We the People

"You know what? I know we have a dangerous job to do here but... I'm taking this. I'm taking this couch" - Peter Griffin, Family Guy - Blue Harvest

About three weeks before the attack on my car which led to our sudden volte-face decision to return to Korea, we bought a Nintendo Wii. It's clear to me from people I know that Wii's are used for one of two things, either to provide an interactive gaming and exercise system, or gather dust in closets. It was soon clear that ours was going to fall into the former category.

This presented a problem because a UK Wii is a PAL output system and Korean TVs run on NTSC, which meant that even if we were prepared to ship it out to Korea, to my mind it wasn't going to work unless we could find a Korean TV that accepted PAL inputs. I may be a former software designer and one-time computer geek, but I'm no expert on audio-visual equipment and everything I read on the subject could basically be summarised as 'forget about linking a PAL Wii to an NTSC TV without a heck of a lot of messing around or some special connectors. My wife scoured the Korean Internet and couldn't find any TVs claiming to take PAL inputs - whereas in the UK NTSC capable TVs are quite common.

So as reluctant as I was to probably lose a hundred pounds in three weeks on a console that we would have to dump quickly, I saw little choice but to write it off as a transition cost and start again in Korea with a locally purchased Wii. Then my wife had her Peter Griffin moment - "You know what? I'm taking this. I'm taking this Wii to Korea". And because as traders neither of us like losing lots of money on a position we've just entered, I found myself seduced by the idea of going along with it.

It logically follows that if you're going to take a PAL Wii to NTSC country, maybe you have to have a PAL TV to use it with if all else fails, and that's how - along with a few other boxes of possessions we arranged to have shipped to Korea, we came to have a cheap 19-inch TV shipped along with them. But the Wii itself along with its accompanying software was not going to be shipped - instead my wife resolved to use about a significant part of her suitcase to bring them with us on the flight. I could only do what any husband would in this situation, which was to offer words of support such as "You're crazy", "Customs are bound to go through your cases", and "I'm really not sure this is going to work anyway". I think it's important to see a marriage as a real partnership.

Despite my disturbing lack of faith I made sure we brought all the connectors and two days after we arrived I'm finally crawling around the back of Korean Mother's 52-mile wide PAVV (i.e. upmarket Samsung) TV looking for a SCART connector, which is what we used to use to connect just about every piece of equipment in the living room to one another before HDMI came along. This exhibited a complete lack of research on my part, because despite having a couple of dozen different connectors in the back - including an Ethernet port of all things - a SCART socket was conspicuous by its absence. I checked the old TV we'd bought when we came to Korea the first time - it's so old it's actually a CRT rather than LCD, and that didn't have a SCART either, which is when it became obvious that Korea doesn't use SCARTs and probably never did. Well, the Wii cables running into the SCART convertor were a left and right audio, and a video cable, so I figured I'd just pull them out and see if I could stick them somewhere else directly - my trademark scientific approach to almost anything technical. There was some colour-coding but since half of the ports seemed to be red it wasn't as helpful as it might have been.

It didn't take long to figure out that the Mega TV set-top box was using the same type of cables to connect to the TV, and by replacing them with those from the Wii we might be in business. And then it just happened - the picture came on - the standard Nintendo warning that their consoles can be dangerous to use or some such thing - and what's more, it even had a splash of colour in the right place despite the cautionary Internet tales that in the unlikely event we had any success, the picture would probably end up being monochrome.

Later I got even more ambitious and succeeded in connecting the Wii to the Korean TV via a non-Nintendo Component Cable I'd bought in the UK, so now it can remain connected without the need to cut off the Mega TV box. And with that we were set up. Admittedly, we can't buy Korean Wii games because they will be NTSC format, so if we want to add any more software to it we'll have to try and find PAL titles from somewhere. But even if we don't, we feel like we really achieved something somewhat against the odds.

I'm not sure that 10.30pm on an uncomfortably humid evening is a good time to be reacquainting oneself with Wii Sports, but we were soon back into the swing of things, and the great thing about Korean Mother's apartment was that we actually had space to move around, unlike our home back in the UK.

Korean Mother came home to discover that we'd seized control of the strategically important lounge area, and her 52-mile wide TV with it, and rushed off to her room to watch the soap opera she'd come home for. But curiosity soon got the better of her, and she was back outside watching with fascination. In fact, she'd been out exercising at a local school, at 9pm, and was intrigued by the idea of exercising in her apartment using a console when we showed her EA Sports Active. After that, it wasn't long before she was playing Wii Sports Resort's table tennis, and unexpectedly discovering she was rather good at it.

But nothing prepared me for what was to follow. Korean Mother discovered Wii Boxing, and suffice to say while I have video of her playing this which I'm sure could be a YouTube sensation if there wasn't a going to be a very long statute of limitations applying to it, I will instead merely have to relate that nothing in life quite prepares you for the sight of an ajumma knocking the hell out of a Nintendo character while angrily suggesting with each punch to the character that his mother might have the characteristics of the son of a fornicating female dog who isn't familiar with the father. What's even more inexplicable, is that having played first and exhausted myself entirely having once again failed to beat my next level opponent, Korean Mother took over my character and beat it on her first attempt. It's clear from watching Korean TV - which run programmes that I always imagined being called When Ajummas Attack - that an angry ajumma is a dangerous animal - but seeing it up close is truly a sight to behold. I tell you this - if Wii Boxing ever catches on in the ajumma community, on the evidence I've seen the rest of us are really in trouble.

TRON

It may or may not be the case that once upon a time Korea's multitude of PC rooms, known as PC Bangs ('bang' is Korean for room), were used for surfing the Internet and doing a spot of word-processing, but if they were those days have long since gone. These days, PC Bangs are basically video game rooms. That said, you can still find some of them that are willing to do something as old-fashioned as print out a document for a price, although based on my experience these are few and far between. And even then, the one we found doesn't have copies of Microsoft Word on its computers so we are reduced to printing out using 'Word Viewer'.

Because of the work generated in preparing our appeal against the decision to prevent myself and my wife returning to the UK, we've been at the PC Bang that prints a number of times of late, and I've begun to realise that these places are full of people no matter what time or day it is, shattering my illusions that they might be quiet during weekdays, when people are supposed to have jobs to go to. That said, I gather that PC Bangs are favourite haunts of Korea's unemployed.

As we were struggling to persuade a computer to print out a document to a networked printer the other day, I couldn't help but note that the guy sat next to us was well into ajeossi territory - mid-40s would be my guess - which admittedly is not your typical demographic in a PC Bang. But what was typical was his choice of game - an online 3D game which may have been Counter-Strike or something called Special Forces which seems to be popular here - with copious amounts of weapons, violence and blood. Perhaps they help deal with the psychological trauma stemming from the National Service which Korean men have to do.

I couldn't help thinking that something about this picture didn't fit, which I suppose is my prejudice of seeing video games as predominantly an activity for young males. On the other hand, it's a distinct possibility that a good number of today's Korean PC Bang and patriot-gaming generation are going to get older and keep playing - so perhaps our 'ajeossi' neighbour was in the vanguard of a subtle Korean social revolution. If I come back here in thirty years will the PC Bangs be full of grey gamers? A possibility. It probably beats what appears to be one of the most popular activities for old people in Korea at the moment, which is hanging around in parks keeping out of the way of family members and waiting for the end. It's common in this day and age to see disaffected youth as a 'lost generation', but in high-tech Korean cities which have long-since forgotten their recent heritage, I'm not so sure it's not really the elderly.

Our PC Bang of choice also features another tell-tale sign of Koreans' determination to stay here far into the future - beyond the inevitable drinks machines they sell snacks. We're not just talking chocolate bars and packets of crisps/potato chips here, because with the addition of hot water or the microwave you've got a complete noodle or rice meal in a tub. And as we regularly struggle with the mysteries of network printing a steady stream of haggard looking gamers make their way to the only female to be seen - the one behind the counter at the entrance - to buy what sustenance is necessary for another fix of murder and mayhem. I suppose it really is like being in the army. Predictably, I've never seen a gamer browse for their lunch. Leave chair, walk north to food counter and take nearest object, return to chair, play and eat. It's no wonder every so often, gamers die of exhaustion in these places.

Had Einstein been alive today, it's possible that he could have cited Korean PC Bangs as conclusive proof of the theory of relativity, because it appears that the measurement of time is not the same in a PC Bang as that which exists outside in the real world.

Korean tags: 방, 아저씨, 인터넷, 비디오, 게임, 음식

Patriot Games

We have a lot of TV channels in the UK, but I think it has to be said that after the first twenty or so, it's niche, long-tail and lowest-common denominator entertainment all the way. So I admit, an entire channel of consisting of "The World's Scariest Police Chases" seems like overkill even if it's your thing. But despite the fact that a lot of people in the UK play video games, there's no games channel and I can't even recall ever seeing a specific gaming programme beyond an old TV show called Gamesmaster which was pulled off the air in 1998.

The Korean cable TV service we subscribe to for 5,000 won per month (about £2.72) in our apartment building is a fairly standard one which a lot of people have. Out of approximately 60 channels, three are video game channels, and a couple of the others feature hours of video gaming during the night. If you weren't convinced by the PC Bang experience already, this should tell you a lot about the prevalence of gaming as an activity and subculture here.

In fact though, merely labelling them as gaming channels doesn't really explain what they are. Their focus is online gaming, and the standard programme consists of tournaments between individuals and teams. Serious and haggard looking - and almost exclusively male - youths with slightly wild or vacant eyes hunch over their screens while commentators provide a running dialogue on the action. Meanwhile a crowded audience watches almost as intently. Girls scream when they show the players up close on the big screen. I never really thought of video games as a spectator sport, or gamers as high-school pin-ups, but here it is.



Oddly enough, three months of flicking through the various TV channels would lead you to the conclusion that there are in fact only three online games played in Korea. World of Warcraft, Starcraft and some first-person-shooter Doom-variant I've never really identified. I actually dubbed one of the channels 'World of Warcraft TV' in my mind because as far as I can tell that's all they ever show. In fact, I know from my own experience playing the hugely-popular Kartrider that there are others, but I've never seen any coverage of them. Very occasionally ordinary multiplayer games make an appearance, so I've seen coverage of a basketball game a few times and last night, bizarrely, a women's wrestling game on the MBC Game channel - with female gamers - rated 19 - adults only (note the logo in the top-right of the screen!)



I couldn't honestly say what the specific content of the Korean gaming channels is beyond coverage of the Korean World of Warcraft League and 'Star League' as I can't understand Korean, but Arirang - the English-language and ever-so-slightly foaming at the mouth Korea-to-foreigners channel (slogan - 'Korea for the World, the World for Korea'), started showing some of the tournaments late at night - especially between Korean teams and foreign ones. Having never played them, I just don't understand World of Warcraft or that genre of game, so I was no wiser despite the valiant attempts of the commentators to explain the battles as they unfolded, and it remains an unsatisfying spectator sport in my book - even in English. But the take home message from the game I watched was that the Korean team beat the Chinese team and there was much rejoicing which left me feeling slightly ill-at-ease.

I continue playing Kartrider because going round and round in circles as a cartoon-like figure is something I can relate to from my real life, and besides I only need another 1,000 points to lose my 'green-glove' status and progress on to the next colour (spot the sign of addiction here). Plus, now that I have Korean Windows I can actually talk with the other players in-between races - something I couldn't do with English Windows even though Korean input worked with normal desktop applications. Whether I will or not is another matter though, I can't type Korean fast enough and even if I could, I'm not sure how my nationality will go down, particularly when I'm winning...

New Year's Eve

We were invited to the Haeundae area to stay overnight at a friends' apartment again, this time for the New Year Sunrise Festival held on Haeundae Beach.

Shortly after arriving a meal was cooked, and the ten adults and four children present settled down to eat. In typical Korean fashion, the meal began while one of the women still cooked in the kitchen, and two of the men grappled with a portable barbecue, fortunately at the opposite end of the table to where I was sitting.

Sunrise at seven-thirty meant we had to be up at six, but we also needed to stay up until midnight to see in the New Year officially, so with some time to kill we went for a walk along the seafront before finding our way to a PC Bang where we played Kartrider - though unfortunately it wasn't 'affiliated' so we didn't score extra points or get any extra equipment for the duration. But Nexon were running a 50% more points promotion to maintain punters' interest on a day they really should have been doing something else. My partner fell asleep at her computer and her friend was so tired she slumped in her chair but still consistently finished above me in the races.

Later, back at the apartment, where they were still eating, I was introduced to 'Korean Poker' (also known as 'Go Stop'). Unfortunately it appeared to have more rules than the Inland Revenue and after several years dealing with them my tolerance for such things is almost non-existent. Having unsuccessfully tried to hide a slightly pained look from my face after winning my second game and not understanding why, my hosts proceeded to play amongst themselves with myself gladly watching. As cards were disposed of they were thrown down onto the 'table' (OK - the mattress in this case) with such force that they make a slapping noise, not to mention giving your upper arm muscles a good workout. It seems Koreans like this in-game explosion of violence and there were smiles and frustration all round. It was very Korean. Normally Stop-Go is played for 100 won per point and is a very popular form of gambling here.

Midnight came and my partner and I kissed in what should have been a private moment, but we were seen and there was much commotion - such public displays are not common in Korea. Our hosts had another friend staying with them, and she excitedly invited her husband who was also present - but had just emerged from the bathroom - to mimic the gesture, as 'that's what they do in the West'. Instead she got the towel thrown in her face - and I guess you could say that that's what they do in Korea. It was playful - but nevertheless the message was clear.

Many apartments in Korea have underfloor heating. Our hosts left it on overnight which might have seemed like a good idea at the time given the cold temperatures outside, but it was so hot sleeping on a mattress on the floor that I dreamt I was trapped in a microwave.

Bang the Machine

Trading has been slow for the last couple of days, so when a friend phoned to invite us out for pizza we jumped at the chance, leaving our systems to work for us while we were out. After pizza at the unlikely named Big Bowls, it was off to a PC Bang (PC room) for a few rounds of Kartrider, as you do.

I've had some brief experiences of PC Bangs while in Korea - but they've been limited so far to hanging around the entrances while my girlfriend went in looking for people. So today was my first entry into the world which so many Koreans seem to inhabit.

It wasn't quite what I expected. While the closely packed machines accompanied by the whirr of fans and the smell of CPU-heated air mixed with body odour took me back to my university days, I was surprised to find that it appeared to be little more than a glorified arcade - since almost everyone was playing a game of some kind. Until today, I'd laboured under the illusion that people in PC Bangs were surfing the Internet, checking their email, watching videos and doing all the kind of things that people generally do aside from gaming. But it all appeared to be gaming, and in fact, to be absolutely precise, of the hundred-or-so computers, everyone was playing one of five different games as far as I could tell. Unfortunately, my knowledge of games is sufficiently limited that the only one I could readily identify was Kartrider.

When we sat down - in the smoking section to start with (there was no room in non-smoking) - a woman brought us a drink that tasted suspiciously like flat Sprite, and about as unpleasant as that sounds. There have been quite a few stories in the past couple of years of Koreans playing games in PC Bangs so long without a break for food, drink or sleep they've actually died, so perhaps this was a small concession to that. Each computer also had a very small vending machine next to it, containing nuts or chocolate for 100 won a time. It wouldn't keep you going for long though - even if you had the change.

A fascinating aspect of the place the PC Bang has in Korean culture is that by some technical means that I am not aware of, Kartrider knows that you're playing in one and whatever points you would have scored at home are doubled. Not only that, special PC Bang-only cars are available which make the game easier to play. Which all serves to put PC Bang players of the game at a distinct advantage to those who choose to play elsewhere. I understand that we paid more for playing Kartrider than had we just accessed the Internet, so I imagine there's some kickback for the company as well as the PC Bang in doing this.

The downside of playing in the PC Bang was the noise - I found it impossible to hear my own computer above the racket of all the others - and when I finally left the PC Bang, I discovered I couldn't hear properly as I'd been slightly deafened. I think if I ever specifically went there to play a game in future, I'd take some small headphones.

Kart Racer

When our Saturday-evening plans fell through at the last minute, I found myself with a new Korean experience - nothing to do. So it was suggested that I try out the Korean phenomena that is Kartrider, a free on-line Mario-Kart style game which is earning serious revenue for its creator Nexon.

Western games companies might wonder how a business model can be built on such a concept, but the answer as so often with Korean companies lies in Korean peoples' willingness to live out alternative lives on line, whether it be through Korean homepages such as Cyworld, or entire game-worlds. When so much time is spent in an environment, and indeed social networking of a sort done within them, the opportunity to use it to sell clothing, equipment and a variety of other add-ons present themselves. For Nexon alone, revenue is into the hundreds of millions of dollars and such is the seriousness with which Kartrider alone is played in here, for some players it can actually become a job.

A few hours after starting, I'd won a few races at the bottom level with my basic kart, and had the sore fingers to prove it. Beating my girlfriend's friend though, a high-ranking player with a year's experience, proved predictably elusive. Despite this, I wasn't immediately tempted to splash out real money buying a faster kart in order to compete more effectively. Perhaps I'll just work my way up the hard way.

Despite not being much of a video-games player, the quick games against real people proved strangely addictive and on a slow trading day yesterday evening I left my systems to trade automatically and went back into the Kartrider world to try and improve my score - but beating my Korean friends still proved impossible.

Given that my girlfriend's friends don't speak very much English, and myself even less Korean, we are therefore limited to communicating instead via a video game, although when you think about it, it is perhaps a very Korean way to build relationships.