Game kids.

• Author: French, Howard W.
• Position: International

Thanks to high-speed Internet access, online gaming is becoming an obsession for young people in South Korea. "Game players don't have normal social relationships anymore," warns Kim Hyun Soo, chairman of the Net Addiction Treatment Center.

More than half of all the country's households have high-speed Internet connections, compared with fewer than 10 percent in the U.S., according to a recent study, and 80 percent of South Koreans under age 25 play online games. Many go to online video-game clubs, where they spend hours zapping bad guys, dodging...