South Korea try to ban young gamers from late night sessions

[Jeremy]

South Korea’s “Shutdown Law” facing double lawsuits

Parents and publishers fight for teenagers right to game

[TheAvenged87]

How does imposing a "curfew" on gaming help anyone?

[OmegaFenix]

How does imposing a "curfew" on gaming help anyone?

In a country where this:

A 19 year old South Korean boy died after playing a game for more than 12 hours, according to a Daily News report (citing a Korean Times report). According to the report, a young man identified only by the surname "Moon" arrived at "PC Bang," an Internet cafe in the city of Ulsan, at around 2 a.m. on Dec. 27. He spent eight hours playing an "online action game" then went home to have a meal. Moon returned to PC Bang at 10:30 a.m. and resumed playing the game. At around 12:00 he collapsed and was rushed to a nearby hospital where doctors were unable to save him.

Local officials are investigating just what happened to Moon. The Daily News report doesn't come right out and blame games but it hints at it with the subtitle "Excessive gaming does more than just kill social lives, apparently." The government has been cracking down on Internet Cafes that let school-aged children from playing past certain times, and a recent law made it illegal to build a gaming parlor within a 200-meter radius of a school.

Source

and this:

South Korean police have arrested a couple for starving their three-month-old daughter to death while they devoted hours to playing a computer game that involved raising a virtual character of a young girl.

The 41-year-old man and 25-year-old woman, who met through a chat website, reportedly left their infant unattended while they went to internet cafes. They only occasionally dropped by to feed her powdered milk.


"I am sorry for what I did and hope that my daughter does not suffer any more in heaven," the husband is quoted as saying on the asiaone website.


According to the Yonhap news agency, South Korean police said the couple had become obsessed with raising a virtual girl called Anima in the popular role-playing game Prius Online. The game, similar to Second Life, allows players to create another existence for themselves in a virtual world, including getting a job, interacting with other users and earning an extra avatar to nurture once they reach a certain level.


"The couple seemed to have lost their will to live a normal life because they didn't have jobs and gave birth to a premature baby," Chung Jin-Won, a police officer, told Yonhap. "They indulged themselves in the online game of raising a virtual character so as to escape from reality, which led to the death of their real baby."


Last September after a 12-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 22-year-old Korean man was charged last month with murdering his mother because she nagged him for spending too much time playing games. After killing her the man went to a nearby internet cafe and continued with his game, said officials. In 2005 a young man collapsed in an internet cafe in the city of Taegu after playing the game StarCraft almost continuously for 50 hours. He went into cardiac arrest and died at a local hospital.


Lee Joung-sun, an MP from the ruling Grand National party, last month submitted a bill restricting the hours offered to online gamers. Several bills are pending in the national assembly suggesting restrictions on teenagers' use of internet cafes and games.


Research published last month in the UK showed evidence of a link between excessive internet use and depression. Leeds University researchers, writing in the Psychopathology journal, said a small proportion of internet users were classed as internet addicts and that people in this group were more likely to be depressed than non-addicted users.

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Are not uncommon such a law makes perfect sense. The parents are against the law because if their 16 year olds and younger aren't allowed to play games after a certain time of day they, the parents, might actually have to do some parenting and wont be able to game either. The children are against this law because they are under 16 and stupid, just like all of us where at that age & the publishers are against it because lets face it... the under 16 year olds are their main target audience and if they are suddenly not allowed a 6-9 hour gaming session after 9pm at night it eats into the publishers pocket. By enforcing this law and teaching those under 16 year olds gaming in moderation is good it helps everyone especially gaming as it will probably result in less stories like the ones above for the anti-gaming campaigners to pull out of a box next time they want to turn gaming into the scape goat for every social woe out there.