{"id":75741,"date":"2025-12-25T09:05:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T00:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/dec\/25\/south-korea-video-game-powerhouse"},"modified":"2025-12-25T09:05:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T00:05:24","slug":"no-pain-no-game-how-south-korea-turned-itself-into-a-gaming-powerhouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=75741","title":{"rendered":"No pain, no game: how South Korea turned itself into a gaming powerhouse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Gaming was once compared to drugs, gambling and alcohol in South Korea. Now its gaming academies offer a chance to earn a six-figure salary \u2013 if you make the grade <\/p>\n<p>Son Si-woo remembers the moment his mother turned off his computer. He was midway through an interview to become a professional gamer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe said when I played computer games, my personality got worse, that I was addicted to games,\u201d the 27-year-old recalls.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/dec\/25\/south-korea-video-game-powerhouse\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gaming was once compared to drugs, gambling and alcohol in South Korea. Now its gaming academies offer a chance to earn a six-figure salary \u2013 if you make the grade Son Si-woo remembers the moment his mother turned off his computer. He was midway throug&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2929,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,1684,222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-games","category-south-korea"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2929"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75742,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75741\/revisions\/75742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}