Cinderella law - no gaming after 12

With the release of Blizzard's new title, the long anticipated Diablo III, our attention goes to one of the largest gaming community.

South Korea can boast itself with one of the richest and most prolific online gaming culture in the world. A study conducted in 2010 by the National Information Society Agency revealed that 8% of South Koreans between the age of 9 and 39 suffer from Internet addiction ,the addiction rate being higher for those between 9 and 12.

This phenomenon reminding of the famous Hikikomori generation of Japan , has come into the attention of the Korean government who last year in November came with a law forbidding children under the age of 16 to play video games after midnight. This is to be carried out by restricting their access to certain gaming servers.

The restriction however is not in effect for mobile games or games that can be found on certain social websites like facebook.

The law went into effect since 20 November and now, in South Korea console services like PlayStation Network and Xbox Live are not allowing kids under 16 to register for game accounts or to login between the hours 12 and 6 am.

Apart from that , the Korean government has been found to be very active in the struggle to prevent internet and gaming addiction for youngsters by holding numerous workshops and offering counseling for students with such problems.


As expected, the Internet community didn't greet this law very well. Blogs and forums have attacked the initiative calling it "idiotic","waste of time and money" and identifying it as discriminating.

Same should have been expected by the Korea Association of Game Industry which has stated that this law enforces " excessive prohibition" and prepared a legal retaliation.


Cultural solidarity organization MoonHwaYunDae also appealed to the Constitutional Court trying , without success to stop this law .

Parents stood pretty much on the same side arguing that they should have the right to educate their children as they see fit and have the last word about what time they want to allow their kid to play.


Lawyer Lee Byung-chan representing the parents in this matter stated that the "cinderella law " violates the right to happiness and discriminates gaming as a leisure activity against other such as television.

In my opinion this law is indeed a peculiar case, the one you might be expecting to see in North Korea than in South Korea, but let us analyze the situation a little. The law blocks the access of children under the age of 16 on online gaming servers after midnight. It is not prohibitive as it is mostly restrictive but why is such a restriction needed?
I'm 26 and I used to play video games myself,( even though online games weren't as much as a thing when I was a kid as they are now)  and I still play them know, as an young adult. I had my share of "gaming nights" with my buddies, but that happened mostly when I was in high school and the rebellious part kicked in. What I don't remember is my parents coming to my room at 3 in the morning and finding me glued to the screen while playing Nintendo. If I did that , not only I would have got into serious problems , but I'd also be way to tired to wake up at 7 AM and go to school.

As a grown man, fully independent and supporting myself I still won't pull an gaming all-niter when I have to be at work in the morning because I learned to be responsible at home.  I do agree, it's the parent's own business at what time he decides it's ok for his kid to be playing, but I hardly imagine a parent having absolutely no problem with his under 16 offspring being online , playing until morning especially if he has to be up for school in a few hours.

Internet addiction is a real thing. Gaming addiction is a real thing and I could make a whole blogs about cases all over the world where gaming addiction lead to seclusion , unsocial behavior, and in some extreme cases real violence and murder. I'm not saying games are bad but when a kid gets so involved in an virtual environment so much that it has negative effects on his real life, maybe his parents should be there to teach him about being responsible in managing his time. Maybe that is why such a law is needed , because the  ones that should prevent this problem from happening are not doing their job.