The Korean Government was the first in the world to develop a national
policy to tackle the problem of Internet addiction. For this reason, it
has received global attention. To combat the problem of Internet
addiction, Korea has established specific laws and systems; a governance
system is administrated in government offices, and a “master plan”
(revised at three year intervals) has been developed. In addition to
these measures, many practical spheres of counseling and treatment have
also been established. Examples of Korea’s efforts to tackle the problem
of Internet addiction include the development of the evaluation scale
for Internet addiction, an extensive counseling program, and treatment
systems linked to hospital care. This study comprehensively outlines
Korea’s national policy on Internet addiction.
Teenagers at online game parlor in Gwangmyeong, Seoul.Credit
Park Jin-Hee for the International Herald Tribune
SUWON,
South Korea — Neither had a job. They were shy and had never dated
anyone until they met through an online chat site in 2008. They
married, but they knew so little about childbearing that the 25-year-old
woman did not know when her baby was due until her water broke.
But
in the fantasy world of Internet gaming, they were masters of all they
encountered, swashbuckling adventurers exploring mythical lands and
slaying monsters. Every evening, the couple, Kim Yun-jeong and her
husband, Kim Jae-beom, 41, left their one-room apartment for an
all-night Internet cafe where they role-played, often until dawn. Each
one raised a virtual daughter, who followed them everywhere, and was
fed, dressed and cuddled — all with a few clicks of the mouse.
On
the morning of Sept. 24 last year, they returned home after a 12-hour
game session to find their actual daughter, a 3-month-old named Sa-rang —
love in Korean — dead, shriveled with malnutrition.
In South Korea,
one of the world’s most wired societies, addiction to online games has
long been treated as a teenage affliction. But the Kims’ case has drawn
attention to the growing problem here of Internet game addiction among
adults.
Sa-rang,
born prematurely and sickly, was fed milk two or three times a day —
before and after her parents’ overnight gaming and sometimes when her
father woke up during the day, prosecutors said. The baby died “eyes
open and her ribs showing,” said the couple’s lawyer, Kim Dong-young.
After
six months on the run, they were arrested in March and charged with
negligent homicide. On Friday they were sentenced to two years in
prison, but the judge suspended Ms. Kim’s sentence because she was seven
months pregnant and he said she needed some “mental stability.”
“I am sorry for being such a bad mother to my baby,” Ms. Kim said, sobbing, during the couple’s trial.
Thanks
partly to government counseling programs, the estimated number of
teenagers with symptoms of Internet addiction has steadily declined, to
938,000 in 2009, from more than a million in 2007, the Ministry of
Public Administration and Safety said in April.
But
the number of addicts in their 20s and 30s has been increasing, to
975,000 last year. Many of these adult addicts grew up with online games
and now resort to them when they are unemployed or feeling alienated
from society, said Dr. Ha Jee-hyun, a psychiatrist at Konkuk University
Hospital.
This
development and a recent string of cases like that of the Kims have
prompted the government to announce plans to open rehabilitation centers
for adult addicts and expand counseling for students and the
unemployed, groups considered the most vulnerable to compulsive gaming.
“Unlike
teenagers, these grown-ups don’t have parents who can drag them to
counselors,” Dr. Ha said. He treats an average of four adults a month
for an addiction to online games, he said. Two years ago, it was one a
month.
More
than 90 percent of South Korean homes are fitted with high-speed
Internet connections. Nearly every street corner has a computer parlor
with computers available for a fee. In these dim, 24-hour-a-day
establishments, “the line blurs between reality and the virtual world,”
said Jung Young-chul, a psychiatrist at Yonsei University.
Especially popular among adult players are large multiplayer online role-playing games.
In
these games, players form alliances and wage battles that can last for
days, with players operating in shifts to keep the action. The more
time a player spends online, the more powerful the game character — and
the player’s online status — becomes.
Cyberbattles
can spill into the real world. There have been several reports of
players tracking down and attacking others for killing the online
characters they had identified with for years.
If
the games are addictive, they are also highly commercial. “Items” —
cyberweapons, outfits and special abilities acquired through gaming that
strengthen their owners’ combat prowess — are traded for real money
online. Such trades were valued at more than $1.2 billion last year.
Park
Ki-hoon and his wife, Choi Jin-hee, both 37, run a swimsuit shop by day
and play online games at night. During the winter off-season, Mr. Park
said, he has played up to 18 hours a day and won up to $2,400 a month,
enough to cover the rent on the couple’s shop.
If Mr. Park knows how to juggle his offline and online lives, many do not.
In
February, a 22-year-old man was arrested and accused of killing his
mother for nagging him about his obsessive playing. In the same month, a
32-year-old man dropped dead of exhaustion in a computer parlor after
playing through the five-day Lunar New Year holiday. “Some jobless men
come here in hope of a financial breakthrough,” said Hong Seong-in, the
owner of a computer parlor.
South
Korea promotes online games, with exports growing by 50 percent,
according to the government, to $1.5 billion last year — by far South
Korea’s single largest cultural export item. Its games are hugely
popular in China and other Asian countries.
Although the country has become one of the first to address Internet addiction, little help is available for adults.
Computer parlor owners and game buffs assert that compulsive playing has actually been decreasing as the prices of items fall.
Enterprising
players in South Korea and China have been running “item factories,”
where hundreds of computers are programmed to play the games without
human users for the sole purpose of generating items for cash.
“Online games are a culture,” Mr. Park said. “To me, people who hike or fish are as crazy as they think I am.”
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