[CE] South Korea's E-SPORTS

I was searching for a video to do my Current Events post and I came across this video that describes how much computer games have impacted the South Korean community.



Being born and raised in Korea, I found this video fascinating. It is unbelievable to think that there are actually schools that base there whole curriculum off computer games. Growing up, I spent a lot of time playing computer games (must be in the blood), I also often watched my older cousins play computer games for hours on end. Other than the fact that I never knew about the computer gaming schools in South Korea, this video was of no surprise to me. The Korean people actually are known for their gaming addictions.

In my couple previous visits to Korea, I noticed there were tons of PC rooms, which I had spent a lot of my time in. No joke, there is a PC room in almost every block. People go there with their group of friends to play multi-player games, eat food, and smoke cigarettes. This is actually a typical day for many  South Koreans. Don't get me wrong, there are tons of other activities to do, but I guess you can say that gaming has slowly become apart of our culture. Every time I would watch T.V. in Korea, there would always be a channel that are strictly for computer games. It is a show where professional gamers get together and go head to head on different multi-player games, the winner was often rewarded prize money. Can you imagine that? Playing video games as a career, now thats the life. I often found it humorous whenever the announcer would go crazy when one team scores a point on the other. It was like a gaming version of America's own ESPN channel.

I feel that this video kind of gave a bad image to the Korean education system. In a recent study, it was estimated that the majority of South Korean high school students actually spent 14 hours a day in some form of education and got about 5 and a half hours of sleep every night. I don't know about you, but I would just quit school if it required me to be dedicated for 14 hours throughout the day.