My mother is Korean and its widely practiced to pinch/massage body fat to reduce the amount of fat. Does it work? I'm not sure. But there are a lot of things Koreans do that actually work. Such as massaging face wrinkles. It increases collagen production and reduces lines. She has this hoola hoop with hard spheres on the inside which "massages" (hurts) your abdomen as it goes around. Or maybe, its just the exercise of hoola hooping? Maybe, its a weighted hoop? Some come with magnetic "technology".

painful massage?

Massages work but not because it's breaking up the fat. What a lot of people don't realise is a large sum of what makes you look fat is water retention, because the fatter you are the more water you'll be retaining as well. So the massage is a lymphatic drainage that removes water weight which will obviously make you look smaller. Lymphatic drainage is good for actual fat loss as well though because the less water you're retaining the more efficient your body works, so losing weight will become easier.