LET ME BE CLEAR: we only went to see boobs. Keep this in mind. It is why, after two and a half hours of drinking through one of South Korea’s most notorious and least desirable red light districts—and having eyeballed disappointingly zero nipples—it seemed a good idea to ask the six-foot-two, black-leather-jacketed Russian man stumbling down the street at 2:30 in the morning: “Do you know where a strip bar is?”

Each time, we’d peek inside—Club Manilla, Club Havana—but the world all over looked the same. Each promised luxury and alcohol and sex, and each was just a small room with a vacant karaoke machine and a few women too tired to smile anymore.