South Korean Politicians Want Video Games Placed Alongside Drugs And Alcohol In Legislation For Addiction

from the you-holding?--i-need-one-more-turn dept

As you should know by now, there are people in this world that think an addiction to the internet and/or video games is a thing. As in, a real thing, a real disorder. This, despite all the evidence that there is no such disorder and that video games are no more addictive than work or school. But scaring the hell out of people with official-sounding terminology makes for great business, leading to care-givers and hospitals opening up entirely new revenue-generators practices for treating these heretofore unproven "diseases."

However, lest you think that fact-less platforms are the exclusive realm of the medical profession, take a look at how some South Korean politicians are trying to craft legislation that places video game addiction as the lunch-meat in their alcohol and drugs sandwich.

According to the Ministry of Welfare, four major categories of addiction where medical treatment is needed are 2.18 million alcoholics, 0.47 million internet gamers, 0.59 million gamblers, and 0.09 million drug addicts. The sum of them accounts for 6.7 precent of the population which adds up to 3.33 million people. This country has to be be saved from the four major addictions. We have to understand the pain individuals and families of alcohol, drugs, gambling, and game addicts go through, heal them and provide them with a proper environment so we can save our society from these evils.

That proper environment, unsurprisingly, essentially amounts to the regulation and hell-out-of taxation on the South Korean gaming industry, which is booming. This, after all, is the country leading the way in eSports. And this "addiction" legislation is coming from the conservative majority party, meaning it actually has a real chance at passing. And they've already passed laws creating blackout times during the day when children can't log into their console game connections. Personally, I wasn't aware that every child in South Korea had somehow bound and gagged their parents, but what do I know?

Well, for starters, I know that crafting legislation to take on fictional problems might be a great way to make headlines, but it doesn't actually do anything useful for the citizenry. I also know that the trend in entertainment in developed nations, like South Korea, is such that some day all of these game-addicted kids are going to be all-growed-up voting citizens, so the conservative party had better get their kicks while they can, because they'll have plenty of opposition in a matter of years. And, more than anything, placing video games anywhere near substances like alcohol and illicit narcotics is just stupid.

Filed Under: addictions, south korea, video games