Is Gaming a Disease? Korea's Seven-Year Fight Over One Medical Code

Imagine a government committee that has met for six years and still cannot answer a yes-or-no question. In Korea, that committee exists, and the question is simple to ask: is playing too many games a disease?

The answer matters more here than almost anywhere else. Korea is the world's fourth-biggest games market and the home of the PC bang, and games are the country's largest content export. Yet since May 2019, when the World Health Organization added "gaming disorder" (code 6C51) to the eleventh edition of its International Classification of Diseases, Korea has been stuck on whether to copy that code into its own disease list. In September 2025, the national statistics office confirmed the decision would not come that year. The new Korean classification it would go into is not due to take effect until 2031.

Here is how one line in a medical catalogue turned into the longest-running fight in Korean games.

What the WHO actually decided

The WHO's World Health Assembly adopted ICD-11 in 2019, and it took effect worldwide in January 2022. Gaming disorder sits in it under the heading of disorders due to addictive behaviours. The definition is narrower than many people assume. To qualify, a person has to show three things for at least 12 months: impaired control over gaming, gaming taking priority over other interests and daily life, and carrying on despite clear harm.

That is a high bar. It is not "plays a lot" or "stays up late on a weekend". But the label still carries weight, because once a condition has a code, it can be counted, studied, treated and billed. Supporters in psychiatry say that is exactly the point: people who are genuinely struggling deserve recognised treatment. Critics say a code invites stigma, and that the science behind it is thinner than the WHO admits.

Korea's slow-motion decision

Korea keeps its own version of the international list, the Korean Standard Classification of Diseases (KCD), which the statistics office revises roughly every five years. Adopting ICD-11 means rewriting the KCD, and that is where gaming disorder has been stuck.

In July 2019, the government set up a public-private consultative body under the Office for Government Policy Coordination, the arm of the Prime Minister's office that settles fights between ministries. It brought together the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, medical experts, the games industry and player groups. The body has no legal power; it can only recommend by consensus.

Consensus never came. The two ministries sit on opposite sides: health officials and many psychiatrists want early adoption so that treatment systems can be built, while the culture ministry, the industry and player groups oppose it. In December 2019 the body agreed on three joint studies to start in 2020, and all three were finished by July 2022. A national fact-finding survey and final research planned for 2024 and 2025 then slipped too.

The statistics office had hoped to finish a draft of the next KCD by October 2025, the draft that would bring ICD-11 into Korean law. In September 2025, material released by lawmaker Cho Seung-rae showed the office now expected to push that work into 2026, saying the timing would depend on the consultative body and on whether hospitals were ready. The ICD-11-based classification is scheduled to take effect in 2031.

What the research found

Both sides cite the same studies, and both find comfort in them.

The first of the three government studies examined the evidence behind the WHO's decision. A team led by Ahn Woo-young of Seoul National University reviewed 44 papers the WHO was likely to have relied on. Many brain-imaging studies used samples of 10 to 40 people. Of seven papers on whether problem gaming persists over time, only five tracked actual gamers, and four of those showed the effect weakening. The researchers called the overall results inconsistent.

The third study modelled the economic ripple. It estimated that a disease code could shrink the games industry by about 20% in the first year and 24% in the second, with a total production loss of about ₩5.6 trillion and about 36,000 jobs lost. An earlier study for the Korea Internet Corporations Association, released in May 2020, reached a similar scale: around ₩5.2 trillion in losses and about 34,000 lost job opportunities.

Then came the longest piece of evidence. In May 2025, the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) published a five-year panel study from 2020 to 2024 that followed 924 children and teenagers and 701 adults, keeping more than 90% of them in the panel. It found no cases that met the WHO's diagnostic criteria and no consistent causal link between gaming and problem behaviour. KOCCA's conclusion was blunt: there is not enough scientific basis to classify gaming straight away as a disease.

Doctors who favour the code point to a different reality: the patients they already see in clinics. That gap, between population studies that find almost no one meeting the definition and clinicians who treat real people, is the heart of the dispute.

Why the industry fears a label

Korea's games companies have a specific memory that explains their alarm. From 2011 to 2021, the country ran a "shutdown law" that blocked under-16s from online games after midnight. It was meant to protect teenagers, did little measurable good, and became shorthand for regulation that treats players as a problem to be managed. We tell that story in our history of the Cinderella law.

There was also the period, still raw in the industry, when government campaigns grouped games with alcohol, gambling and drugs as one of the "four major addictions". Industry figures fear that a disease code would bring back that framing, followed by levies, warning labels and new restrictions. > Fun fact: The disease-code fight has already reached local government. Seongnam, the city that contains the Pangyo tech cluster where many Korean game companies are based, includes internet gaming among the addiction categories in its local support programmes.

One industry official told Korean reporters that the aim was for Korea "not to become a country that exports disease", a pointed phrase in a country where games are the biggest content export.

A president takes sides

The politics shifted in 2025. During the confirmation process in July 2025, culture minister nominee Choi Hwi-young called the idea of listing gaming disorder something that should "absolutely" not happen.

Then, on October 15, 2025, President Lee Jae-myung visited Krafton's PUBG Seongsu complex in Seoul for a meeting with games executives, the first time a sitting Korean president had attended a games industry meeting. He told them that games are not an addictive substance, criticised the old "four addictions" framing and argued that it had helped China overtake Korea. At the National Assembly's audit that autumn, Cho Seung-rae proposed reopening the question only after social consensus, and the head of the newly renamed National Data Agency responded positively. The issue was separated from the current classification revision.

That does not end the matter. The president's words are not law, the health ministry has not changed its view, and the 2031 deadline gives both camps years to lobby. But for now, the momentum is with the people who say no.

By the numbers

• 2019: WHO adds gaming disorder (6C51) to ICD-11
• January 2022: ICD-11 takes effect worldwide
• 6+ years: time Korea's consultative body has spent without agreement
• 44: papers reviewed by the government's evidence study
• 924 / 701: children and adults followed in KOCCA's five-year panel, with no cases meeting WHO criteria
• ₩5.6 trillion: estimated production loss in one government-commissioned model
• 2031: when the ICD-11-based Korean classification is scheduled to take effect

What to watch

The next real moment comes when the statistics office, now the National Data Agency, publishes its draft of the next Korean classification. If gaming disorder is left out, the code is effectively shelved until the 2030s. If it is included, expect a fight in the National Assembly.

WGC's take: Korea's long delay is frustrating, but it is not pure dithering. The country has produced more research on this question than almost anyone, and the best of it suggests very few players meet the clinical definition. The sensible path is to keep funding treatment for people who need it while refusing a label that would brand millions who do not. Keep an eye on the culture ministry's next game industry plan and on any move by the health ministry to restart the consultative body.