South Korea has won the grand-champion title for the past three years. In a nation where more than half of the nearly 50 million people play online games, the industry has become a cash cow. Games like StarCraft, first published in , have sold 11 million copies worldwide 4. Understandably, it's going to be difficult to regulate such a massive industry. But the government is intent upon trying. In it opened one of the first treatment centers for Internet addiction.
Game companies, such as NCsoft, based in Seoul, also finance private counseling centers and hotlines. Today, hundreds of hospitals and clinics have installed government-subsidized programs to treat gaming addiction, such as the Save Brain Clinic, opened in at Gongju National Hospital, kilometers outside Seoul, specializing in treating the disease. Jaewon Lee, the program's director, has seen a range of addictive behaviors among young gamers.
Other people seek an omnipotent feeling, gaining more power over others. Whether these games draw in kids who are already "socially awkward loners," as one psychiatrist puts it, or whether they enforce such tendencies, the result is the same: "It's very hard for [addicts] to be with other people when they're offline. He was rushed to a clinic but could not be revived, the Beijing Times said.
China has more than million internet users, and online games - which can involve multiple users role-playing in a virtual world - are particularly popular with young men. Researchers say tens of millions of Chinese people - many of them teenagers - are addicted to internet gaming, despite curbs introduced by the authorities aimed at tackling the problem. Similar deaths have occurred in other nations.
In a year-old man died in South Korea after playing online games for 50 hours without a break. Last September after a hour gaming-session the couple came home in the morning to find their daughter dead. The baby's malnourished body aroused police suspicions of neglect that were was confirmed after an autopsy. The couple fled to the wife's parents' house in Yangju, Gyeonggi province, but were picked up on Monday.
The case has shocked South Korea and once again highlighted obsessive behaviour related to the internet. A year-old Korean man was charged last month with murdering his mother because she nagged him for spending too much time playing games. Story highlights Gamer entered the Internet cafe on January 8, was found two days later The man, surnamed Hsieh, is believed to have suffered cardiac failure Earlier this year, a man was found dead after playing online for five consecutive days.
An employee found him motionless and sprawled on a table at 10 a. Read More.
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