Getting Round The Regulations
Published: Friday, July 15, 2005 Online-Casinos.com
GETTING ROUND THE REGULATIONS
South Koreans play cyber games
Korean news site Donga.com reports that some innovative thinking is being applied
by South Koreans to get around gambling regulations.
The activities are centred on four main venues, HanGame, Netmarble, Pmang and
Mgame. These effectively online gambling sites recorded 234.3 billion won in
revenues last year, up from a mere 82.4 billion won in 2002.
Traditional gambling industry revenues from horseracing, motorboat-racing, Kangwon
Land Casino, on the other hand, saw decreases in revenue last year by 25 percent
to record 7.92 trillion won.
The growth of Internet gambling has been spurred by the explosive increase of
users in their 20s and 30s and female users, reports Donga. It claims that the
number of registered users for the four major sites has risen to upwards of
15 million, an increase of 1-2 million per year. Sixty percent of users are
in their 20s and 30s, and female users account for 40 percent of total users.
The Korean Game Development Institute (KGDI) expects the online game market
to grow by 20 percent annually until 2007.
The gaming sites' main source of income is from selling cyber money or avatars
(one`s characterised self on the Internet) which deposit cyber money. Users
can win as much as one billion won in cyber money for online games like Go-stop,
a traditional Korean card gambling game, if buying an avatar worth 70,000 won.
Cyber money worth one billion won for Go-stop is being traded at 13,000 to 15,000
won in the online game market. The actual price fluctuates in similar fashion
to share price movements, and is controlled by supply and demand.
Sellers, after completing the transaction, play a game with the buyers, in which
sellers intentionally lose money to the buyers. This activity is called "transfusion."
Some sellers go further and hand over the ID and password of the account containing
the cyber money.
The total monetary amount of items exchanged across 100 Internet sites reached
500 billion won last year. The lack of relevant regulation keeps this transaction
within the legal boundaries.
According to the Korea Media Rating Board, 196 games with varying degrees of
gambling involved were newly released last year, twice that of the number released
in 2003.
The committee is not eligible for regulating these games unless cyber money
is directly charged by using cash, or cyber money is transferred to gift certificates,
letting gaming companies sell items with cyber money as a form of bonus to avoid
regulation.
According to a spokesperson for Dandobak, a group that seeks to limit or discourage
the spread of gambling, "It is nonsense to think of this as non-gambling
because only cyber money is used, and it can still lead to problems.”
Lee Jin-oh, the general executive of the Korean Network to Regulate and Improve
Gambling Industry, said that online games could lead to real gambling such as
horse racing or casino games.
"Internet games can clearly lead to gambling addiction and should be heavily
regulated along with the more traditional gambling industry," he added.
