The One With Aldacron

A recent Washington Post article about gaming addiction in Korea really seems to handle the topic better than I would have expected. In America, with video games blamed everytime a kid goes nuts, I would have expected the article to be slanted toward the “video games cause addiction” side. Instead, the article refreshingly looks at what may really be the cause of gaming addiction in Korea - stress.

Today’s Koreans live in a stress filled environment. It all starts at an early age, an age which seems increasingly to be getting younger. When I first started teaching English in Korea twelve years ago I was surprised to find that even elementary school kids were spending most of their free time, time when they should be enjoying childhood, attending institutes to improve not only their English, but also every other subject they study in school. Those children whose families could come up with the money (whether they could really afford it or not) would also find themselves taking piano or violin lessons. These days, even prechoolers are getting shoved into “preschool academies” in order to get a head start. This incessant life of study continues all through a child’s school life, the ultimate goal being to prepare the child for the university entrance exam.

High school is all about the univeristy entrance exam. There’s no free thinking education. The students are expected to memorize tremendous amounts of material. Having taught briefly at a private school here, I was amazed to find that of the five English teachers on the staff, only one spoke English fluently, one spoke brokenly, and three barely could utter a word at all. Extrapolate this to other subjects and you can get an interesting picture of Korean school life. It’s not important to be knowledgeable in a subject to teach it. You just have to make sure you drill the material given you into the students’ heads. Read, listen, memorize, test. That’s the process. And it’s not just the kids who are stressed out over education.

Parents have a great deal of stress making sure the kids get the education they “need”. Koreans are all about reputation, and schools in affluent neighborhoods naturally have better reputations than those in poor areas. Parents who are not wealthy break their necks to buy a house in one of those neighborhoods, where real estate is horrendously overpriced because of the demand. It’s not just the quality of education that is at stake - students from such reputable schools are more likely to be accepted into one of the top universities. A farmer’s kid from the a no-name school out in the boonies doesn’t stand a chance, regardless of his entrance exam score. If the parents are ever able to get their children into a reputable school, they then need to fork out the money for the multiple institutes the kids will study at after school. At the root of all of this stress over education is the child’s future job.

Most Korean parents want their children to become doctors or lawyers so that they can be financially comfortable. The backup plan is to help the kid get a job at one of the top conglomerates, such as Samsung, Hyundai, or Daewoo. In Korean business culture, the name of the university on an applicant’s resume carries a lot of weight. An applicant who graduated from Seoul National University, for example, is much more likely to get hired for a given entry level job than one who graduated from Some Less Prestigious University, even if the latter candidate has stronger qualifications. Most executives come from the most prestigious schools. It’s Korea’s version of the Good Ol’ Boy Network. Schools are even officially categorized according to their prestige.

Unlike in America, where students can choose to apply to as many universities as they want using a single SAT score, Koreans are limited in the number of applications they can make - three. Universities are categorized as A-level, B-level, and C-level. It’s not the same as AAAA, AAA, AA, and A in the United States. These grades are really based on prestige. For example, in the US, even though Harvard and USC are AAAA schools, USC would be B-level in Korea where Harvard would be A-level. Each student, when submitting applications, is allowed to submit to one each of A, B, and C level schools. This is a recently instituted regulation, as before most students only submitted to one school because many schools had their own entrance exam. Some schools still require further testing, though it is supposed to be illegal.

So you have these parents spending outrageous amounts of money on their childrens’ educations. Then you have children who are forced to do nothing but study. In Seoul, it is not uncommon for high school students to get home at one o’clock in the morning. There’s a good business in something called “study rooms” where students can go to study without interruption. School lets out at two or three, the kids spend four or more hours in institutes in the evening, then finish off the day in a study room before heading home. The kids have no lives.

Once a kid gets into a university, it’s like a vacation. The atmosphere is more relaxed. Males will have their education interrupted briefly for a mandatory two year stint in the military (another stress inducer - the ROK Army is very, very different from what Americans know), but still it’s like a new world for them. Of course, if the kid didn’t make it into a top university, there’s always the future to worry about.

Once university is in the past, the job hunt begins. If you want a job with Samsung, you aren’t alone. They have a great reputation, which means every other graduate who thinks they stand a chance will be applying as well. The number of applicants far surpasses the number of available jobs every year for the top companies. Only a handful make it, so having that prestigious university on your resume guarantees nothing, though it does make you a more attractive candidate. Assuming the graduate gets the job, a new life of stress begins. Most Korean office workers, even at Samsung, work 10- 14 hours per day with no overtime pay. They often work weekends. Saturday used to be a regular work day in Korea until the government mandated a five day work week a couple of years ago. Even so, many workers will find themselves in the office on Saturday or Sunday more often than they think they will, again without overtime pay (depending on the company of course - Samsung supposedly has the best deal of any company in Korea, though my experience talking with employees there says it’s not all roses). Then there’s marriage, kids, and your kids’ education as the cycle repeats itself.

Recently, a new problem has arisen. So many people are competing for so few jobs at the big corporations that many undergraduates are staying in school for a master’s degree, or even a doctorate in order to delay the job hunt as long as possible. Koreans have a certain level of pride that makes it difficult for them to try to get less prestigious jobs at small or mid-size companies. Most would rather be unemployed than work at a “lower class” job. Class and the perception of other people are very important to Koreans (if the rest of what I wrote didn’t demonstrate that already). When I meet a high-ranking Korean businessman for the first time, it is not unusual too see the guy look me up and down. He’s not admiring me, he’s determining where I fit in the social caste. The clothes you wear are the first sign of your position. Since I often wear jeans or khakis, sometimes I’ll get cocky smirks from those who are self-important. If I were to wear an Armani suit in such a meeting, I might be considered an equal. To be fair, though, foreigners are often spared such criticism as we are perceived to be more “casual” even at high social rank.

So what I’m going on about here is that life as a Korean is very stressful. I’ve mostly looked at it from a male viewpoint. Mothers are usually in charge of a child’s education since the father is often working all day, though that is changing now as more women enter the workforce in positions once the realm of males only. Women still need to deal with the pressures of sex and age discrimination. Some companies are hesitant to hire women over 25, as most women used to get married and quit their jobs after 25, so the myth still persists even as women are marrying later and forsaking the housewife role altogether. Sexual harrassment has been a big problem in the Korean workplace for a very long time and, while it has become less open and less acceptable, it still persists.

Students are finding ways to escape the institutes and the study rooms by going to the “PC rooms”. Workers, both male and female, let off steam from a hard day at work by playing Starcraft for a few hours in a PC room before heading home to crash. And those who are unemployed, whether because their pride won’t let them work at McDonald’s or not, spend hours on end in PC rooms that Mom and Dad unknowingly pay for (many Koreans live with their parents until they get married). This release is turning into addiction at an alarming rate and has become a huge social problem.

How Korea deals with this modern addiction will be a precedent for the rest of the world. The important thing to understand is that the root cause in Korea is one that is culturally and socially based, and not the games themselves. The causes in other countries will be different, but games, like drugs, are an excellent way to escape reality for those who need to. Understanding what those causes are will be key to treating the problem, no matter where it shows up.