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41 Strolling up Hooker Hill today, men will still get asked to follow girls into juicy bars and dark doorways. The bars and clubs up here have been mostly the same for 20 years: Friends Bar, now popular with Filipino workers; Polly’s Kettle, which for decades has served soju cocktails out of plastic pop bottles sawn in half; and the Grand Ole Opry, the cowboy bar with the raised square dance floor in the center. Every night since Mama Kim opened the Opry 39 years ago, she has played “The Star-Spangled Banner” at midnight. Mama Kim is in her mid-70s and tends the bar alone now; she can’t afford any help, but she doesn’t need it anyway, as there are so few customers. She still gets the small beer bottles duty-free, but now she is allowed to admit anyone. But no one really comes anymore. “Itaewon is not good now,” Kim says. “The Koreans think Itaewon is good, but American people come and they say it’s bad. You know why: Hamilton backside, it’s all Korean. Many businesses, it’s good. But here, if we don’t have Americans, we close.” Kim — a close friend of Tom Casey’s — misses the old days, even if they were exploitative and poor. It used to be that she would sell 30 to 35 cases of beer in a night. Now she doesn’t even sell five cases. “Forty years I have watched this place,” Kim says. “Before, we had 20 good years. After (2001), it went down. It’s really bad now. Too many bars. More people (in Itaewon), but they’re all Korean.” While Westerners are content with dive bars, Koreans, for the most part, are not. Down Texas Street — home to remnants of the old Itaewon, still the place most Koreans would not want their daughters wandering around — and around the corner, across the main street and behind the Hamilton, there is the new Itaewon. Le Saint-Ex, 3 Alley and Moghul are still there, but they’re the dinosaurs now. The street is filled with new options, most of them bright, beautiful and expensive. London Pride with its fire engine red façade, The Fox Hole with its shiny black exterior, Hong Seok- cheon’s My Chelsea, Zelen at the top of the stairs — they are all emblematic of the new Itaewon. Outside a new gastropub, in another rapidly gentrifying alley, a lem- on yellow Lamborghini sits unattended. One of Gangnam’s nouveau riche is out looking for an authentic evening of foreign food and beer. Inside the pub, they can make sure your hamburger is matched with the right IPA, your steak with the right porter. This is as far from the Kyunghyang Shinmun’s dirty enclave of “vagabond criminals” as you can go. It’s still foreign, but it’s a whole different breed of it. It’s a new Itaewon, an Itaewon of money. It’s a fun Itaewon, a multicultural Itaewon, a cosmopolitan Itaewon — Itaewon Freedom, for those who can afford it. The new Itaewon Freedom ‘itaewon is not good now. tHe Koreans tHinK itaewon is good, but american people come and tHey say it’s bad. you Know wHy: Hamilton bacKside, it’s all Korean. many businesses, it’s good. but Here, if we don’t Have americans, we close.’ mama Kim, grand ole opry