There is increasing work being done looking into the effect games have in the real world. One one level it seems like a waste of time, effort and money. The stuff of Hollywood.
Aparently not. South Korea is the most connected country in the world, and online gaming and social networks are presenting a dark side. A very dark side. Gamers, whose task it is to destroy fellow online gamers in the virtual world are finding their antics ‘bleeding’ through to the real world, sometimes unconsciously, and sometimes very deliberately.
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“They are very serious. They said ‘I’m going to kill you’, that they’d pray for me. It was a kind of curse. It was the worst day I’ve ever had.”
The spiteful comments and threats continued for 12 months. This is a mild case of a growing phenomenon Koreans call cyber violence.