South Korea: King of the Virtual World
The rise of online gaming in South Korea has brought improved economic prospects and notoriety, but at what price?

By Brian Callies

Beginning in the late 1990’s South Korea has quickly become the undisputed king of the online gaming world. Gaming and the culture that has grown up around it are now the defining aspects of the lives of many South Korea youths. While this eruption of online gaming has created revenue for the country and made South Korea a global hotspot for international gamers it has also been a cause of concern in much the same way excessive television viewing and game playing has in the U.S.

A number of factors contribute to the huge percentage of online-gamers in South Korea. A fast internet connection is a necessity and South Korea is, per capita, the most wired country in the world. Over 60% of households have broadband – compared to 20% in the United States (Kim 2). South Korea’s small geographical size and high population density make running the required cabling an easier task than it would be in the U.S. Broadband access in South Korea is, furthermore, the cheapest in the world at $25 per month (Kim 2). Additionally, in South Korea console gaming isn’t nearly as popular as it is in the U.S. and elsewhere. Console systems – Playstation, Nintendo, Sega – are by and large of Japanese origin. Due to past discord between the two countries – Korean being a colony under the rather, at the time, iron-fisted Japanese – Japanese imports have been both officially and culturally unpopular (Herz 3). Without consoles to take away from the base of game players, in South Korea unlike the U.S., online computer gaming is the dominant form of electronic gaming.

Though more than half the homes in South Korea are wired it is the cyber cafés, know as PC bangs, where much of the serious game playing occurs, and where the culture is most apparent. There are reportedly over 25,000 bangs in the country, open all hours of the day and inexpensive (Gluck 1). Game playing in South Korean is a much more social experience than it is in the U.S. Going to a bang, whether to play online or simply go to a chat room, has become the social activity for many young Koreans. It is what they do when they go “out”, how they escape the apartment complexes in which 50 percent of South Koreans reside (Herz 2).

The choice of games that the South Koreans play also reflects their more social nature. Star Craft, a real time strategy (RTS) game by U.S.-based Blizzard Inc. was the first extremely popular game in South Korea in the late 1990s. RTS games can be cooperative team-based or simple head-head battles. At that time there was not a lot of choice in online games, particularly in Korea as they had limited or no access to U.S.-based massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as Ultima Online or Everquest. That changed when Seoul-based NCsoft released Lineage, an MMORPG for South Koreans. Now, as of March 2003, Lineage has 3.2 million active users – 2.2 million in South Korea -- whereas Everquest, the most popular game of its type in the U.S. and often dubbed “Evercrack” by both fans and critics, only has 430,000 users (Kim 1). Lineage is the most popular online game in the world (Levander 2).

Games of this type require extensive social interaction. However, Lineage differs from its U.S. counter parts. It has Confucian characteristics in that when you create your in-game character he/she has an unchangeable hierarchy and rank (Kim 2). Korean players have no difficulty accepting being a servant or follower, whereas the majority of American MMORPG players want to be the hero. Everquest is all about making your character more powerful through killing monsters and acquiring powerful magic items. This is often done in groups, but the other people are simply tools to make the goal of character advancement easier. In Lineage the goal is to take an enemy castle and control it to raise taxes and recruit and supply an army to defend it (Herz 4). In Korean gaming working as a team is not just a means to an end, it is a large part of the reason for playing. According to education psychologist Joonmo Kwon the need and desire to work in groups in order to succeed in Lineage reflects the Korean “spirit” (Levander 2). Typically when a “clan” of Lineage players decide to attack a castle they all physically go to a bang and together begin their onslaught of the enemy fortress. Online gaming to South Koreans is as much a real-world experience as it is a virtual one (Kim 2).

The bangs, and from them the current state of gaming in Korea, rose from the economic crisis that hit Korea and much of Asia in 1997. Some recently out of work Koreans had enough money in their family to open bangs which provided a cheap source of entertainment for the many laid-off workers (Herz 3). Popularity grew and more and more bangs opened up.

The huge numbers of game players and internet users in South Korea have attracted international attention – both from game players, and from businesses. The broadband success in South Korea gives hope to a sagging tech sector in the U.S. which has hopes broadband will reinvigorate it (Fulford 2). Microsoft has recently invested $500 million in Korean Telecom – one of South Korea’s two largest broadband suppliers (Fulford 2). Foreign gaming companies, such as Sony the distributors of Everquest, now view South Korea as a huge potential market for their games. The Korea government, meanwhile, sees the online game industry as a potential key export (Ihlwan 2).

To international gamers South Korea has become something of a Mecca. There, gaming has grown into a national sport to such an extant that three cable stations are dedicated full-time to broadcasting gaming tournaments (Herz 2). Unless ESPN were to expand to ESPN6 such a scenario is hard to imagine in the U.S. Gamers in Korea can and do become celebrities. There are professional gamers who garner the respect and adoration that professional athletes do in other countries (Electro Lobby). For U.S. gamers who are typically branded nerds or social misfits in their own country, South Korea must seem like heaven.

Along with the economic benefits and increased international profile the proliferation of online gaming and the culture that has grown around it also invokes troubling questions. There are cases of gamers becoming psychologically addicted to the internet and the games they play. One extreme case is that of Kim Kyung-jae a 24-year-old man who died in a bang after playing 86 hours non-stop. The concerns in South Korea are much the same that are heard in the U.S. in regards to Everquest players who have quit their jobs, or ignored their spouses, or worse, because they couldn’t pull themselves away from the game.

An obsessed 25-year old South Korean man named Yoon Dae Won said, “I’m an elf. I kill monsters. And when I can’t, dream about it” (Kim 1). Addiction to the internet is clearly a growing problem. Grades worsen and real social interaction can suffer. The South Korean government recognizes that there is a problem and has started the Center for Internet Addiction Prevention and Counseling (Gluck 3).

Beyond psychological problems the popularity of Lineage and games like it has created a surprising problem: the entrance of real world gangs into the virtual world, and the real world violence they cause because of events in the game. A gang burst into a Seoul bang and beat the man who had killed one of their characters in the game world (Levander 1). In MMORPGs there is the term “PK’ing” which stands for ‘player killing’. It simply means killing another player’s character, as opposed to a computer-controlled character. In some games this is illegal, in others it is simply frowned upon. Due to the common real-world violence resulting from events in Lineage and other games some South Korean authorities have borrowed the term for one of their own: “off-line PK” (Levander 1).

Crimes such as hacking others’ accounts, stealing online ids and the fraudulent sale of online weapons are so commonplace that the police have started a cybercrimes unit (Levander 4). It appears that in online gaming, crime as well as in simple socializing transcends the virtual into the real world.

Online gaming is South Korea is a unique phenomenon. No other place is the world is so wired, or has such a large game-playing population base, or treats their best gamers as star athletes. The dramatic rise in gaming has brought increased economic opportunities to the country and international notoriety. The culture of game playing has had a negative effect on some South Koreans, however, as gaming addicts lose touch with the real world. The net effect of this rapid growth in gaming and internet usage will be positive or negative remains to be seen.

Bibliography

Herz, J.C. “The Bandwidth Capital of the World.” Wired August 2003. November 1, 2003.
    (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.08/korea.html)

Levander, Michelle. “Where Does Fantasy End?” Time Magazine 4 June 2001. October 28, 2003.      (http://www.time.com/time/interactive/entertainment/gangs_np.html)

Gluck, Caroline. “Korea’s Gaming Addicts.” BBC News 22 November 2002. October 28, 2003.      (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2499957.stm)

Fulford, Benjamin. “Korea’s Weird Wired World” Forbes Online 21 July 2003. October 28, 2003.      (http://www.forbes.com/technology/free_forbes/2003/0721/092.html?partner=newscom)

Kim, Jin David. “Lucrative Lessons from Online Game Players” International Herald Tribune 12 March 2002. October 28, 2003.
      (http://www.iht.com/articles/89432.html)

Ihlwan, Moon. “The Champs in Online Games” Business Week Online 23 July 2001. October 28, 2003.      (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_30/b3742142.htm)

Electro Lobby. “E-Sport: Gaming Goes Pro – Interview.” Unknown. October 28, 2003
      (http://www.tnc.net/el/el01/progaming.html)

Related Links:
http://www.worldcybergames.com/ - home site of the World Cyber Games
http://www.ncsoft.net/ - NCsoft, makers of Lineage
http://www.blizzard.com/ - Blizzard Inc., makers of Starcraft