South Korea Opens Camp for Net Addicts

[Sunite]

South Korea Opens Camp for Net Addicts
By Richard Koman
November 19, 2007 11:20AM

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Of the 2.4 million kids at risk in South Korea, some 250,000 are showing signs of Internet addiction, said Ahn Dong-hyun, a child psychiatrist. Like drug addicts or alcoholics, Internet addicts cannot stop themselves from getting online, have ever-increasing tolerances for game play, and show withdrawal symptoms when disconnected.

Related Topics
   South Korea
   Addiction
   Kids
   Teens
   Video Games
   Broadband

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   South Korea is one of the most connected countries in the world. It boasts 90 percent broadband penetration into homes. But with that connectivity comes a terrible risk for the country's youth: computer addiction.

According to a three-year government study of the problem, 30 percent of people under 18 -- 2.4 million kids -- are at risk for Internet addiction. To deal with the problem, South Korea has opened the world's first boot camp for Net addicts.

Called the Jump Up Internet Rescue School, the camp includes strenuous obstacle courses, counselor-led group therapy sessions, and therapeutic arts and crafts classes such as pottery and drumming.

While there are people in every country who spend too much time online, especially the U.S., in South Korea online gamers have dropped dead from playing nonstop. It's not uncommon for students to skip school to keep playing.

Addicted or Just Troubled?

Of the 2.4 million kids at risk, 250,000 are showing signs of full-blown Internet addiction, said Ahn Dong-hyun, a child psychiatrist at Hanyang University in Seoul, the author of the government study. Like drug addicts or alcoholics, Internet addicts cannot stop themselves from getting online, have ever-increasing tolerances for game play, and show withdrawal symptoms like anger when they can't get to a keyboard.

While health experts in the U.S. acknowledge that Internet obsession is a problem, it is not fully accepted by the psychiatric community. In June, the American Medical Association declined to accept "video game addiction" as a serious mental disorder on the order of alcoholism.

"There is nothing here to suggest that this is a complex physiological disease state akin to alcoholism or other substance abuse disorders, and it doesn't get to have the word addiction attached to it," Dr. Stuart Gitlow, of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said at the time.

'Life Without Internet'

According to the New York Times, demand for the camp is huge, with five applications for each spot. Government officials plan on doubling the camp's sessions next year. At the live-in "rescue school," the kids get zero computer time and only one hour of cell time per day. Instead of games, chat, and Web surfing, their days are filled with physical activity and therapeutic sessions in which they learn skills for connecting with flesh-and-blood people.

"It is most important to provide them experience of a lifestyle without the Internet," said Lee Yun-hee, a counselor. "Young Koreans don't know what this is like."

It's not so easy. The Times interviewed a 15-year-old named Lee Chang-hoon who was used to spending 17 hours a day online, skipping school two to three times a week to catch up on sleep. At the start of the camp, he said, "I don't have a problem. Seventeen hours a day online is fine."

But a few days later, after running an obstacle course with an instructor yelling at him -- "Tell your mother you love her!" -- Chang-hoon allowed there is more to life than games. "From now on, maybe I'll just spend five hours a day online."