Where Does Fantasy End?
  - why all of South Korea is obsessed with an online game where
   ordinary folks can be arms dealers, murderers ... and elves
        By MICHELLE LEVANDER Seoul, Stuart Isett for TIME.
                Originally published on the web

                   Sent in by Dave Booth

Korean gamers spend most of the day and night playing Lineage or
hanging out in a PC cafe waiting for the chance to play. The
teenagers come together through their obsession with the online
game.

Five rough-looking men stepped out of a black sedan and burst into
the Seoul PC cafe where Paek Jung Yul hangs out with Strong People
Blood Pledge, his clan of online gamers. "Is the wizard here?"
demanded one of the toughs, asking for the player who killed his
character in an online game called Lineage.


The "wizard" was there, alright, and he was feeling bold. He
boasted that he had offed the gangman's virtual character just for
the fun of it.  Bad idea.  The roughnecks dragged the 21-year-old
into the urinal and pummeled him until he was covered with
real-world bruises.

Paek describes the incident - now part of his clan's lore - with
jaded nonchalance.  Actual violence has become so commonplace
among computer- game players that concerned authorities even have
a term for it that borrows from the game:  "off-line PK" (player
killings). Paek, who relishes online killings as a refreshing
change from his decorous real-life manner, allows that physical
retribution is merited if players engage in particularly craven
online behavior, such as theft or scams involving the game's
coveted virtual weapons.

Online revenge is O.K. too: "Usually, I kill the ones I hate," he
says. Those are fighting words, coming from a shy, skinny
16-year-old who regularly tops his high-school class. But this is
the other Paek speaking, the ruthless (and female-go figure) elf
who is master of Lineage, a medieval fantasy game that has swept
Korean society into a gaming frenzy. "In reality, I have few ways
to express myself or show off," Paek says. "But in the game, if I
put in a little effort, many people will know who I am."

In South Korea, a deeply conformist society where children must
speak to elders with a special deferential grammar, this
bloodthirsty game has caught on with a vengeance. In Lineage,
gamers playing princes, wizards and elves fight one another to the
death in mini-armies or clans, headed by guild masters, to gain
control of the castles that dot the virtual world. The victors can
then levy feudal taxes upon virtual villages under their control
and dun gamers a percentage of each online weapons sale. All this
can be fairly lucrative, especially since there's a thriving black
market that exchanges the virtual items for cold, hard cash. But
what makes the game so addictive is its complex feudal
environment, which hooks players after they invest days or weeks
building up the strength of their online characters. Based on its
success in garnering online subscribers in Korea alone, Lineage is
the most popular single interactive online game in the world right
now, ahead of Sony's Everquest, Electronic Arts' Ultima Online or
even Microsoft's Asheron's Call, according to Samsung Securities.

Why does Lineage have such a hold in Korea? "This is a small
country," explains Joonmo Kwon, an educational psychologist. "If
everyone you know plays Lineage, you have to play it." Besides,
says Kwon, the game's emphasis on winning and working in groups
speaks to the Korean spirit. And then there's the universal
explanation for escapism: "In the real world, in Korea, you have
to repress your drives and hidden desires. In the game they come
out."

In this wired nation, there are PC cafes on virtually every
street, outfitted with the high-speed Internet connections that
make interactive games crackle.  Open 24 hours, and charging just
$1 an hour to play, these game rooms are well stocked with
cheese-whiz sausages, potato wafers and instant noodles.  Many
games are played here, but Lineage is the most addictive,
authorities say.

Two million people, out of a population of 46 million, have active
Lineage accounts. And when day turns to evening, close to 100,000
Koreans can be found glued to computer terminals around the
country, playing the game simultaneously. School kids in Seoul
routinely doze through classes after playing all night. Parents
either don't know or can't stop them.  Shy young boys take on
alter egos as aggressive killers online. A doctor plays ruthlessly
while a neighborhood bully has a chance to show compassion. Girl
characters, meanwhile, have sometimes been known to offer sexual
favors to experienced male gamers in exchange for virtual weapons.
But, as one Lineage clan's guild master notes, who's to say the
girl characters are really girls?

The game has also caught on with the loan-sharking gangsters
active in the Korean entertainment industry. Some have seized
control of Lineage castles, gamers say. They do a brisk side
business trading in virtual weapons and levying taxes in the game.
In between off-line heists, they boast among themselves about
their online exploits. "They guard people for money in the game,"

says the sweet-faced girlfriend of one gangster, as she leans back
into a red plush couch at a Seoul bar. "It's just like reality."

At times, it seems like the whole nation is caught up in the
confusion.  Sandwiched between news of the latest political
scandals, Korea's broadsheets revel in details of Lineage
controversies. One March article in the Dong-A Ilbo reports on an
online protest - when "more than 1,000 players gathered within the
Lineage world" - after unscrupulous gamers took advantage of a
computer glitch to make bootleg copies of the game's prized
virtual weapons.  Korea's intellectuals and literary hopefuls have
also gotten caught up in the craze. Gamer Lee Seung Woo, a
draftsman by day whose real- life hope is to find a girlfriend,
has written a still unpublished novel about male friendship set in
the game. Then there's literary critic Park Sang Woo, whose book
on Korea's game players draws on the ideas of French philosopher
Michel Foucault. "For the gamer, the game world is much more
attractive than reality," he writes, based partly on his own
experience. "Reality is only a space in which he makes a small
amount of necessary money for continuing the game."

Even Lineage developer NCsoft has gotten caught up in the virtual
world of its own making. Systems administrators, often gamers
themselves, have been fired for throwing online events in favor of
one gaming clan or another.  The company recently issued an online
apology to its customers for one such incident and promised it
would investigate any allegations of employee corruption. Kim Taek
Jin, NCsoft's president, says gamers have attempted to buy off his
staffers with gifts of up to $1,000 to manipulate the game.
Korean newspapers report that some gangsters recently turned up at
the company demanding personal information on online rivals to
extract off-line retribution.

Not surprisingly, NCsoft's Seoul headquarters is fortified with
double steel doors and fingerprint scanners for the server room.
"In Korea," Kim says dryly about Lineage's diehard fans, "hate is
a kind of love." To protect the game software, Kim has set up
security procedures that might be more familiar to a bank.
Meanwhile, vigilantes with names like the Honorable Resolution
Clan take it upon themselves to monitor their own members as well
as the behavior of unsavory rivals. Online killings are often
accompanied by abusive curses and threats sent in instant
messages. Sometimes, entire clans-numbering in the dozens-storm
down to NCsoft headquarters to demand redress when another has
wronged them. Others take a more legalistic approach, meticulously
documenting grievances by taking "screen saves" of incriminating
moments in online battles.

Others prefer to settle their own scores, such as Paek's Strong
People Blood Pledge clan. A number of the 16-year-old's gang sport
the close- cropped haircuts and tight suits that gangsters here
wear as a kind of uniform, he says. When members meet, they
usually like to carry out online player killings together. Paek
doesn't seem worried about the clan's reputed gangster ties.
"It's O.K. when we get to know each other," he says. "If they are
enemies, it's really scary."

Authorities say three types of crime are common in the game:
hacking into others' accounts to steal weapons, stealing users'
online identification and fraud connected to the sale of virtual
arms. Kim Gi Bum, an inspector in one of the police's new
cybercrime units - founded after authorities were deluged with
complaints from Lineage gamers - tells of a 14-year-old runaway
who recently defrauded gamers out of about $10,000 by promising to
sell them virtual weapons but not delivering the goods after he
was paid. The boy, who often slept in the PC caf‚ where he played
Lineage, pulled off 128 fraudulent deals over a year before he was
captured.

For the non-player, the mixing of reality and fantasy boggles the
mind. But serious game players live their lives toggling between
the two worlds. "The game doesn't affect reality," says a red-eyed
addict after spending two nights playing virtually nonstop.
"Reality affects the game."





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