South Korea Announces Daily MMO Blackouts For Youths

eldavojohn writes "GamePolitics reports that South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism has announced two new policies that will force underage gamers to pick a six-hour block of time (midnight-6 AM,1-7 AM, or 2-8 AM) where they will not be able to play 19 online role-playing games. While it targets most popular MMORPGs, some popular games like Lineage were left off the list."

Comments

Freedom?

[commodore64_love]

I'm not seeing it. It should be left to the Parents to decide what kids should be doing late at night, and I'd certainly prefer my kid be home during those hours, rather than outside getting into trouble.

IMHO.

Re:Freedom?

[Renraku]

Because there's SO much to do in South Korea at night. This isn't about blocking MMOs, it's about trying to make sure that the kids have nothing better to do than go to sleep and get ready for school the next day. An appreciable number of young South Koreans play 10+ hours a day of MMOs and it will affect the next generations of the country.

However, this is the wrong way to go about fixing the problem. Perhaps they should make more things for young people to do at night, other than play MMOs?

Re:Registration Numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_registration_number

Re:Registration Numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple of years ago, there was a big disaster with Lineage 2 (insanely popular in Korea) where a bunch of Korean Social Security Numbers for everyone who played the game got leaked. As a result (don't ask me how this makes sense), the Korean government demanded that every MMORPG operating in Korea take down identification (in the form of KSSNs for Korean citizens) for every player using their system. This is why it is insanely difficult for non-Koreans to get into Korean MMOs - usually, they either have to find a leaked KSSN and use that to register, or in some cases use a separate registration system that requires sending multiple forms of ID to the company operating the MMO and potentially having that ID looked at by the Korean government.

Socks for South Koreans

[allometry]

I'm going to make a killing running SSH proxy's!

Re:Stupid

[trytoguess]

I rather doubt this will be possible. To sign up for pretty much anything online in Korea (with the exception of sites that cater to an international audience) you must enter your "resident registration number." And like wikipedia so kindly tells us, the first six digits of that number is ones date of birth.

Re:Stupid

[zill]

1. Steal parent's/friend's/neighbor's ID #
2. Register new account
3. ???
4. Play until dead

Just look at how many drug related robberies happen every day; from what I've seen MMORPGs can be a lot more addictive than your average narcotic substance.

Internet use in korea isn't based at home

[Deibhaid]

I think the reason for this new measure decided upon by the government is because in Korea, it is far more normal for people to get together at a PC Bang (basically internet cafe), where first of all the kids waste their money and time (not to mention sucking up huge amounts of second hand smoke, even in the so-called "not smoking areas") and in addition to that, they pay less attention to their studies. In Korea in particular where studies are very important up through the end of high-school,

Re:Registration Numbers?

[Daengbo]

That was pretty much the reason I left Korea. Massive nanny state. Internet filter. AND I was unable to join or post on many sites.

Re:What a joke

[crossmr]

Most students don't get home from school until 10:30 pm. They go straight from public school to private academies all night.