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Comment by ronsor | Hacker News Reader

The South Korean government's obessession with regulating video games is quite interesting.

Given that playing video games competitively for a living is possible through large prize pools in quite a few games, and that South Korea has historically been a powerhouse of gaming, it seems not at all surprising to me that they'd treat this as fraud and try to crack down on it.

There are plenty of other types of competitions where fraud carries legal penalties, after all.

This seems very unusual even considering how popular esports are over there. Cheating in traditional sports is not a crime as far as I know as the punishment is just getting kicked out and having your winnings taken back.

What level of cheating are we speaking here? Bribing the ref, match fixing, doping are all forms of cheating in sports and could be a punishable crime.

The linked article doesn't say say that it is restricted to games that are played for money so it seems to be equivalent to being arrested for cheating in school sports day.

US had an obssession with regulating "Violent Video Games" for decades with various laws. https://ncac.org/resource/a-timeline-of-video-game-controver...

I wonder if their obsession with video games (and I say this in a positive sense) will be a competitive advantage in the future. Like the Mecca for esports, where people can make a living in the industry instead of treating it as "silly nerd fantasy hobby" like here in the US.

Not "in the future", more like right now. South Korea had an e-sports broadcasting channel since 2000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGN_(TV_channel)

I have heard some complaints about South Korea being a geritocracy - even by the standards of the US. I don't know the fine details but that sounds consistent with some of the other stuff like the porn ban. If they really are being run by a bunch of old men. I don't know nearly enough about the culture or context to know how true or widespread the perception is but it does sound consistent.

> South Korea being a geritocracy

Isn't that the case of most countries, at least in the West? If you look at the median age of most public officials (ministers and all), they are usually more likely to be in their 50,60s and 70s in some cases.

There is old in age and old in customs, opinions and close-mindness.

Only 70 years ago, South Korea was a dirt-poor agricultural country whose major export items were rice, seaweed, and the likes.

Before that it was a Japanese colony, and before that it was a die-hard confucian kingdom that would out-Confucius contemporary China.

Old moralities die hard. (Think of how racism persists in the US, 150+ years after the Civil War.) It didn't help that we imported right-wing American Christian ideology wholesale after the Korean War. :/

Was the latter imported in part because it was compatible with older Korean values? Just curious.

When your country is in ruins and barely saved by foreign soldiers fighting and dying, it becomes kinda easy to accept their belief system as your own.

But actually they were quite compatible, come to think about it. Hard working will reward you, be obedient to your elders, your family and your country before you, men decide and women follow, yadda yadda.

Edit: Of course many American soldiers who fought weren't actually right-wing Christian evangelists, but we didn't know it then. Koreans didn't speak good English on 1953: our perception of America (and what it stood for) was warped by whoever was willing to learn Korean... and a lot of them did it to spread the gospel of Jesus, I guess.

Koreans accepted Christianity because they believed it’s right. Japanese are sensitive to social norms and wouldn’t accept Christianity even if they believed it was right to avoid conflict.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-...

I think it has to do with how early esports went mainstream in SK, especially in the SC:BW scene.

Many of the people in government right now were probably into competitive gaming back then, so it makes sense that relatively more interest would go into gaming-related legislation.

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