Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the PC Room air.

The time has come, my friends, to take you on a journey. A journey to a place patronized by 99.99% of the young male Korean population. This is a place found on every street corner in every self-respecting, over-crowded city in Korea: it is the PC Room.

We begin our adventure three minutes from our apartment, across the street from our favourite kimbap haunt. There were actually two to choose from, but this looked by far the nicer option. I mean, look how much money they put into that signage.

Despite the dominance of this PC Room's signs, the actual business was on the third floor - on the "Power Internet Praza!" No, that's not a spelling mistake (on my part) - this place just really means business. And with all the power references and the crazy-cool binary overlays, we were expecting something extra-special.


You can't get much more special than black lighting and gothic thrones. Well actually, as my lungs began to sputter and contract the second I walked through the wall of cigarette smoke, I thought some air ventilation might have been pretty special too.


Now, you'll have to use your imagination a bit, as we had to be a bit sneaky taking pictures of the place (we decided to forgo asking permission...I mean, they might have said "no"). But just multiply the scene above by twenty and you pretty much have the place wrapped up. And it was literally full of young men (most of them chain-smoking) playing World of War Craft. We walked around, too, just to see if anyone was doing something more important, like typing up a business briefing or putting the finishing touches on their thesis, but no one was. They were all pretty much controlling elves or blowing up things. That and developing some serious cancer cells.


Ahh, the snack aisle. What PC Room would be complete without the wall of ramien and other nutrient-free delights? And we tried one of the more unusual, just for a kick...

It's a cheese cookie! We tried it, and it yes, it really is a cheese cookie. Imagine your average cookie with some Kraft cheese powder mixed in. Kraft should really get on this train. Toot toot!

Ramien, not the cheese cookie, is the real staple here though. Through our extensive research interviewing an appropriate cross-section of young Korean males, we've discovered that the youth spend countless hours in these rooms living off cup-o'-ramien. Okay, we only really talked to one guy. But he spends a lot of time in PC Rooms and not much time doing anything else, so we thought he was fairly reliable.

It's sad really. The number of young men that waste their lives in places like this one is staggering. With every slurp of ramien, this place sucks the souls and ambitions of countless young Koreans, who if it weren't for these great lands of electronic escape, might do something with their lives. It reminds me of Thomas Gray's musings in "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", and with my own version of which, I leave you:

Here rests his head upon the PC Room berth,
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
And Indolence mark'd him for her own.

Until next time,
Jo