Internet cafes in Seoul shunned as hotbed of COVID-19

(Yonhap via The Korea Herald)

SEOUL — Internet cafes, where patrons mostly play multiplayer computer games for an hourly fee, are getting the blame for spreading the novel coronavirus as students have nowhere else to go amid extended school closures.

Seoul City has advised owners of internet cafes and karaoke establishments to suspend business to keep COVID-19 from spreading, considering that they are enclosed spaces where people tend to stay for long hours.

Four people who used the same internet cafe in Seoul’s Dongdaemun-gu tested positive for COVID-19, raising alarm about the gaming centers.

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said the city government was also considering an administrative order to ban internet cafes, karaoke establishments and clubs from doing business should the situation get worse.

“Due to the extended school closures and cancellation of classes at hagwon (private cram schools), students are going to karaokes and (internet cafes) as they have nowhere else to go. Clubs are also places where close contact is likely,” Park said Wednesday in an online briefing.

“The current situation requires special management. The city is recommending suspension of business, and we’re considering an administrative order to prohibit business depending on the situation.”

Culture Minister Park Yang-woo has asked people to sit far apart from each other at internet cafes, and to wear masks and use hand sanitizer.

Use of internet cafes declined after the COVID-19 outbreak started, but inched up in March as schools and hagwon remained closed.

According to a statistics service run by N Media Platform, a subsidiary of online game company Nexon, people nationwide spent 26.9 million hours in internet cafes in the first week of March (March 2-8), up 1.6 percent from the previous week.

The use of internet cafes went down drastically after the government raised its infectious disease alert level to “serious” on Feb. 23 and advised the public to refrain from going to internet cafes.

Then it began to pick up last weekend, N Media Platform said Thursday.

March is normally a slow season for internet cafes as it is when the spring semester starts, according to people in the game industry.

Concerns about infection clusters have grown stronger since nine people connected via a church and an internet cafe in Dongdaemun-gu tested positive for the coronavirus.

Since a 35-year-old preacher at the church in Dongdaemun-gu was diagnosed March 4, five people who are believed to have had contact with him have also tested positive.

One of them, the ninth patient in Dongdaemun-gu, went to the internet cafe March 1 around 9 p.m.

Three other people who used the same internet cafe have since been confirmed positive.