There is a bizarre report from Korea today about a man who authorities say launched a denial of service attack on the nation's game content ratings board.

According to JoongAng Daily, the man, identified only as Choi, age 39, is the CEO of a company that helps game developers with the content rating process. Choi reportedly accepted an advance payment from an unnamed game developer who then complained when the rating process did not progress quickly enough.

Police say that, in order to generate an excuse for the rating delay, Choi purchased a hacking program and launched attacks on the game rating board:

[Choi] made postings on Internet bulletins... saying “MP3 files can be downloaded for free” with a link to a separate Web site. If people clicked on the site, they were directed to a pornographic video. While watching the video, the hacking program Choi had bought from China infected the watchers’ computers with a virus. These so-called zombies computers were then used for a distributed denial-of-service attack...

Choi managed to freeze the Game Rating Board 10 times between March 4 and 22, mobilizing some 7,400 hijacked computers...

Rather surprisingly, South Korea's intelligence service is operating an online game designed to raise public awareness of infiltrators from the North.

The AFP reports that the National Intelligence Service will run the game through July 21st. The timing concides with the 59th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War. A variety of prizes are being offered, including laptops, camers and video game consoles. From the AFP:

The first stage invites users to identify suspicious characters in a crowded park. One figure is shown holding a placard reading "Love Kim Il-Sung," the North's founding president who died in 1994.

The game urges players to look out for people who leave Internet cafes quickly after posting "impure" articles, or protesters who spread groundless rumours or incite violence at anti-US and anti-government rallies.

Other suspects include those who photograph sensitive military and industrial facilities, people who cover their mouth with their hand when they talk, and those who bring sticks to street demonstrations.

The game, however, has provoked ridicule among some Korean bloggers:

I never met a spy before as far as I know, but I don't think they will be waving 'I love Kim Il-Sung' signs or carrying walkie-talkies and pro-North Korean documents and books in public parks.

The National Institute on Media and the Family, which seems to have adopted video game addiction as its primary game-related issue of late, recently used its Twitter account to point to a Frontline video report on gaming in South Koria. 

Part of the report examines the struggle of an adolescent boy to balance his game play with the other facets of his life and looks at the government-run anti-game addiction camp he attends.

Click here for the video.

The Korean government will invest 80 billion won (US$63.52 million) to support the country's growing serious games business, reports Korea IT Times.

If successful, Korea will expand its serious games market by a factor of six by 2012. Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Yu In-chon commented:

The functional game market is at an early stage, but the market is an emerging blue ocean. The government is going to give support to prompt private investment in that field.

Mervyn Levin of the U.K.'s Serious Games Institute reports on a 2008 visit to Seoul where he observed some of the Korean serious game projects in development:

An interesting Korean Serious Games project was presented by T3 Entertainment on anti-bullying, a subject of obvious relevance to the UK. The title was "Online 'Star Stone' Development for Improvement of Personal Relations".

South Korean University research was also presented demonstrating evidence of the relationship between on-line games and the development of leadership skills in the workplace...

Via: gamesindustry.biz

In what could be viewed as a real-world version of a business tycoon game, the video game foreign trade wars appear to be heating up.

Earlier this month came word that Nintendo was jacking up the price of the Wii in the U.K. due to the weakness of the British pound vis-a-vis the yen.

Last week GamePolitics cited a report that China was using protectionist tactics by blocking entry of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft in order to promote home-grown MMORPGs.

Now, via Kotaku, comes word that Sony has stopped shipping PlayStation 3s to South Korea.

Thanks to the depreciation of South Korea's won versus the stronger yen, it seems that Japanese tourists have been picking up PS3s on the cheap and toting them home from Korean trips. A Sony employee told Chosun Online:

We are troubled by 'reverse-importing', which is when products exported into South Korea are flown back into Japan," said a Sony employee.

Nintendo has pointed the piracy finger at several nations in a press release issued today.

China, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Spain and Paraguay all come in for a mention as countries where "piracy is rampant," according to Nintendo.

The maker of the Wii and DS systems also appealed to the U.S. Trade Representative to help combat piracy, especially the type accomplished through circumvention devices such as game copiers and mod chips.

Interestingly, Canada, which was recently singled out by the ESA over its relaxed posture toward mod chips, does not come in for a mention by Nintendo.

Here are some snippets of Nintendo's concerns about the offending nations:

China continues to be the hub of production for counterfeit Nintendo video game products. The number of online shopping sites in China selling infringing Nintendo products is increasing...  Internet piracy in Korea continues to increase, as does the availability of devices that get around product security and allow for the play of illegal Nintendo software...

Federal anti-piracy actions are not reducing piracy in Brazil, and local enforcement efforts are weak. Efforts to prosecute for piracy are virtually nonexistent. Customs and border control agents failed to seize a single shipment of Nintendo video game products in Brazil in 2008...

Anti-piracy actions by the Mexican government in 2008 were wholly inadequate... The availability of game-copying devices in Spain is alarming. Internet sites offering game-copying devices and illegal Nintendo software are widespread... Corruption continues to hamper anti-piracy efforts [in Paraguay]...

Lee Myung-bak (left), President of South Korea, wonders why his nation can't build video game hardware to compete with Nintendo. During a visit to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy this week, Lee said:

A lot of our elementary school children have Nintendo game machines. Why can't our companies develop products like that?

Lee's comment sparked derision from Korean game industry types, reports the Korea Times. Park Sang-hoon, an exec with GamePark, maker of the Linux-based GP2X handheld, said:

The lack of [game] content is evident, as we don't have many companies here with the personnel and financial capability to develop games, and the open-source model is our best bet for the short term.

It would be great if the software industry here was healthy enough to produce a lot of games, which would drive up the sales of handheld consoles and introduce more products onto the market. However, as a latecomer, we have the difficulty of proving our products first and securing third parties later.

An unnamed mobile games developer added:

Talking about Nintendo is out of touch, when you consider that the local software market is virtually on life-support. Piracy and lack of quality personnel has killed the vibrancy of the Korean software market, and I wonder whether the government has ever been serious about fostering the country's software industry. It's telling that most of the computers at government agencies rely on pirated software.

Another exec also slammed Lee's government:

You don't have the right to be daydreaming about Nintendo, when Korean online game firms, which are actually doing well overseas, feel they could do better if the government wasn't biting at their ankles.

A South Korean academic's campaign to encourage friendly online communications has spread to China.

Writing for China Daily, Professor Min Byoung-chul of Korea's Chung Ang University describes some of the issues which led him to create the Sunfull Movement in May of 2007. Sunfull translates to "good replies."

Min ranks violent video games among the causes of negative online behavior and asserts that adolescents who have been exposed to violence are the "main culprits of negative comments":

With one of the world's lowest birth rates, there are more one child families in S.Korea than before, and children are becoming incapable of communicating with others.

 

The development of the gaming industry has created an addiction for these lonely children. Most games focus on stimulating plots like violence and murder rather than on educational methods for their humanity. Therefore, teenage gamers became familiar with instant killing in these games. Some of them confuse the real world with violent games and this confusion leads to replicating violent actions and criminal behavior in the real world.

 

In this regard, adolescents who have accessed obscenity and violence on the web easily become offensive and thoughtless rather than considerate to the people they encounter in the Internet. They are the main culprits of negative comments.

This phenomenon is in line with the rise of virtual violence, which includes mobile phone bullying and strange murders without motives.