South Korean Camp Frees Internet Addicts

The "world's most wired nation" now uses fresh air and outdoor activities to snap Internet fiends out of their crippling cyberspace addictions.

If there’s a way to enjoy it, there’s a way to become an addict, and if there’s a way to become an addict, there’s a way to break out. It should really come as no surprise, then, that South Koreans have recently begun to tackle their country’s rising Internet addiction with a new approach: camp.

It’s called the Jump Up Internet Rescue School. According to the New York Times, the South Korean government has already built 140 Internet-addiction counseling centers in the country and even invented a scale for measuring the addiction, but the Jump Up Internet Rescue School is a first. Campers there are cut off from the Internet experience they’ve come to rely on and given activities like obstacle courses, horseback riding and pottery instead. The goal is getting them to realize there’s a real world outside the Worldwide Web.

The camp is too new to have much of a track record, but it is already soaring in popularity, and administrators will soon try to double its capacity to accommodate. Since the camp is funded by the South Korean government, parents are able to send their children at no cost.

South Koreans have more Internet availability than any other country on Earth, and a corresponding trouble with Internet addiction. One child psychiatrist estimates 30 percent of the country’s population under 18 years old is at risk for addiction.