Risqué Business
ココだけの際どい話
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Two Korean hosts tour the sex industries of Japan, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Germany; the Japan episodes drew a Korean backlash for featuring adult-video performers.
Risqué Business is a Netflix Korea talk-and-travel series in which the comedian and television host Shin Dong-yup and the singer Sung Si-kyung visit places where sex and the sex industry are discussed more openly, and ask the people who work in them how it all works. Netflix describes the aim as demystifying what is treated as taboo by meeting the people inside it. Each edition runs five or six short episodes.
The first, Japan (April 2023), takes them to the sex shops of Akihabara and an adult virtual-reality room; sits them down with three adult-film actresses, who talk about how they started and the pride they take in their work, and then with two male performers, Shimiken among them, and a director; tours TENGA, a maker of masturbation devices; walks the host clubs of Kabukicho and interviews the celebrated host ROLAND; and ends with young Japanese men and women comparing dating and sex in Japan and Korea. Taiwan (August 2023) visits the Taiwan Adult Expo, married gay and lesbian couples in Taipei's Ximending, models for a men's magazine, a class by the sex educator Dr Gracie and young Taiwanese talking about dating. The Netherlands and Germany (February 2024) goes to Amsterdam's red-light district, where prostitution is legal, to a mixed German spa and a group of nudists, a Berlin studio run by dominatrixes, a night in Berlin's clubs, a party at the sex-toy maker Womanizer, and two polyamorous relationships.
Starring
Shin Dong-yupHost
A veteran Korean comedian and television host who travels with Sung Si-kyung and leads the interviews.
Sung Si-kyungHost
A Korean singer who co-presents with Shin Dong-yup, questioning the people they meet in each country.
Why it matters
What Risqué Business puts on screen is a conversation that is hard to have at home: what adult film, sex work, sex toys, same-sex marriage and polyamory look like to the people who live with them, asked about by two famous entertainers for a mainstream audience. That is both its value and its risk. The Japan edition, which let adult-video performers talk about their work with pride, drew a fierce backlash in Korea, where making such videos is illegal: critics said it glossed over exploitation in the industry, and viewers demanded that Shin Dong-yup leave TV Animal Farm, a programme children watch. The producers answered that a variety show is not an investigation. The Taiwan and German episodes, on married gay and lesbian couples, nudism and polyamory, widen it to the question underneath: how much of what a society calls shameful is simply unfamiliar, and how much deserves the scrutiny the show chose not to give.