Parents For Hire

For kids worldwide, it's the worst kind of letter home: a request for a meeting between parents and teachers. But in Korea, beleaguered students who are loath to tell their folks that they've broken the rules or flunked a test have discovered a nifty new alternative: online employment agencies, which—for a fee—will provide them with a phony parent to take care of the matter.

In the past two years, dozens of websites with names like angelpartner.co.kr or helpmon.com have sprung up, offering anything from fake sons and daughters to fake boyfriends and fiancées. Many of the stand-ins are ordinary people who sign up to make a few extra bucks, and while most end up impersonating significant others, Bek Hui Sun, president of the year-old Seoul-based website Helpmon.com, notes that demand for parents-for-hire is growing. "The students really like this," says Bek. His company's site offers the services of nearly 3,000 members, some 40 of whom are willing to help students out of sticky situations. "There's a lot of pressure on students to do well in school and they don't want to dissapoint their parents," says Park Gwang Il, an English teacher in Namyangju, near Seoul. "They are starting to learn that money talks." The going rate for a phone call to a teacher is about $30, while a visit to a school costs about $100. Some kids are even lining up fake parents on retainer, just in case they might need someone to pose as a mom or dad down the line. "My teacher hasn't told me exactly when to bring my mom to school," says one 19-year-old Seoul student caught smoking, whose posting on the Angelpartner website offered $45 to anyone who could pose as her mother. "But I'll be ready when she does."