It must be understood that minimum wage in Korea is still quite low by Western standards, while cost of living is high, not to mention fast on the rise. In many cases, products are more expensive here than in the US. As such, when Koreans are faced with the dilemma (if it can even be called that) of whether to pay full price for PC games or download them for free, it's a non-issue for most.

The interesting thing is that this extends even to those with disposable income. To illustrate, I have a friend who is the president and founder of a very successful design firm in Seoul, and one day when the subject of a particular title came up, he immediately exclaimed how he'd recently downloaded it and what a big fan he was.

It's very much a 'topless woman at the French Riviera' scenario -- illegally downloading games in Korea is nothing if not completely and utterly normal, so much so that purchasing a game at full price can be seen as something of an oddball behavior. Where possible, the same applies to console games, but that's for another article.

The second reason for the lack of any major retail presence for new PC games in Korea is the fact that most popular online titles from domestic developers -- and it must be noted that if a PC game isn't online, it generally won't find much of an audience here at all -- are free to download and play; some operating on a micro-transaction system of customization, some with a subscription fee to play, and others just plain free.

The companies and individuals that took risks and made use of such systems from the beginning generally went on to reap huge rewards. While a rather recent example, Nexon's Kart Rider became such a huge phenomenon because of the fact that, despite being a rather blatant rip-off of Mario Kart, it was free, for the most part well designed, and immediately accessible to players of any and all age groups. Though it's now significantly lessened in popularity, the game was a true national phenomenon in its heyday, one that's going to be remembered for years to come.

Central in all of this is the role of the internet cafe, or as it's called here, the PC Bang (that's 'ah' as in 'on'), meaning 'PC Room'. While there are many gamers who also play at home, the PC room is where the real action is at, largely because of the fact that you can find them virtually anywhere, they always feature a good selection of the most popular online titles, and perhaps most importantly, subscription fees to the games that require them are already taken care of.

Rates are very reasonable for non-members, around 1000~2000 Won an hour, which corresponds to about a dollar or two USD. The hardcore, however, mostly have paid memberships to their bang of choice, and whenever possible, they vegetate all through the night, subsisting on a not-so-healthy diet of spicy ramen ('ramyun' as it's called here), cigarettes, and the ever popular canned coffee, either hot or cold.

Years back, I gave this this witch’s brew a try, minus the cigarettes, and it left me feeling so awful the next day that I had to go to the doctor. Not recommended.