Lawmakers Ask for Game Sponsor Fees

The “Lawmakers for the Promotion of E-Sports and the Gaming Industry” (LPESGI), a group consisting of assemblymen of the ruling Uri Party (President: Jeong Chung-rae), stirred controversy when it suggested Korean online game makers participating in online gaming competitions and asked them to pay hundreds of millions of won in sponsoring fees.

According to a game industry announcement on April 20, the LPESGI Secretariat sent an official document titled: “Sponsorship for Official Titles of the President Cup Korea E-Sports Festival” and a 27-page sponsorship proposal in PowerPoint to 11 online game makers via e-mail on March 23 and 24.

The sponsorship proposal the Dong-A Ilbo obtained describes the competition as “an e-sports competition with the most authority in Korea” that is “led by the State, authorized by the government, sponsored by the National Assembly and supported by local governments.” The proposal also says those who pay 500 million won in sponsoring fees will get such benefits as “being a sponsor in official titles” and “being provided with a venue for promotion within the arena.”

The official document states the competition will take place from May to August 2006, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT), the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC), the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MOE) and the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs (MOGAHA); it also explains the project is being pursued by the “E-Sports Gathering consisting of 33 members of the National Assembly.”

It reportedly remains undecided, however, whether government agencies including the MCT and local governments will be sponsoring the competition.

The E-Sports Gathering was created in April 2005 by 31 Uri Party lawmakers with the aim to “promote proper functions of gaming and e-sports that will lead the development of Korea’s culture and information technology industries.” E-sports stands for a variety of competitions using computer online games.

“We just asked if the companies were willing to participate in public subscription to include their games as official titles. We did not mean to make them pay hundreds of millions of won. A working-level official, a 34-year-old woman identified only by her surname, Jeong, made the mistake of writing those documents on her own and sending them at a time when even the organizing committee of the committee had yet to be formed,” explained Rep. Jeong Chung-rae, the president of the gathering, in a press conference on April 20 at the National Assembly as controversy intensified over the LPESGI’s request for sponsoring fees.

Rep. Jeong dismissed the Secretariat official, Jeong, on April 19.

In a telephone interview with Dong-A Ilbo, Jeong said, “I was suggesting the amount of sponsoring fees and their possible effects, but I did not ask [the companies] to pay money. As concrete consultation results did not come out, I did not report about my suggestion of the amount of sponsoring fees.”

Dong-Yong Min mindy@donga.com