Myth of the morning calm is a personal column, written by myMYM.com's guest writer Richard 'evan_' Armstrong. The opinion of the author does not necessarily represent the opinion of myMYM.com.

South Korea is eSport utopia. The place is sacred, untouchable and an ever present reminder of what's on the horizon. Many have tried to explain why and how the Starcraft society came about, the recent suggestion that an economic recession was the catalyst was elaborate but spectacularly wrong. The idea that South Korea is the future and the West is dragging its knuckles along the floor is equally wrong.

What are the realities of a Starcraft society? Well as you can imagine, being gamers, these are never mentioned. It's always the glitz, glamour, skill, television channels and my god have you seen the salaries? They're huge I tell you huge!

There are three main reasons why gaming in South Korea hit the 'mainstream' and none of have anything to do with glitz, glamour or money. Korea's ethnically homogeneous people, urbanised population and mainstream electronic companies are the things responsible.

Seoul is South Korea, it's a multi-coloured kaleidoscope of incandescent lights, a city built to stimulate your mind, body and soul – 24/7 and at 100mb speed. In 2015, the population is supposedly going to stabilise and more than 90% of the country will be living in cities. 2008 was an “invisible but momentous milestone” according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) because for the first time in human history more than half the population of the world, some 3.3 billion people, live in urban areas.

More than three quarters of Korea's 49,232,844 people are already classed as urban and half live in the countries six largest cities. Korea has one of the highest population densities in the world and its cities make a 17th century slave ship look spacious.

	South Korea has had an explosive growth in the energy consumption over the last few years

The countries energy consumption, as you can imagine, is ridiculous. Electricity consumption raised 14.83% to 368.6 billion kWh last year, the ninth largest in the world despite only having the 24th largest population. In the space of five years consumption has risen by nearly 100 billion kWh. Burning coal covered in oil and wrapped in a wooden box would be less wasteful than Korea.

There are upsides to city life however and according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 34.12 million people use the internet. The country has the seventh largest number of internet users in the world but when the infrastructure and population is largely built around one city, Seoul, is it really surprising internet penetration is so high? Even condoms come equipped with wireless so you can, ironically enough, be told how to add inches and lose weight only minutes before you take the plunge into whichever Asian vixen you've intoxicated.

	South Korea has the 9th highest energy consumption in the world

There are a number of fallacies however, a lot of Western countries have similarly high levels of internet use despite appalling connection speeds and services in comparison. The United Kingdom actually has more PC's than South Korea and only trails by less than 1 million internet users despite the severe “digital divide” it suffers.

Unlike Western society there's no divide in Korea, its people are ethnically homogeneous with the exception of 20,000 Chinese - and after all, someone needs to do the dishes. When your entire population comes from one gene pool, the beliefs, culture, history and way of thinking are ultimately the same. When they all live so close together the 'problem' exasperates.

If you're a Warcraft III fan you've already seen this, South Korean players visit Europe and instinctively seek out Korean restaurants. It seems strange to us but they've no concept of choice, free will or variety. Personality, achievement and self worth is obtained through work and careers. Their culture is based on shame and bovine compliance.

So much so that Korea is the very model of contemporary consumer culture and if we already moan about the headlong rush of game designers prioritising graphics over everything else; DD syndrome – big tits and no brain, following South Korea or any modern Asian culture is like given Michael Jackson the keys to a nursery. It doesn't matter if the games picked are 'good' because the principles behind them are bad.

It makes you wonder though, if Starcraft has made it why no other games? Why unlike the European or North American markets does Korea only have one eSport game. Why is there no variety or choice? Now you can begin to see the cracks in Korean culture and its people. Europe has struggled to get to the same sort of level because we're too used to choice. If you don't like Counter Strike 1.6, then you can happily play and realistically earn money through 'Source or Call of Duty 4. Anything which isn't Starcraft inevitably suffers, but because they put all their eggs in one basket they 'made it'.

The accessibility of Starcraft works both for and against gaming in general. You'd be naive to believe that the prospect of mainstream adulation has no influence on the levels of youth unemployment for example. Since 2002, the unemployment rate of people aged 15-24 has increased year on year to 10.2%. The rate for men is even higher according to the United Nations Statistics Division, with 12.3% unemployed – that's one in eight. This doesn't compare favorably to other modernised societies like the United Kingdom which has rates of 7.8% and 9.3% respectively.

Nightview over a busy Seoul. Is South Korea a rolemodel for eSports or a society that has gone too far?

The gamers themselves are hard working chaps though, slaving in front of a hot... computer for 13-14 hours a day for a career with the life expectancy similar to an African infant. Most people can realistically play games for 15 hours a day, but the lure of money, lack of social stigma and common sense offered by Korea's mainstream society, lead Koreans down increasingly introvert and myopic lives in search of 'their' dream and partly to justify the madness.

Unsurprisingly, Koreans have one of the lowest life expectancy rates in the modernised world, even Bosnia and Herzegovina beats them by ten ranks! One of the common practices of Asian business is to hire excessively to cover unemployment, low wages and menial irrelevant work come as standard. Yet the collective success of something abstract hides the lack of individual suffering. Business booms.

Samsung is the richest company in South Korea and Forbes rank the public company as the 59th most profitable in the world. Samsung in case you don't know, produce a variety of electronics, they're also the main World Cyber Games (WCG) sponsor. Their position as a relatively mainstream consumer focused company, backed by their huge finical clout, puts gaming at a significant advantage, development wise. At the same time it actually works against more established markets like Europe and North America.

The richest company in the world is HSBC, a British bank. Until banks, oil and gas companies find a way to exploit the eSports market then we'll fail to find the same sort of 'success' as Korea. Until then the West will have to compete with traditional sports like football for advertising budgets, somewhat unfairly, based on raw numbers.

South Korea is the most overworked, socially retarded country - Japan might challenge, in the world and the idea that we're actually looking at them with anything other than a smirk is mind numbing. If you're still in any doubt or just don't want to believe me, how about the Samsung Economic Research Institute (SERI)? They admit that there are only 300 registered professional gamers in South Korea and that “the Korean economy is facing a serious dilemma as it continues to slow along with surging inflation”. Either I'm being overly negative or we're placing way too much trust on 300 gamers.