In game-obsessed South Korea, some people don't know when to leave the cybercafe.:Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune | Dying to win? Passion turns tragic: "In game-obsessed South Korea, some people don't know when to leave the cybercafe."

Dying to win? Passion turns tragic
In game-obsessed South Korea, some people don't know when to leave the cybercafe. For one man, the fantasy -- 50 hours of it -- was fatal.

By Barbara Demick
Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
Published September 3, 2005


TAEGU, South Korea -- By day, Lee Seung Seop was a skinny guy who repaired industrial boilers.

But after work let out at 6 p.m., the 28-year-old would head to a nearby Internet cafe and enter a far more enticing virtual world populated by saber-toothed dragons and purple-haired women in metallic bodices.

Gradually the evenings stretched into nights and the nights into the dawning of the next day. Lee sometimes forgot to eat. He didn't sleep. He came into work later and later until his boss finally fired him.

One night, after a 50-hour binge playing an online game called "World of Warcraft," Lee collapsed and fell off his chair. He died a few hours later.

"He was so concentrated on his game that he forgot to eat and sleep. He died of heart failure brought on by exhaustion and dehydration," said Park Young Woo, a psychiatrist at Taegu Fatima Hospital, where Lee died.

Certainly, more people drop dead while eating dinner or having sex than playing online games. But Lee's death this month gained widespread notoriety, bolstering creeping fears among South Koreans that they've become hooked on the Internet.

South Korean authorities have linked several high-profile deaths to excessive Internet game playing. Some believe that cybercafes have in effect become the opium dens of the 21st Century, luring players into staying around the clock in disregard for their health and responsibilities.

In May, a 4-month-old girl left alone at home in Inchon died of suffocation while her parents were playing at an Internet cafe.

"We were thinking of playing for just an hour or two and returning home as usual, but the game took longer that day"--that's how a policeman was quoted in newspapers paraphrasing the parents. The couple were charged with involuntary manslaughter, police said.

Authorities seem mindful that they have a social problem in the making. This month, the government-run Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion began sending psychologists into cafes to warn players of the dangers. Players also are being handed questionnaires asking, for example, "Do you sometimes wish that what is happening in the games was your reality?"

Son Eun Suk, one of the psychologists visiting the cafes, believes that online gaming is potentially a bigger social problem than drugs or booze because people are unaware of its addictiveness.

"Parents and teachers lecture against drugs and alcohol, but they are very open to the Internet. They think their children are learning something about computers, and they allow them to play from a very young age," Son said.

South Korea boasts of being the most wired country in the world. Nearly three-quarters of its households have broadband connections, whereas the United States remains in the comparative Dark Ages, at about one-third. Forrester Research, a technology research firm in Massachusetts, doesn't expect the United States to reach South Korea's level of connectedness until at least 2010.

But by dint of their status in cyberspace, South Koreans may be providing the rest of the world with a scary glimpse of the future.

"What Korea is experiencing we might all be experiencing soon," said Edward Castronova, an Indiana University economist and author of the forthcoming "Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games."

"This poor man's death could be a harbinger of just how powerful this fantasy world could become for many of us," Castronova said.

The most seductive games are known in the industry as massively multiplayer online role-playing games, in which more than 100,000 people around the globe can play at the same time.

In these virtual worlds, participants make friends and form alliances. Each creates an online persona who develops skills and can climb the social ladder--from serf to knight, say, medieval Europe being one of the more popular themes--and acquire virtual treasures such as a magic sword or castle.

South Korea's online gaming industry brings in revenue of $1.2 billion a year and has been growing about 25 percent annually, according to the trade association in Seoul. The country is pushing exports of its games to the United States, China, Japan and other markets.

Online gaming is taken seriously enough here that there are two cable channels devoted to the activity, professional players and "e-sport" tournaments. The best known is the World Cyber Games, which South Korea's Samsung Electronics has sponsored since 2000.

South Koreans are considered the world's most avid online gamers by far. In fact, a poll the government published in May found that online activities were more popular than television among South Koreans ages 9 to 39.

The games are thought to be especially appealing to South Koreans because they live in small apartments with little physical and psychological space of their own, said Castronova, who has studied the demographics of participants. Although people of both sexes and all ages play, most prevalent are lower-middle-class men in their 20s with unsatisfying professional lives.

"After all, wouldn't you rather be a spaceship captain than pouring lattes at Starbucks?" he said. "I think people recognize at least at a subconscious level that there is something subversive about these games."

Lee Seung Seop was a case in point. He grew up in Taegu, South Korea's fourth-largest city. His family was poor and lived in a shop they ran, a relative said. Lee attended a vocational college near home and after graduation moved in with a married older sister and her family. He worked in a drab, walk-up office that looked like a time capsule of the 1960s, with harsh fluorescent lighting and curling linoleum.

"He seemed like a very normal and ordinary guy," said Park Chul Jin, the office manager. "There was nothing odd about him except that he was a game addict. We all knew about it. He couldn't stop himself."

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By the numbers

The recent death of a South Korean who collapsed after playing an online fantasy computer game for 50 continuous hours could be a glimpse into our future, some Internet observers say. Gaming is huge in South Korea, which is better-connected than the U.S.

75% Rough percentage of South Korean households with broadband connections

2010 The year the number of U.S. households with broadband is expected to reach the same level

$1.2 billion

The amount the South Korean online gaming industry brings in annually

25% The amount the South Korean gaming industry is growing annually

25,000 Internet cafes in South Korea






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