Internet Café
Living in Hotchkiss means receiving exceptional education and meeting intelligent classmates. However, it also means no IMAX theatre, no department stores, no Chipotle, and most noticeable for me, no internet cafe. My favorite pastime in Korea used to be playing soccer, singing karaoke, or going to internet cafe with friends. Unfortunately, living in Lakeville means that the latter two are no longer options for me. When I express my dissatisfaction for this, however, no one seems to understand what an internet cafe is like. Some people understand karaoke -- New York has plenty of Karaokes these days -- but many have never been to an internet cafe.
Explaining an internet cafe is not a proud business, especially because it is the sign of unhealthy life in Korea. Whenever exam is over, students from elementary schools to high schools flock to internet cafes in groups of friends to play computer games. After that one day, though, students are restrained by their parents’ watching eyes to keep away from internet cafes as much as possible. Even so, the cheap price of internet cafe (about 1 dollar an hour) and the prevalence of it in Korea keeps drawing in millions of students every day.
So what is an internet cafe? I searched it up in google to find pictures of nice looking, ordinary cafes with occasional computers installed for use. That may be the case for American internet cafes. In Korea, however, what we call “internet cafe” is more computer game oriented. Most internet cafes only serve instant food and snacks, and the entire room is filled with rows of high-tech gaming desktops placed side by side each other. Unlike a quiet cafe, a Korean internet cafe is usually filled with the sounds of keyboards and mouses clicking, while groups of friends who go there taunt and swear at each other gleefully as they play online games together.
People question what the point of going to an internet cafe is. Isn’t it better to just play games on computers or use gaming consoles? Why would one pay a dollar every hour to play the same games one could play on his home computer? Avoiding an internet cafe does save a lot of money, but students still love going to internet cafes because it is much more fun to play there with friends than it is to play alone at home. Because the concentration of population in Seoul means that all classmates can gather in an internet cafe within twenty minutes of walking distance, students prefer to gather and game together than to play alone in their rooms. The internet cafes also specifically supports the mainstream gaming industry in Korea. The most popular games in Korea were all online computer games, which is a factor that spurred the spread of internet cafes all over Korea. This in turn suppressed the console and single play gaming industries, which is why gaming console companies find it extremely hard to expand their market in Korea. Therefore, future population of students only find games that are more fun to play together in an internet cafe.
Although it definitely is unhealthy and damaging to students, internet cafe has rooted itself as a part of teenage boy culture in Korea. Examining why this industry became popular only in Korea reveals Korea’s concentrated population’s effect on its unique history of internet development. It isn’t a culture proud to be talking about, but certainly is worth discussing.
