Quote:In its effort to curb game addiction among adolescents, South Korea pulled the plug this weekend on young gamers after midnight by blocking access to game websites, putting a hotly debated law into practice.

[...]

As South Korea, which has one of the richest online gaming cultures in the world, tries to battle gaming addiction that has led to serious consequences, it struggles to find effective means to selectively help those in need. Roughly 8% of the population between the ages of 9 to 39 suffers from Internet addiction, according to a study conducted in 2010 by the National Information Society Agency (NIA), which runs a national Internet addiction counseling center. The addiction rate for those between 9 and 12 was highest at 14%, according to the NIA.

The government is heavily involved in treating people for gaming addiction by holding workshops on prevention education at schools and offering counseling for students with an addiction.

However, internet users have flooded the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which initiated the policy, website with postings calling the new measure "a waste of money," "idiotic" and "useless," and questioning whether it will prevent young gamers from playing into late hours.

"Do you really think that teenagers are going to give up on gaming and study?" one posting from the website read. "Have you even thought about what the result of this going to be before deciding to crackdown on it?"

[...]

"You can say someone is an alcoholic if they drink more than three bottles (of liquor) a day, but you can't call them alcoholic because they drink after midnight. It's the same with gaming," Lee Byung-chan, the lawyer who filed the petition on behalf of parents and a young gamer said.

The argument is that the measure violates the right to happiness and discriminates gaming against other leisure activities such as watching movies or television.

"From the parents' point of view, it violates their right to educate their children," Lee added. It is for the parents to decide what time they want to allow their children to play games or not, not for the government to exclude them from that process, the argument goes.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/22/world/...?hpt=hp_t3

I'm guessing it's based on the age supplied at registration, in which case it could be easy to bypass by choosing an older age.
On the other hand, if this is enforced by net cafes, which I believe many younger Korean gamers go to, it's probably more difficult to work around.

To the other side of the debate, I guess it's difficult to think of a solution to the problem of addictive gaming.  I mean, at least in Australia, gambling is restricted to >18 y/o.

The article does mention "game websites" which seems a little odd, but could just be a journalistic error.

(This post was last modified: 23/11/2011 09:53 PM by ZiNgA BuRgA.)