This is a little insane, but I see it often PC Barns in every direction I turn. I don’t understand why people go out instead of staying home and playing the games on their own personal computer, with their own bed behind them. It would be a lot cheaper too. However they are all the rage here in Korea.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Jun Mung-gyu remembers the throbbing pain in his head and shoulder aches from spending as many as 15 hours a day hunched over a computer keyboard battling his online foes.”You have no life, you only focus on gaming, putting off everything, like getting a haircut,” recalled the 27-year-old Jun, who was able to kick the habit earlier this year though he remains in the milieu, running an Internet cafe in southeastern Seoul.For others, the addiction has become all-consuming, raising concerns about the health of the millions of gamers in the world’s most wired country.The habit has even been deadly: In August, a 28-year-old man died after nearly 50 straight hours of playing online computer games. The man, whom police refused to identify by name, was moved to a hospital after he collapsed while gaming and died three hours later.A pedestrian walks by a billboard promoting gaming. Video games are hugely popular in South Korea.Hong Jin-ho, a 24-year-old professional gamer, earns more than 133 million won ($130,000) a year, living and training with his fellow game team members in an apartment in central Seoul.Hong, who specializes in Starcraft, a science-fiction strategy game, says he has never thought of video games as an addiction.He admitted, however, that the seven to eight hours of daily training — which sometimes drags on for nearly 24 hours before competitions — can be physically challenging.”My body doesn’t welcome it, but I do it to win,” Hong said.
[Via CNN]
