South Korean Students Missing

Just in time for vacation, too.

Today marks the official release of the long-awaited Star Craft II computer game. No one’s actually gone missing or is lost, but my money says that many hogwans will be short a few students over the next few days. To get an idea of how big the original Starcraft is and therefore some idea of the magnitude of this release consider this: The first release sold somewhere around 11,000,000 copies and a whopping 45% of them were sold in Korea. Before Starcraft I there were 100 internet cafes, or PC Bangs as they’re known here. Now there are 22,000 of them dotted throughout the country. An industry launched on the back of a game.

Of course simply because today is the official release, doesn’t mean that Koreans haven’t been playing the game fiercely already. South Korea is the undisputed king of pirated movies and games (which is why it’s exceedingly difficult to find a DVD store in this land – people just download what they want.) The bittorrent sites are already crammed with copies of this game, some of which have been up for nearly two weeks.

If your students begin to come in with just a touch more glaze in their eyes than usual, you’ll know the reason.