Online gambling arrests and gaming addiction
2009/03/08 23:33Korean police recently arrested operators of a local affiliate for an international gambling site:
It is the first time that an international online game company was legally implicated for opening Korean operations to handle marketing, exchanges of cyber money and other works for online gambling. So far, Koreans have gained access to gambling sites whose servers are based in foreign countries.
JoongAng Daily: Cyber gamblers on winning streak (October 28, 2008)
Meanwhile, the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs is looking to restrict access by minors to online sites that trade virtual game items:
The decision came after a Supreme Court ruling in December found trading of game items was dangerous to adolescents. That was a blow to an item-trading site that filed a lawsuit to cancel the harmful-to-minor designation.
Operators of item-trading sites that allow minors in will be subject to imprisonment of up to three years or fined up to 20 million won. All related sites will be required to have adult authentication.
Korea Times: 2% of Students Listed as Internet Addicts (October 24, 2008)
JoongAng Daily: Virtual reality and real-life addicts (October 29, 2008)
But the same ministry is also involved in a very odd story about possibly banning a MP3 audio file that claims to be a “cyber drug”:
The Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs held a meeting with related institutions on Friday and decided to examine ways to block Internet users from gaining access to the I-Doser Web site until it is proven to be safe.
The ministry will also carry out research to identify the possible addictiveness and dangers of the program while banning the term “I-Doser” from being able to be looked up on the nation’s major web portals such as Naver and Daum.
Another report from the Korea Times mentions that the Korea Communications Commission was also investigating the audio files.
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