When Escape Seems Just a Mouse-Click Away

In many other nations, video game consoles such as Nintendo or Sony PlayStation rule. But South Koreans largely opt for online, interactive role-playing games. Such games have no end and allow multiple players to come together via the Internet.

Online games are hot here partly because South Korea is the world's most wired nation. Nearly 70 percent of South Koreans -- compared with 45 percent of Japanese and 33 percent of Americans -- now gain access to the Internet via the super-fast broadband connections required for the most popular online games, according to Telecompaper, an Internet research organization in the Netherlands. Now, Koreans can also play sophisticated games via cellphones.

But hard-core and casual gamers alike tend to while away their time inside PC baangs, which translates as "PC rooms." At one PC baang in southern Seoul on a recent afternoon, the sounds of electronic swords, guns and fists pounding cyber-opponents filled a dim room lit mostly by the glow of computer screens and smoldering cigarettes. Engrossed in their games, few of the young men and women inside conversed with one another.

Web sites allow players to individualize their game characters by purchasing clothing, weapons and other items -- and for some, such characters can become extensions of their own personalities. Rare items are sold through highly developed online markets. Moon Sung Hoon, a 31-year-old Web page designer who spends about five hours a day inside PC baangs, said he paid $800 in an online auction last year for a virtual sword.

"This is my way of releasing stress," he said. "I'm not hurting anyone, so what's the problem?"

But doctors cite a growing toll on Korean family life. M.H. Kim, a 37-year-old homemaker in Seoul, forced her 14-year-old son into treatment at a private clinic two months ago. The boy had slipped deeper and deeper into his computer games as he entered junior high school.

"My husband began putting an English book into my son's hands and demanding that he memorize the entire lesson in one night," said Kim, who asked that only the initials of her first name be used to preserve privacy. "He would not be allowed to go to sleep until he had finished. But he ended up not studying at all and just playing his games instead."

Mental health counseling of any sort still carries a heavy stigma here, and it took Kim months to persuade her husband to put their boy into game addiction treatment. After their son ran away for three months -- scrounging money from relatives to play games at PC baangs -- Kim's husband gave in.

"I can understand my son's suffering," she said. "He could never satisfy his father and was failing at school. But when he plays his games, he becomes an undefeatable warrior."

The boy's doctor, Chin Tae Won, said the most serious addictions result in violence. He cited a case last year in which a game-addicted grammar school boy with confused concepts of life and death killed his little brother with a hammer after the younger boy interrupted his game playing.

"There is nothing wrong with kids relieving stress through games," Chin said. "But parents need to watch for the warning signs of addiction. If a child gets violent when told to stop playing a game, that's one of the first indications that there's a problem."

Special correspondent Joohee Cho contributed to this report.