When Sang-Hyeok Lee, who is well known as Faker, who’s the legendary League of Legend pro-gamer over 10 or more years, was asked this question “Why do you think that South Koreans are so good at e-sports or gaming?” on an interview, his answer was “well, because there are numerous e-sports training camp all around South Korea for teenagers, which we call ‘PC Bang’”.
PC Bang (피시방), or more formally called internet cafe, in South Korea indeed shares unique culture comparing to other country. When we do animation&gaming tour for those oversea tourists visiting South Korea, most or all of the English Speakers were amazed by South Korea’s internet cafe culture. They said in the States, people just tend to use their own PCs for gaming, so they wouldn’t come to an internet cafe for entertainments.
And here, is the official internet cafe which made partnership with T1, the LOL team with Faker.
Korean people sometimes jokes around, saying that Korea’s internet cafe is actually a restaurant, instead of a place to use PCs. Their food provided are indeed so good, that there’re people searching about “internet cafe ramen recipe(피시방 라면)”.
With that being said, this was the very first thing on the screen when we sat down.
The food would be immediately cooked and being brought by the employees, so we could just participate in playing our own games.
I suppose i would have proper meal for myself so that i could better concentrate on my gaming afterwards…..
There’s a lot of theory among us discussing about the reason why the internet cafe’s food has developed over the years despite the fact that they are an entertainment place instead of food, the most convincing one is that as in South Korea, internet cafes are more for teenagers, as they rush in in groups after school, so being worried about the fact that the kids wouldn’t properly have meals due to the fact that they are obsessed with gaming with their friends, so under the purpose of at least having the kids to have food, so the food industries of Korean internet cafe has grew rapidly.
Most people come here for online PVP games such as LOL, Overwatch or Valorant, but here I am for steam games, like Persona 5 Royal. It was rather hard to understand for those tourists on our tour when they saw people simply watching Netflix at internet cafe instead of their place, but we indeed do.
And these internet cafes are mostly 24 hours opening, which mean you could stay the whole night too. Might be an unique experience for those who visits South Korea, as they could both enjoy the gaming culture and Korean food?
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