Video games surfing the Korean Wave

Right into Vietnam, in fact, as one reporter from free daily The Focus discovered. A boatload of Korean stars, films, and soap operas have hitched their ride on the Korean Wave before, and some have recently said it to be running out of steam. Video games may not be so obviously Korean as films like The King and the Clown so perhaps they’re actually running on their own steam rather than just along for the ride.

You may be interested to know the astoundingly cheap hourly rate for internet cafes in Vietnam — just about 300 won an hour, while in Korea we pay over 1,000.

Since the late 1990s in Vietnam when the beginning of the broadcasting of Korean dramas pulled along the Korean Wave, Korean games are following right behind now, causing young Vietnamese to get hooked on them.

Right now at least 10 online Korean games are offering service in Vietnam including ‘Audition’, ‘Mu Online’, ‘Ragnarok’, ‘Granado Espada’, and ‘Silk Road Online’. Among them, the T3 Entertainment-developed and Yedang Online-serviced online dance game Audition has recorded 3.2 million members and 110,000 joiners as it leads the Wave.

In Ho Chi Minh City’s top internet cafe, 22-year old female college student Vu Thi Hue said, “My friends and I live our lives all wrapped up in the music and dance game Audition,” adding that the praise Korean games receive is far from frugal.

Together with Audition, Webgen’s massively multiplayer online game “Mu Online” has received the same tremendous reaction.

In another internet cafe 20-year old male college student Nguyen Phuc Nam said “There are 10 fun games with service in Ho Chi Minh City but to me the best is Mu Online”, adding “on the weekend I play Mu Online all day.”

In May of 2005 Webgen struck a deal with Vietnamese publisher FPT to offer ‘Mu Online’.

In September the same year, a rushed beta release of “Mu Online” attracted 500,000 subscribers.

Vietnam’s internet population is 7.5 million, and if its 800,000 online gamers are taken into account it makes for an astounding total.

Park Jae-woo, director of overseas operations for Yedang Online, said “If the 140,000 subscribers to Vietnam’s most popular online roleplaying game are considered, the upward trend in Audition’s popularity is amazing”, and that “Vietnamese gamers used to do just roleplaying games, but now they’re hunting for casual games.”

Following that he added, “As there is deep interest about Korea’s other casual games, from now on the commercial prospects for the market appear bright.”