Korean PC games are racist.

With PC gaming tournaments being broadcasted on TV at every hour and a PC gaming room on every block, it's hard to not notice how huge e-gaming is here in Korea. The Korean government is currently trying to curb gaming addiction, since it's such a widespread problem. Luckily, I won't have to deal with being addicted SINCE THEY WON'T LET ME PLAY BECAUSE I'M NOT KOREAN. This is an issue I ran into while trying to play Dragon Ball Online last week. I just keep ending up at an error screen like this one:

Basically, to make an account, you need the Korean equivalent to a social security number, which I assume is for age verification purposes. That's not the problem though, since I have one of these since I'm a registered foreigner. The problem is that it requires you to enter your name in Hangul, which leads to a different error then the one above where it tells me that my name doesn't match my number.

I wouldn't really mind this if it was only for Dragon Ball Online, but it's impossible for a foreigner to play over half the PC games in Korea. This is because one company runs the services for a number of games. For example, to play Dragon Ball Online, I'm not having the problem making a Dragon Ball account, but with NetMarble. So since I can't make a NetMarble account, I'm unable to play all the games they offer, including the popular first-person shooter Sudden Attack. It's also really weird that in Korea, Counter-Strike (you're a straight n00b if you don't know about this shit) is run by Nexon, the company that produced Maplestory. It basically leaves only games that run off of a CD available for foreigners in Korea, like Starcraft, but most of these are readily available in America anyway.

It's not like I really want to play games that much, and I could always get someone I know to make an account for me using their information, but this shit blows. Every time I walk through the PC bang, I see some crazy ass shit going on someone's screen and it sucks to know that they don't want me playing it.