Hardcore gaming

According to Marketing Insight, 40% of Korean mobile users are also m-gamers - over 6% for hardcore mobile gamers (daily use). If you want to know what a Korean hardcore gamer is, ask Mr Lee : the 28 year old collapsed after playing 49 hour non stop in a PC Bang. Mr Lee would often stay there 3 days in a row but this time he died. No wonder : I tried the same game ("World of Warcraft") in a PC Bang and had to leave after one hour, my heartbeat pulsing a steady 359. Around me, people wouldn't leave the screen one second, even while ordering ramions or pizzas with their mobile phones. I also left because I had been methodically buldozed, nuked and vaporized by a giant bug army (who happened to be controled by a 12 year old), but luckily enough, I survived in real life.
Now you can turn your own home into a PC Bang : in http://ftth Korea (Fiber To The Home), 100 Mbps rates are getting common and BcN (Broadband Convergence Network) first pilots are starting in Seoul thanks to DaCom* (a broadband-VoIP-broadcasting triple play for the 350 first customers). The Government wants every Korean to have at least a 1 Mbps connection by 2010 and the country proved it could deliver.
I wonder how life in appateu will look like when everybody's playing with 3D goggles on an ultimate shoot'em all...

* Among the other 3 BcN consortia, those led by KTF and SKT are focusing on wireless first (unlike DaCom, their core business) : real convergence in BcN may take 2 more years and both players already enjoy key entry points in the country's households. Note that KTF launched their mobile music portal half a year after SKT : dosirak started last may (download & streaming services - 192 Kbps for streaming, interesting coupon packages) and should get 300,000 customers by year end (MelOn targets 800,000 paying subs at that time out of 3M total subscribers - they hit the 2M mark after 7 month).