By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
The government said that people trading ``excessive'' amounts of cyber money will be charged with gambling.
According to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism's proposed bill revision concerning the online game industry, those who purchase ``too much'' online game money ``habitually'' for gambling purposes will be subject to up to two years prison sentence and a 20 million won fine.
The bill will be proposed at the National Assembly in September. The move came after people buying large amounts of cyber money to buy game items became a social issue.
While online ``Go-Stop'' traditional hwatu card game, poker and others are considered leisure according to the law, there were constant reports that they are in fact de facto gambling.
Most game sites allow users to exchange up to 300,000 won's worth of cyber money a month, but there are loopholes allowing people to trade tens of millions of won to buy online game items.
Police requested the administrative government for tougher rules, ministry official Kim Kyu-hyun said. ``A game is supposed to be fun; but if it gets carried away too far, then it is gambling, and illegal,'' he said.
The ministry has not yet defined what will be considered ``habitual'' or ``excessive'' purchases of cyber money.
``We have not yet defined how much money or how often purchased would be excessive enough to be regarded as gambling,'' the official said. ``It's for the police or prosecution to decide. Moreover, what we are aiming at is to show people that they could be punished, we are not really trying to jail them,'' Kim said.
However, critics say the problem is with the brokers who encourage the illegal deals, not the players who buy them using their own money.
``While the government has never managed to identify the brokers, how are they going to get hold of the users? Moreover, why would they want to punish the buyers when the seller has more responsibility?'' an online game user said.
Some also question the feasibility since there is no fixed standard to define the offenders and the government is showing no strong willingness to set things straight.