Internet has become one of the biggest media for Entertainment, Games, Business & Personal Communications, Research and many more things. With a wide variety on your fingertips, you have the whole world to explore and can be connected with such virtual world without much adieu. But in South Korea it has reached to a level where people prefer to miss their sound sleep, entertainment, physical gathering just for one thing – Online Internet Games.
In a shocking report by government, about 2 million South Koreans, nearly 1 in 10 internet users in the country has been addicted of Online Video games. Interestingly the number of teenage addicts has fallen from 1 Million to 938,000, main age group to get attracted towards online games, but at the other side people at 20s and 30s have shown better interest and stand as 975,000 addicts, mostly unemployed or university students.
South Korea’s status as one of the most and fastest developed internet broadband nation attracted various IT companies in Gaming domain. With strong infrastructure and high speed internet availability developers are much more free-handed and open-minded. This has made them to produce many games which is either very close to reality or stand out as another virtual life for people to live with. 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.
In May 2010, 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. While the couple fed and lavished gifts on their virtual child, Anima, allowing her to acquire magical powers as she grew, 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 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.
Ji, a 27-year-old mobile content developer, has said, “In my line of work I spend a lot of time in front of a computer, so this (gaming cafe) is where I feel most comfortable. 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.”
As per Dr. Kim Tae-Hoon, people in South Korea are becoming more dull and numb towards personal interaction as its easy to play a online games in comparison to go out and meet & greet with people personally.
