South Korea Needs Exercise?

A front page story in today's New York Times described a boot camp in South Korea that has been established to help the country's youth get some other forms of physical exercise besides tapping on a computer keyboard all day. According to the Times,

"compulsive Internet use...may be a particularly acute problem in South Korea because of the country's universal Internet access. It has becomes a national issue [there] in recent years, as users started dropping dead from exhaustion after playing online games for days on end."

One teen, whose name will remain anonymous on this blog (not that you'll ever run into the kid, since he's probably holed up in his room), spends 17 hours online a day. Shameful and sad indeed.

Now don't get me wrong. I enjoy surfing the web as much as the next guy. Hence the blog. But 17 hours a day on the computer is excessive in any situation. So the problem has gotten so bad that a bootcamp has been put together to give these kids a chance to breathe some fresh air, interact with other human beings, and get some much needed exercise. Good for them. But given this trailer from the 2006 South Korean film, The Host, I think the Koreans are getting enough exercise already...




It's a great film, too. Worth trying to find on NetFlix.

To read the Times article, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/technology/18rehab.html?ref=world