Finally, Korean Governement are to Illegalize RMT.

November 23rd, 2006 Jun Sok Huhh

According to an article of a Korean newspaper, if a recent proposed bill named “Amendment for Game Industry Promoting Law” be through the National Assembly, all kinds of mediating businesses between in-game money and real money could be punished.

The amendment adds the former original bill to a clause for prohibiting acts of exchanging in-game money to real money. This tells that anyone cannot do her business for ‘exchanging’ or ‘mediating’ exchanges of, and 'repurchasing' outcomes of games by real money. The 'outcomes' mentioned include in-game money, all kinds of in-game points, but in-game items are not among these.

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IGE, ready to sweep Korean RMT market?

September 4th, 2006 Jun Sok Huhh

About a month ago, IGE bought a Korean RMT mediator, Itemmania. It is not the biggest player but its share in RMT transaction is considerable, around 35%. Hard to believe fact was the price of the company, 4.7B KRW(1000KRW is around 1 USD). It was really under-valued price considering the size of the Korean RMT market. Many suspected that there might be another secretive option in the contract.

Today, some newspapers reported that the biggest player in the market, Itembay, was under negotiation for selling itself to IGE. The selling price is estimated to be between 80B and 90B KRW. If this contract be done, IGE would acutally monopolize the RMT mediation in Korea.

According to an unnamed source, Itembay has tried hard to go public in Korean stock market, but only to fail. The failure was supposed to come from the nature of its business, RMT. Virtual item trading/mediation is not totally legitimate in Korea. Many company are doing their business around RMT-related area, but nothing has been confirmed as perfectly legal in Korea.

If there be another big swing on the issue, I'll post about it, a.s.a.p.

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Here Comes the Taxman!

July 11th, 2006 Jun Sok Huhh

I saw a strikingly shocking article(in Korean) at a newspaper about tax agency’s plan on RMT markets in Korea. Recently, many articles on Korean game markets has been delivered in English, but this one not yet.

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A man concerned in Seoul Tax Service said that his office has done its investigation about the outlook of RMT in many Korean online games. According to him, “this is not tax audits, but just the investigation to gather relating data.” Also, he commented that whether taxation on RMT or not “will be determined at the level of main office(National Tax Service) after hearing many experts’ opinion.”

These attempts might be to get a decisive step for taxation upon many kinds of RMT, also would be another effective measure to eradicate illegal RMT activities from Korean online game scene.
Since RMT has been on grey area between the legal and the illegal, there is few punishment or regulation on RMT activities. One specialist of taxation said, “For this is a long arranged case, there would be some special actions on RMT markets in cooperation with Nation Prosecutors’ Office.”

Online game industries are welcoming the unvailed plan of NTS. They have been strongly against RMT by their business rules, but also have been blamed for causing many social problems. They expected that if not only individual dealer but RMT sweatshops would be pushed by this measure, RMT and many anti-social crimes around it could naturally shrinks.

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Personally, I'm really embarassed by this news. I'll post my own comment on this news.

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Recharge Yourself!

May 24th, 2006 Jun Sok Huhh

Let's see this commercial of a Korean sports drink for national TV networks! This is living proof on the powerful cultural code that online games have in this country. The code that the commercial used would be very specific to the game itself. This commercial shows that the wide popularity of the game covers all of weakness for its narrow specificity as the TV-networks commericial.

If you are not familiar with the game that appeared in the commercial, visit this site. The game, Kart Rider, is one of most popular games in south Korea. The game is comparable to the games like StarCraft, Lineage.

To see the clip, click this youtube link

Following is translation of the Korean language text in the commercial.

All of Youth,
It is time for taking "Enerzen."
While your competitors are sleeping,
You, brave new worker(!), should recharge your energy for the win.

Could you take a hidden hint of the commercial? See the place where the youth are enjoying. It is so-called 'PC-bang' that has been unique part for Korean gaming. I think PC-bang is really different from Internet Cafe while those two appear to be similar. PC bang has evolved from a simple convenient place for accessing internet to the common playground for online game enthusiasts. The commercial has this kind of sense for PC-bang.

At the end of commercial, the players transform themselves into the characters of the Kart Rider. Wow!

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Price Watch for Item Trading

May 2nd, 2006 Jun Sok Huhh

Recently, I've found an interesting site for item trading. As you know, there has been several major intermediaries for RMT in Korea. If you had experienced transactions, you might have been curious about price differentials among these mediators.

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