In this blog post, we take an in-depth look at whether the shutdown system implemented in South Korea under the pretext of protecting young people is actually effective or an outdated regulation.
“A (16), a member of a South Korean StarCraft 2 professional gaming team, participated in the Korean qualifying round for the Iron Squid II tournament in France on the afternoon of February 13, 2013. The incident occurred in the second set of the best-of-seven match. At around midnight, during the second set, A suddenly said, ‘Oh, right. I have to shut down,” according to an article published in the Kookmin Ilbo’s Cookie News. In the end, A had no choice but to give up the game he was winning. The shutdown system, also known as the “Cinderella Law,” is a system introduced by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family to prevent internet game addiction among young people. The essence of this system is to “restrict internet games for young people under the age of 16 for six hours from midnight to 6 a.m.” Internet game providers must block access to games for minors during these hours by verifying their age and identity. This is why Player A was unable to continue the game. The shutdown system has been controversial since its introduction. Is it really necessary?
Most young people in Korea are caught up in the competitive college entrance exam system. Many of them are unable to enjoy their free time on weekdays or even on weekends due to cram school and private tutoring. When they finish their daily routine, it is already late at night, so how can they relieve their stress? They cannot drink alcohol or go to clubs like adults, so many of them naturally end up sitting in front of their computers. The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family’s justification for implementing the shutdown system is to “guarantee the right to sleep for teenagers,” but it is unclear what the right to sleep refers to in this context. Is someone forcing teenagers to play games and preventing them from sleeping? Even without the shutdown system, teenagers can sleep as much as they want. Rather, the shutdown system is an attempt to force teenagers to go to bed and ignore their right to freely engage in activities during that time. In fact, the nighttime self-study time for high school students nationwide, which is not compulsory education and can hardly be called self-study, violates their right to go to bed as they wish, so it should have been banned instead.
Realistically, teenagers who have no choice but to play games late at night will look for alternatives if the shutdown system is implemented. The easiest way is to use their parents’ resident registration numbers to play games. In fact, according to statistics from Nexon’s game MapleStory, there are more users over the age of 60 than expected, and most of them are thought to be children using their grandparents’ resident registration numbers. In addition, in a survey of 500 teenagers conducted by the Korean Society of Legislative Studies, as many as 94.4% of students responded that they would continue playing games by stealing resident registration numbers. This is not preventing game addiction, but rather encouraging crime. No parent would say, “My son stole someone else’s name,” so it is not realistic to prevent the theft of resident registration numbers. Another way is to turn to foreign games. The shutdown system only applies to online games in Korea, so you can simply play foreign games through foreign servers. In this sense, the shutdown system is shrinking the domestic game market and reviving foreign games. If it’s not an online game, there is also the option of console games. There is endless content to enjoy on PlayStation, Nintendo, and other consoles. Even with just a smartphone, you can play games. If not, young people will find other immersive activities they can do on their computers. In the first place, when it has not even been academically proven that games are harmful or addictive, can the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family assert that there is no “harmfulness” in chat rooms and social media? Young people may turn to pornography instead of games, which would be tantamount to digging their own grave from the perspective of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. There is an old saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” Even if the shutdown system is implemented, it is up to the youth themselves to decide whether to sleep or not.
Above all, the shutdown system has problems with its effectiveness. If it is implemented only in Korea, internet users outside the country will become a problem. Accordingly, if it is enforced in other countries, foreign companies may react against it and cut off their supply to Korea. Therefore, it is impossible to enforce it in other countries. In addition, foreign games do not have a system that requires resident registration numbers, so even if the shutdown system is implemented, there is no way to filter out teenagers under the age of 16. It is not a matter of simply asking foreign companies in Korea to “request personal information.” In fact, the Korean government once requested YouTube to introduce an identity verification system. Google, which manages YouTube, simply blocked Korean accounts, resulting in a ridiculous situation where the Blue House had to upload UCC content using accounts from other countries. Furthermore, since this system is implemented based on the time zone in Korea, it may be completely ineffective for Korean teenagers living in other countries with different time zones. For example, in New York, you cannot play games from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., which is unfair. However, blocking access from overseas is a cause for concern for the global growth of the cultural industry in Korea. Let’s shift our perspective a little and think about how the old Joseon Dynasty implemented prohibition. The basic human psychology is that “when you tell me not to do something, I want to do it even more.” Simply put, it was a law that no one would obey from the beginning. The same is true for the shutdown system. To exaggerate a little, it is no different from saying, “Let’s get rid of all cars because they are dangerous.” Naturally, no one would agree with this. In fact, the current restrictions on minors’ use of PC cafes late at night are not properly enforced, even though they are subject to on-site sanctions.
Another blind spot of the shutdown system is that it is based on the dangerous idea of not accepting games as a form of culture and designating them as harmful without exception. A long time ago, there was an incident where comics were burned because people thought they would corrupt children, which ultimately led to the collapse of the Korean comic market. Currently, the comic market in Korea, which plays a major role in the country’s culture, consists entirely of foreign works, with the exception of a few domestic artists. There is no guarantee that the domestic game market will not suffer the same fate. There is still a long way to go before domestic artists become the mainstream of the Korean comic market, but we must strive to protect the game market now. We must also consider whether the shutdown system can prevent game addiction among young people. No, even without thinking deeply about it, it is obvious that there is little correlation between game addiction and the shutdown system. If you think about it, saying that you cannot play games from midnight to 6 a.m. means that you can play games freely during the rest of the time. The time you spend playing games and becoming addicted to games are two completely different things. Suppose a student is really into a game and has enough time to enjoy it outside of midnight to 6 a.m. In that case, the student can enjoy the game to their heart’s content without violating the shutdown system. Does the introduction of the shutdown system prevent this student from becoming addicted to games? Absolutely not. Again, the shutdown system does nothing to prevent game addiction. The idea that blocking game use during certain hours will prevent people from becoming addicted to games is nonsense. This is something that anyone can understand with a little thought, but the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family has nevertheless introduced this system.
Since the implementation of the shutdown system, both the game industry and users have been voicing their dissatisfaction. There have been many cases where the targets that should have been blocked were not blocked, and even adult users were blocked. Furthermore, two years later, it was announced that the shutdown system would be applied to all games distributed in Korea, which is likely to lead to the withdrawal of overseas game companies and the dismissal of developers, resulting in a significant loss for the country. With the implementation of the shutdown system, game companies in Korea were required to request users’ resident registration numbers, which ultimately led to large-scale personal information leaks such as the Nexon MapleStory personal information leak incident. In the end, NCSoft and Nexon decided not to request resident registration numbers upon registration. In addition, starting with “websites with more than 10,000 visitors per day” in 2012, it was decided to gradually abolish the real-name system on the Internet and restrict the collection and use of resident registration numbers on the Internet. What will happen to the shutdown system, which requires the collection of personal information? On top of that, the shutdown system itself is ineffective. “I’ve never talked to my friends about the shutdown system. All my games are registered under my dad’s (resident registration number) anyway,” said Kim, a teenager, clearly showing how ineffective the shutdown system is.
Although it is said to be necessary for young people, the shutdown system is an unreasonable policy of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which does not understand the nature of exam-oriented education. Rather, it is a policy that is difficult to accept even from the perspective of parents, as it implies that “the state will forcibly manage children because their parents cannot.” Currently, the three ministries of education, culture, and gender equality and family are fighting over jurisdiction over game regulations, and game companies are the only ones suffering in the meantime. If the current situation continues, Korean game companies will ultimately have only two choices: go bankrupt or move abroad. Either choice will deal a severe blow to the Korean economy. The introduction of the shutdown system was intended to protect the health of young people, but it has not been effective and its validity is being questioned. It is wrong to judge and regulate the play culture of young people from an adult perspective, and the method of regulation is childish. The current shutdown system is like cutting off an arm because it hurts. The argument that the cause of excessive gaming lies in gaming itself is unfounded. I don’t know how much thought the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family put into this policy, but I feel that people who are paid by the government have failed to fulfill their duties. Currently, this regulation is limited to teenagers and is simply a matter of whether or not to play games, but we don’t know how it will affect us in the future. This is a dangerous situation in which young people become subject to state control, and the social system itself could drift toward controlling the people. Adults should not remain indifferent just because they are not subject to the shutdown system, but should accept it as a problem for all of us and take it seriously. The shutdown system, which poses a threat to everyone, must be abolished immediately.
