How Real Are Video Games Becoming?

    It is amazing how two places that used to be the same country are so drastically different.  There are so many specific cultural components that make North Korea and South Korea very opposite, but the underlying difference between the two is that people want to live in South Korea.  In most cases, living in North Korea is a curse, and most of the people in South Korea feel bad for those in North Korea.  Although North Korea is typically known for being a worse overall place from South Korea, they both have their ups and downs.  The largest underlying issue in North Korea is the amount of people who are starving, especially those who are children.  Human beings in general deserve to have food, but especially if you are young.  The starvation of the people in North Korea is a well known event in the United States.  Something that people are not aware of are the issues that are occurring in South Korea with video games.  The amount of electronics that are used in the United States is most definitely an issue, but people in South Korea, especially teenagers, are taking it to a new level.  It has become a place for large groups of people to gather, and play hours and hours of online gaming.  Playing video games has become such a large part of their culture, that there are now professional video game players who get paid to play and are praised by the citizens of South Korea.  There are even video game tournaments that are broadcasted on television with commercials and everything!  In 2005, Seungseob Lee visited an Internet Cafe in the city of Taegu and played, "StarCraft" almost continuously for fifty hours. He went into cardiac arrest, and died at a local hospital.  Once this occurred, the video game addiction in South Korea became a large deal.  When people start dying because of how many video games they have been playing, I think it has reached a point where peoples time spent on games needs to be reduced.  If you want to read more about the death of Seungseob Lee, click on this link http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4137782.stm  I personally feel as if video games are fun if you are playing them with a couple friends, but if you are investing that much time into them, they are a serious issue.  If you would like to hear more about the game that killed Seungseob Lee, go to this link for some rediculous facts http://www.cracked.com/article_18763_5-insane-true-facts-about-starcraft-professional-sport.html