Korean Game Industry Thriving

Even with a global meltdown, many Korean companies are still performing well. The most notable industry as a whole -- as far as students are concerned -- is the gaming industry. Industry execs are looking to extend their reach and continue to grow the business of Internet gaming. All that from a country that is already the most connected in the world.

The fact that business is booming, and will continue to grow, is now surprise at all. My friends and I are part of a generation that were born in raised in the earliest days of home video gaming.

But the students who flock to the PC rooms and jam them all night were raised in an era of which they never knew life without games. The PC is still much more popular than the console here, and for good reason. Parents view a PC as a machine that can also help with studying. A console only plays games.

Now, no parents think their child is going to the PC room to study, but it's an image thing. And this is South Korea, after all.

The story goes on to say that the industry executives are looking for further Internet penetration, a term that will always make me laugh, no matter how old I become.

I want to set the record straight on Korean Internet. Everyone says it's blazingly fast. Well, get this: It's not THAT fast. Yes, it's slightly faster than the ethernet you can get in America ... slightly. Maybe it starts out faster, but since we're all living in stacked shoe boxes here, the speed slows down a bit.

And I can't even talk about service without getting angry. My Internet experience in Korea has been nothing short of awful. I rarely had connection problems in America. But in the year and two months I've been in Korea, I've had to call tech support no less than 10 times. They come and fix it that day, but it's still a hassle waiting for them to arrive when everything should just work. That's what I'm paying for, right?

But I digress. The point of this blog post is that as big as gaming already is here, it's only going to get bigger.