In an effort to crack down on telephone dating clubs that enable users to engage in sex with minors and child prostitution, the National Police Agency is planning to submit a bill to revise a law controlling the adult entertainment business, NPA officials said.

The agency plans to revise the Law Regulating Adult Entertainment Businesses to tighten regulations on such clubs, which often offer services through nonstore operations, by requiring business operators to confirm that users are aged 18 or over.

The NPA is aware of the need to introduce a legal measure to deal uniformly with telephone dating clubs, which are currently regulated under ordinances set by individual prefectures, they said Thursday.

Minors can easily find a sex partner because the dating club operators usually connect callers without asking their age.

The operators of these clubs also have no way of controlling any payments of money for sex among their users.

Women call male users toll-free, making it impossible to identify them, while men are obliged to pay for the calls by credit card or prepaid card and thus can be identified by the operators.

The toll-free numbers are often written on packets of tissue paper distributed by the business operators on streets.

The NPA, which will compile the bill after accepting public comments by mail, fax and e-mail, plans to submit it to the ordinary Diet session scheduled to begin Wednesday. It will accept comments until Feb. 14, the officials said.

In the planned bill, which will define telephone dating clubs as operators that provide a service for members of the opposite sex to talk on the phone, the agency would identify the clubs as part of the sexual entertainment business.

The operators of these clubs , who would be required to report to the address of their head offices and service offices to prefectural public safety commissions, would be barred from operating their businesses near schools and would face restrictions on their advertising and operating places, they said.

The prefectural public safety commissions will be able to issue instructions to these operators and will have the right to suspend or ban their business.

The NPA, in response to growing international concern, also plans to include provisions requiring Internet service providers to make efforts to prevent distribution of child pornography.

Of the 836 cases of child prostitution recorded by October, 53 percent involved telephone dating clubs and telephone voice-mail dating services, according to the NPA.

A law banning such acts, which took effect in November 1999, generally applies to those aged over 18, and only to minors who pay for sex.

Minors who sell themselves for sex are not liable to be penalized.