Via the Korea Economic Reader comes this article, which just goes to show if you provide a service well enough there is always a market for you:
Until the unexpected phone call comes and she learns the breathtaking truth, Rika Suzuki will remember it as a night of fun and excitement in a cheerless and humdrum life. It began with an invitation from a young female friend, Kaori, whom she’d met by chance a few weeks earlier. A group of friends were going out for the evening and, unexpectedly, Rika — 40, and unhappily married — was invited to join them.
They met in one of Tokyo’s smartest restaurants; the beer and saké flowed. Kaori’s friends were flatteringly interested in her, none more so than a man of her own age named Osamu Ota, a successful businessman with a droll and confident charm. When the bar at which they ended up closed for the night, it was Osamu who suggested that they all take a room in an hotel so that the party could continue. And as the others said their goodbyes several hours later, it was he and Rika (not her real name) who were left behind.
The photographs taken the morning after tell the story of what happened next: the discarded clothes and screwed up tissues and Rika, looking bashful but happy, sitting among the churned up sheets of the hotel bed. “These are her earrings on the bedside table, and that’s her belt,” says Ota, who is showing me the photographs. “And these . . . bodily liquids on the sheet — well, these are the proof of what happened.”
In other circumstances, this would be unsavoury, but predictable, sexual bragging. But Rika was the victim, not of a straightforward womaniser, but something more chilling: a meticulously planned professional sting operation.
Everyone involved in that wild evening — from the young “friend” who invited her, to the guests in the restaurant — was an actor, an employee of an agency that specialises in sexual entrapment. The chance meeting with “Kaori” weeks before, the dinner invitation and the act of seduction were commissioned and paid for by someone Rika has never met — the lover of her husband, a woman who yearns for the failure of Rika’s marriage.
The whole thing was masterminded by Mr “Ota” — real name Osamu Tomiya — a member of a peculiarly Japanese profession, part-private investigator, part-prostitute, known as wakaresase-ya — the “splitter-uppers”.
The function of the wakaresase-ya is the direct opposite of a dating agency: with great ingenuity, and the right fee, they will prise apart human relationships. Do you have a troublesome ex-boyfriend who won’t leave you alone? A beloved son who is getting engaged to an unsuitable girl? A dead-loss employee who refuses to take the hint and retire? All of these difficult situations can be resolved by the splitter-uppers. [Times Online]
Read the rest about this service at the link, but like Tom Coyner I am wondering whether this service is available in Korea and if not how long before it is?







9:11 am on May 21st, 2010 1
Might not work so well in Korea since marital infidelity carries a 2 year prison sentence.
11:16 am on May 21st, 2010 2
It might work better in Korea since marital infidelity carries a 2 year prison sentence.
There I fixed it for you. The whole point is blackmail so the greater the shame/legal threat the greater the effect.
12:59 pm on May 21st, 2010 3
And yet you don't see/hear of too many people going to jail for adultry despite the fact that it is rampant in Korea…
2:23 am on May 23rd, 2010 4
You have to wonder about the people that pay for this 'service'. Seriously. You can't break it up with the person, so you resort to an elaborate ruse? Even assuming the potential situations mentioned in the last paragraph are true, isn't the direct way still the easiest way? Korea hasn't become as obtuse as Japan sounds….
12:48 pm on May 23rd, 2010 5
Wow … these are the people you don't want involved in your life.
And yes, in the culture that is east Asia, being the "wronged" party goes a long way in legal situations. I too wonder if there is such a business here and its just merely been hidden / glossed over.
5:29 pm on May 24th, 2010 6
I wouldn't doubt that Korea has this… they already have a show (I'm sure many of you have seen it) called "X-boyfriend" I think, where a paid actor is followed around by a hidden camera crew to try to get the person on the show's boyfriend or girlfriend to cheat or flirt with him/her.