were arrested early this month on suspicion of arranging over 80,000 cases of prostitution and evading some 3 billion won ($2,685,000) in taxes.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office also charged the chief manager of the room salon “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” without detention.
Occupying three basement floors of a 19-story luxurious hotel in Nonhyeon-dong, southern Seoul, YTT boasted 182 private rooms and employed some 500 hostesses mostly in their early to mid 20s. It is said to be the largest room salon in South Korea, and perhaps Asia.
The hotel is also owned by the brothers, according to the prosecutors.
After being entertained and sweet-talked for several hours over hard liquor and fruit platters, patrons were ferried by private elevators with their hostesses to the floors upstairs, where 169 hotel suites and the scent of fresh linen awaited them.
The prosecutors’ office estimates that 200 to 300 sexual transactions took place each night on average. YTT reportedly took in more than 65 billion won in sales each year and 6 billion won in profit between July 2010 and June 2012.
The Korea Exchange bank estimated last year that YTT was the “bar that saw the largest amount of money paid via credit cards by foreigners.”
The investigators suspect Kim to have dodged taxes through fraudulent accounting, and also provided tens of millions of won in bribes to police officers when he ran a different room salon from 2007 and 2009, also in the basement of a hotel in Nonhyeon-dong.
Investigations into YTT have been on-going for several months. In July, prosecutors questioned about 500 clients who swiped their credit cards at the room salon. After getting unruly responses from the clients for the summons request, the prosecutors asked if they could send the requests to their home address, which yielded improved compliance and cooperation.
Their arrests comes weeks after the nominal owner of the hotel, the wife of the elder Kim, filed a lawsuit against the government’s tax collecting office to annul a 1.7 billion won tax bill.
The prosecutor’s office is expected to widen the probe of YTT to investigate further charges of bribery involving government officials.
By Samuel Songhoon Lee (songhoon@heraldcorp.com)
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Articles by Korea Herald
