Seoul is a city of mirrored skyscrapers, drenched in neon. QR codes on billboards to order your dinner, and electric adverts on the subway that chase your train through dark, winding tunnels. A city of blisteringly fast internet, real-time data and wide-eyed cartoons, where the distinction between digital and offline life has melted away far more than anywhere else I have been.
Amid all of this, on a road road lined with small trees, is a small brick building. Called the Haja Centre, it is low rise and low tech compared with its towering neighbours; a friendly, colourful, tactile, mechanical place. When I visited, I saw a group of people sat in a circle playing guitars and others learning how to repair bicycles. There’s woodwork. In the most digital city on earth, it felt more… tangible than anywhere else. And there’s a good reason for that.
It is dedicated to helping a certain kind of patient: the hikikomori, or “the departed”. Hikikomori are recluses who have retreated from offline life and live entirely online. They are – most usually – men of around 30, though many start withdrawing when they are still adolescents and living with their parents. They don’t leave their homes, or even their rooms, for months or years on end.
The Haja Centre is helping them take their first steps on the long journey from the bedroom back into society. With its ‘Come out and Play’ project, music is taught as a way of bringing them back, uniting them into groups, encouraging them to form relationships with a mentor and peers, and building self-esteem. Bike-mending is a way of encouraging them to have a tangible effect on something real.
One 18-year-old there started to tell me about his life. “I dropped out in high school” he said. He was 16. “After I dropped out, I had no real relationship or link to society or any other group. I just thought, ‘I am who I am’. I wasn’t in contact with any other person. One hundred per cent hikikomori.”
He became nocturnal, and began to play online games more and more. “I’d play whenever I wanted a relationship with others. It’s connect and disconnect, that’s why it’s useful.” The game was MapleStory 2, a scrolling cartoonish fantasy role-playing game. “It was the one thing I could enjoy doing during this time.” He played it for 15 hours a day, every day, for two years.
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