The Downside of Computer Games

When we talk of addicts, we do so mostly in the context of drug addicts, alchoholism , accidents or incidents arising out of compulsive and violent behavior.

South Korea is faced with the same problem in the virtual world. Addiction to online gaming.

South Korea has the world's highest per capita rate of broadband connectivity, at 78 percent. It is a trend created by South Koreans' fascination with new technology, a government policy of encouraging the Internet as an engine for economic growth, and urban clusters of high-rise apartment blocks that make broadband networks commercially viable.

Here, Internet cafés are as commonplace as phone booths once were, and most are filled with people playing online games.

Under corporate sponsorship, platoons of young cyberspace warriors eat and sleep in dormitories, training for "e- sports" leagues that participate in competitions. The games are broadcast live on cable channels or watched at e-sports studios, where hundreds of fans cheer or weep over their heroes' fates.

Experts say that South Korean society's relentless focus on competition and its shortage of recreational diversions force millions of students and adults to escape into cyberspace and battle for the status they may never achieve in the real world.

In multiplayer role-playing games, they are transformed into knights who slays dragons, spaceship captains who save the world from aliens, or princesses who crusade for a lost throne in medieval Europe.

Some play themselves to death. Last year, the deaths of at least seven people were attributed to excessive game- playing. In August, a 28-year-old man died after nearly 50 straight hours of playing online games. In December, a 38-year-old day worker collapsed and died at an Internet café; his logs showed that he had played for 417 hours in his last 20 days.

One problem with those games is that you build your online persona through countless hours of battles, and you develop a huge emotional attachment to your game character," said Chang Woo Min, a onetime online gamer who is now a counselor at the government-run Center for Internet Addiction Prevention and Counseling.

Well, it's time to wake up and save those who are vulnerable from going down this dangerous path of an addiction, the consequences and their remedies have not been fully addressed or explored yet.