cybercafe

it's 2:10 p.m. on Monday afternoon in Seoul. after a delicious meal of yuk-gae-jang (spicy beef soup), i'm now in a cybercafe known in Korea as a PC bahng; this translates literally to "PC room".

this brings me to another point: Koreans are more PC-dependent than Americans, meaning there is little in the way of Apples here. i was at a coffeeshop last night wherein i saw a young Korean woman with a MacBook, but it's an unusual sight indeed.

PC bahngs are everywhere - even more numerous i believe than no-rae bahngs ("singing rooms"; or in Americanese, private karaoke rooms). what you'll typically find in these cafes are: blackened windows, black lights, decently large flat screened monitors, high speed internet connections, 80% males ages 14-30 playing online computer games, and the random female gamer or plain email/internet user. each station has its own set of speakers, so you can imagine that the place is LOUD with "bang! bang! kapoom!!"

gaming addiction is a problem here in Korea. however, this is among the more innocuous addictions facing Koreans these days. there are also not-so-hidden addictions associated with alcohol, gambling and sex. so pervasive are Korean addictions that they are, in many ways, incorporated into the culture here. the sex trade is hardly hidden. blatent drunkenness hardly raises an eyebrow anymore either.

at least in public, the women in Seoul seem surprisingly tolerant of the sex-, alcohol-, gambling- and gaming-oriented culture, mostly indulged by Seoul's men. most women respond to these topics with a shrug and a "hal-su-up-ji-mo" ("what can one do?"). there seems to be a mutual understanding that this culture is about working hard and "playing" hard.

i'll have to come back to Korea's work culture, but something i read this morning in the Lonely Planet Korea: within the top 30 world economies, Koreans take first place for number of hours worked per year.