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Lawmaker urges scrap of 'forced game shutdown law'

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A multitude of game fans crowd in front of the BEXCO exhibition center, the main venue of G-Star 2017 global game show, Saturday. Many teenagers visited the game show for the weekend. / Courtesy of K-Games
A multitude of game fans crowd in front of the BEXCO exhibition center, the main venue of G-Star 2017 global game show, Saturday. Many teenagers visited the game show for the weekend. / Courtesy of K-Games

By Yoon Sung-won

Heated social debates are expected to form as a ruling party lawmaker proposed a bill to scrap the "obligatory online game shutdown law," according to industry sources, Thursday.

Earlier this week Rep. Kim Byung-kwan of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) submitted a bill to revise the Juvenile Protection Act, aiming to abolish the rule that bans minors from nighttime access to online games after midnight.

"The obligatory online game shutdown law has had fairness issues as it has banned teenagers' access to online games in a certain time window, regardless of the games' actual ratings," the lawmaker said in a statement.

"It is impossible to tackle the fundamentals of the problem with the current law, which uniformly prohibits juveniles' access to online games at night even when the root causes of the young people's addiction to internet games vary by each case."

The lawmaker also underlined that young people's access to online games has already been regulated by what is called the "selective shutdown law" under the Game Industry Promotion Act. In this law, a legal representative of a minor can decide how to limit their access to online games and request it to the content providers.

"Though there are many causes that make young people overindulge in video games, the problem cannot be solved simply by prohibiting them from playing the games late at night without a fundamental approach to the causes," Kim said.

"The government's excessive interference in juveniles' consumption of cultural content is in violation of basic constitutional rights including the young people's right to pursue happiness, their parents' right to decide upon their children's education as well as the internet game providers' rights and freedom of expression."

The revision bill is in line with a previous remark by Culture and Sports Minister Do Jong-hwan. When he took office in June, he said the restrictions on young people's access to online games in late night should be non-obligatory.

Expectations are that the revision bill and the move to scrap the shutdown law are likely to face a tough challenge from the Ministry of Gender Equality and parents' unions as the Constitutional Court already ruled this law as constitutional in 2014.

Kim, who has formerly led major game enterprises such as NHN and Webzen, was elected as a lawmaker of Bundang, Gyeonggi Province, in the 20th National Assembly election in April.

Kim's entrance to the National Assembly came as a surprise as he clinched the victory only four months after entering politics. Kim started his career as a businessman in Korea's game industry as head of Nexon's internet game development team in 1996.

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family introduced the obligatory online game shutdown law to ban young people under age 16 from accessing computer online games between midnight and 6 a.m. The ministry enacted this regulation in 2011 as a part of the Juvenile Protection Act.

This rule has continued to face objections from game users and the industry over its effectiveness and side effects for the last six years.

"It is not even news that teenagers play adult-only games by stealing resident registration numbers of their parents," a game industry insider said.

"It is also too much a request for mid-sized game firms to arrange a screening system to detect teenagers who try to access to an adult-only game through a foreign internet protocol."




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