As dusk descends on the Sinchon neighborhood of Seoul, a wave of Saturday shoppers melts away into restaurants and bars. In a windowless room several floors above the throng, Ji Yu-tae is steeling himself for a very different night’s entertainment.
His only companions are a vitamin drink, cigarettes and a monitor displaying a scene from Aion, one of South Korea’s most popular online games. When the hunger pangs become irresistible, he will click a box in the corner of his PC screen and order instant noodles.
By Monday morning, after two days of almost non-stop gaming, Ji will make his way to work, pale and sleep-deprived, but content that he has progressed in the virtual world that has been his second home for the past two years.
Seated next to him among rows of screens at this Internet cafe in the South Korean capital are scores of fellow obsessives whose attachment to online gaming is fast becoming a problem.
According to the government, about 2 million South Koreans — nearly one in 10 online users — are addicted to the Internet. Many spend every waking moment immersed in role-playing games, in which players form alliances to guide their characters through mythical worlds, collecting extra powers and other items as they go.
“I’ve been playing this for about two years and won’t stop until I get to the end,” Ji, a 27-year-old mobile content developer, says as beads of sweat form on his brow. “In my line of work I spend a lot of time in front of a computer, so this is where I feel most comfortable.”
But he denies that his obsession could be turning into an addiction.
“It’s my way of relieving stress. I could drink or go to the cinema, but this is how I want to spend my spare time. I don’t have a girlfriend, and I’m not likely to meet one here,” he says.
No girlfriend
The government has responded to juvenile Web addiction by spending millions of dollars on counseling centers and awareness classes for children. From September, gamers aged under 18 will be unable to access 19 popular online titles, such as Maple Story and Dragon Nest, from midnight to 8am. Those who play outside the curfew will find their characters growing weaker the longer they play.
Now, however, the government must reconcile its support for online activity with the emergence of an older generation of Web addicts. While the number of teenage addicts has fallen from more than 1 million to 938,000 in the past two years, those in their 20s and 30s has risen to 975,000, with the unemployed and university students considered at greatest risk.
South Korea’s status as the world’s most wired nation gives people the technical wherewithal to fuel their addiction. The country boasts the fastest and most developed broadband network on the planet and more than 90 percent of homes have high-speed Internet connections.
There are almost 22,000 online havens where, for a small hourly fee, the real world gives way to a virtual one that some enter only to find they are unable to leave. They are the driving force behind a gaming industry worth an estimated US$2.4 billion and involving 30 million people.
The popularity of StarCraft, a military sci-fi game, has given rise to an elite class of professional gamers who have been elevated to the status of national e-sports icons. The best are said to make up to US$300,000 a year in televised contests watched online by tens of thousands of adoring fans.
The arrival later this month of a new version, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, is expected to generate the sort of hysteria usually reserved for a Hollywood blockbuster.
Eo Gee-jun, president of the Korea Computer Life Institute, says South Korea is simply going through the growing pains of becoming the world’s first fully fledged information society and the authorities, he adds, are reluctant to stifle the county’s thriving online culture.
Thriving online
“The government is in charge of promoting gaming, so although it has established regulations, there are no penalties if they are broken. The ministry of culture, tourism and sports has established regulations that game companies don’t have to follow,” he said.
Attempts to wean adult gamers off their addiction have been frustrated by the arrival of a US$1.2 billion illicit market in cyber-weapons, costumes and other items that can be traded online for real money.
The gravity of the problem was underlined in May, when a man was sentenced to two years in prison after he and his wife allowed their three-month-old daughter to starve to death while they raised a virtual child, for up to half a day at a time, at a 24-hour Internet cafe. The same month a court sentenced a 22-year-old to 20 years in prison for clubbing his mother to death after she complained about his online gaming habit, and earlier this year a 32-year-old man dropped dead after a gaming session that lasted five days.
“In South Korea it is easier for citizens to play online games than to invest in their offline personal relations through face-to-face conversations,” said Kim Tae-hoon, a psychiatrist. “People are becoming numb to human interaction.”
In another Sinchon PC hangout, Kim Dong-ju and his new girlfriend, Kim Saet-byul, are bonding against a backdrop of extreme virtual violence. When the 20-year-olds met a month ago, Ms Kim had no interest in games; now, her fingers zip across the keys with the speed and accuracy of a seasoned pro.
She screeches and, only half playfully, thumps her boyfriend on the arm. He has let the side down in Sudden Attack, a game of military conquest that draws them into PC hangouts for at least five hours at a time, several times a week.
Having blasted her way thorough a disused warehouse, Ms Kim pauses: “I never thought gaming would be this exciting. But to be honest, I am worried that I am a little too into it.”
But her reticence is short-lived.
“We’ve been here for about four hours,” she says. “We’ll call it a day when we want to eat ... but I have no idea when that will be,” she says.
Addiction that led to infant starving to death
By Justin McCurry
The Guardian, LONDON
South Korea was reminded of the tragic consequences of gaming addiction earlier this year when a couple were found guilty of starving their baby to death while they raised a virtual child in an Internet cafe.
The father, Kim Jae-beom, 41, was sentenced to two years in prison in May after admitting neglect of their three-month-old daughter Sa-rang — “love” in Korean — while they spent up to 12 hours a time at a PC hangout playing a 3D fantasy game called Prius Online.
“I think of our baby in heaven,” he said. “I’ll be guilty until the day I die.”
His wife, Kim Yun-jeong, 25, expecting their second child next month, was given a suspended two-year sentence.
While the couple fed and lavished gifts on their virtual child, Anima, their real daughter starved in their single-room apartment. She was fed nothing but powdered milk two or three times a day, before and after her parents’ marathon gaming excursions.
The court heard how the couple arrived home one morning last September after spending another night at a PC cafe to find Sa-rang dead. The infant, born prematurely, weighed just 2.5kg when she died.
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