Tag Archives: south korea

The South Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is currently look at an act that would ban online accounts of minors that spend two hours consecutively or three or more hours in a day on online games, according to Gamasutra. The new policy follows the introduction of a similar bill two years ago in the country, where a curfew would be in effect for under-18s playing online games from 10pm in the evening until 8am the next day. An unnamed Korean games industry rep has said on the new act the government should “discuss it and provide guidelines to instruct us.”

South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, posed a question during his visit to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy this week asking why the nation cannot build a  videogame hardware system to compete with the likes of Nintendo.

“A lot of our elementary school children have Nintendo game machines. Why can’t our companies develop products like that?” he asked.

A Korean news paper reported on the backlash the president received from game execs in the country, says GamePolitics, one of which is was Park Sang-hoon who’s company makes the Linux-based GP2X handheld:

“It would be great if the software industry here was healthy enough to produce a lot of games, which would drive up the sales of handheld consoles and introduce more products onto the market. However, as a latecomer, we have the difficulty of proving our products first and securing third parties later.”

One exec even slammed the prez stating, “You don’t have the right to be daydreaming about Nintendo, when Korean online game firms, which are actually doing well overseas, feel they could do better if the government wasn’t biting at their ankles.”

Ouch.

Full thing through the link.

According to this, Nintendo Korea is likely to launch Wii in South Korea before the country’s Children’s Day, which falls on May 5.

As the article points out, piracy’s a massive problem in Korea, an issue Wii is unlikely to be able to shrug off.

“Even before its official release, many game shops in major electronics stores such as Yongsan and Kukje Electronics Market have been selling imported Wii players that have a special chip transplanted to run duplicated game CDs,” said the story.

Have a read. Interesting stuff.