Gamers rake in money in a hot Korean mart

Korea's computer game market grew to the eighth-largest in the world last year, a nonprofit game-promoting agency said yesterday. The game market was worth 4.3 trillion won ($4.1 billion) in 2004, claiming 3.8 percent of the world market, according to the Korea Game Development and Promotion Institute. The advance of the game industry was attributed to the meteoric rise of online and cell phone-based games, which were the No. 1 and No. 2 types in the world, the agency said. Korea's online games claimed 31 percent of the global market while its mobile games accounted for 13 percent of the worldwide total. In contrast, the market share of its arcade games was 2.7 percent, followed by 2.3 percent for PC games and 1 percent for video games. “The local market is forecast to rise 13 percent to 4.89 trillion won this year,” said Hong Yu-jin, an official at the institute.