Motels becoming haven for teens playing PC games at night

These screenshots from Good Choice advertise motels with high-performance computers installed with League of Legends and Battlegrounds. Photos from Good Choice's website

Unmanned lodges enable teens to engage in illicit activity without legal shackle

By Ko Dong-hwan

An increasing number of teenagers in Korea are heading to unstaffed motels at night to use the venues to play computer games, raising concerns about the facilities' lack of monitoring against underage visitors.

The issue has stoked further a more deeply troubling side effect of the facilities that they are creating a space for teenagers to engage in the illegal consumption of alcohol, prostitution and sex crimes.

The lodges welcome visitors with kiosks at their fronts instead of concierge staff. The machines offer rooms to anyone who pays in advance, regardless of age. The facilities, because of the unmonitored check-in system and lax screening regarding customer age, are becoming more popular option for teenagers who are restricted from using PC rooms after 10 p.m. under the country's Youth Protection Act.

These so-called “PC-tels” ― a compound of PC and motel ― aren't difficult to locate. One can easily find a list of PC-tels at popular online lodge searching brands using websites or smartphone apps like Good Choice or Yanolja. Users, once agreeing to provide their real-time location information through those search engines, can conveniently browse a list of lodges offering high-performing computers with pre-installed popular games ― like League of Legends or Battlegrounds ― in their vicinity.

Various online “review blogs” created by those who have visited PC-tels provide even more visually appealing information to those interested in using the facilities. Either sponsored by a third-party promotor of such facilities or unsponsored, the bloggers post photos and description of their experiences at the facility. Many of the bloggers express satisfaction with the facility's clean environment, convenient amenities and how flawlessly computers performed when playing games.

An unmanned motel in Seoul advertises free high-end wine, two cup noodles and two cookies to all-night customers in 2018. Korea Times file

The country's laws don't ban lodging businesses from setting up computers at their rooms. However, boundaries are blurred when facilitating underage customers playing of R-rated games on their premises.

What's being urgently demanded of the lodge operators is intensifying their monitoring against visits by teenagers. Not all the unmanned motels' operators neglect to do so, as they say they have blocked underage visitors' attempts to enter through closed-circuit TV surveillance. But the operators say it's not easy to discern whether visitors are underage or not when they are all wearing face masks as required at public indoor spaces under the country's disease control measures against COVID-19.

“PC rooms can prevent teenagers from using rated-R games,” according to the country's state-run Game Rating and Administration Committee. PC rooms operators are required to let teenagers use computers reserved for underage users, which automatically shut down at 10 p.m. When teenagers attempt to play rated-R games on their computers, a pop-up message appears on-screens to both the underage clients and the cafe operators notifying of their attempt to play the games. Infringement on this regulation costs the operators millions-of-won in fines. “But at PC-tels, teenagers and other customers are often left bare to explicit content.”

Not just PC-tels but many unmanned motels are increasingly attracting teenagers because they can easily use the facilities. In Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, in January this year, 10 female students took one of their fellow students to a local unmanned motel and assaulted her. They even filmed the scene and shared it online. At another unmanned motel in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province in December last year, five teenagers got drunk and wrought havoc outside their room. A 20-something ski instructor in December last year took an elementary school girl to another unmanned motel and asked her to have sex with him. Upon her rejection, he raped the girl then later lied to police they had an agreement to have sex.

“Unmanned motels basically monitor underage visitors by checking via their security cameras whether they appear to be teenagers or not,” said a police officer based in Seoul. The operators are legally required to block entry by teenagers in combined groups of opposite sexes to prevent them from sharing a room. As the method is apparently failing, “more stringent measures are required for the operators to more effectively monitor underage customers from using the facilities for ill-motivated purposes,” according to the officer.