By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
A growing number of ward offices are intensifying their campaign to crack down on sex businesses operating ostensibly as massage parlors and other legal entities.
The ward office in Gangnam, where such massage parlors and room salon businesses thrive, said Monday it will form a taskforce to inspect more than 350 suspicious businesses and utilize administrative countermeasures to root them out.
``Those caught selling sex will face harsher punishment, including business suspension and closure,'' a Gangnam ward office official told The Korea Times. ``This cleanup drive will continue indefinitely until such illegal business completely disappear from this town.''
Gangnam has emerged as a major hotbed of prostitution following the police crackdown on Jangan-dong ㅡ a major red-light district in Seoul ㅡ starting November last year, which succeeded in driving most brothels there out of business but eventually motivating them to cluster in the new ``sanctuary'' of Gangnam.
``If necessary, we will cooperate with police and relevant offices,'' the official said.
Other ward offices in Yongsan, Seoul and Suwon City, Gyeonggi Province are also joining in the cleanup campaign.