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갈수록 심각해지는 아시아의 도박 중독 (E)


아시아에서는 고속 경제성장 속에 도박장, 카지노가 늘어나는 가운데 인터넷을 통한 온라인 도박게임에 중독되는 사람들이 늘어나 정신보건 전문가들과 정부 당국자들이 크게 우려하고 있습니다. 이 시간에는 아시아 지역의 도박 중독 실태를 알아봅니다.

홍콩에서는 경마가 있는 매주 수요일이면 시 전역에 걸쳐 개설돼 있는 경마클럽에 많은 사람들이 모여들어 돈을 거는 내기를 합니다.

경마에 돈을 거는 사람들은 대부분 남자들이지만 여자들도 적지 않습니다. 사람들은 보통 오락삼아 재미로 경마에 돈을 걸지만 상당수는 도박중독에 빠져 생활을 망치고 있습니다.

40대인 이 공무원은 심심풀이 삼아 경마에 돈을 걸었다가 몇 번 돈을 따게 되자 경마내기에 빠져 4년 동안 10만 달러의 빚을 진 나머지 아파트 한 채를 날려 버리고 식구들을 데리고 처가의 단간방에서 살고 있습니다.

홍콩에서는 경마와 축구경기에 내기를 하는 것이 합법으로 돼 있으며, 주민이 도박에 거는 돈은 1년에 평균 2천 달러나 됩니다. 도박에 빠져드는 사람들은 홍콩인들만이 아닙니다. 아시아 지역의 많은 사람들, 특히 중국계 사람들에겐 전통적으로 도박이 뿌리깊은 관습처럼 돼 있다고 뉴질랜드 오클랜드대학의 샘슨 체 심리학 교수는 지적합니다.

심슨 체 교수는 아시아에서는 많은 사람들이 운수와 요행수를 믿는가 하면 삶 자체를 도박의 한 형태로 여겨 자신의 운수가 어디까지 닿을 수 있는지 보려는 경향을 지니고 있으며, 손쉽고 빠르게 팔자를 고쳐보려 한다는 것입니다.

아시아인들의 도박률은 높은 편입니다. 그렇다고 아시아인들의 도박 중독률이 비아시아인들에 비해 더 높다는 증거는 없습니다. 그러나 아시아인들은 자신의 도박 습관을 드러내는 것을 수치로 여기기 때문에 실제 도박률과 도박 중독률은 밝혀지지 않고 있다고 샘슨 체 교수는 지적합니다. 그렇지만 도박의 장소와 종류가 늘어나는 만큼 많은 사람들이 이에 중독될 가능성이 높아지고 있다고 체 교수는 말합니다.

도박의 도시 마카우를 예로 들면 사람들이 도박횟수가 늘어나면 도박의 규모도 커지고 중증의 병적인 도박 증세를 보이는 것으로 나타나 있다는 것입니다.

중국에 반환된 마카우에서는 지난 몇 해 동안에 도박장이 두 배로 늘어나 27곳에 달합니다. 마카우 정부의 도박 세입은 지난 해 70억 달러에 이를 정도로 마카우는 세계 최대의 도박시장입니다. 이 같은 마카우의 도박흥행 성장을 본따 아시아의 다른 도시들에서도 도박장이 늘고 있습니다. 싱가포르에서는 도박 금지법이 2년 전에 폐지됐는가 하면 2009년까지 2개의 카지노가 건설될 예정입니다. 일본과 타이완도 도박 합법화를 검토 중이고 베트남에서는 남부지역에 40억 달러의 호화판 도박휴양지 건설이 시작됐습니다. 도박의 또 한가지 문제는 한국, 뉴질랜드에서처럼 휴가철에 가족들이 많이 모이는 휴양지 안이나 가까운 곳에 카지노와 도박 시설이 들어서고 인터넷 도박이 늘어나는 점이라고 샘슨 체 교수는 지적합니다.

한국의 문화관광부 통계자료에 따르면 한국 인구의 약7 %가 인터넷 도박 중독자인 것으로 나타나 있습니다. 이에 따라 한국 정부는 인터넷 도박의 폐단을 막기 위한 교육자료를 내고 도박 중독자 치료소까지 운영하고 있으며 싱가포르와 홍콩은 도박 문제 상담소와 상담전화를 운영하고 있습니다.

As more casinos open in Asia, and online gambling increases, mental health experts and governments are worried about addiction to gambling. Claudia Blume reports from VOA's Asia News Center in Hong Kong.

Wednesday is horse racing day in Hong Kong. All over the city, people crowd into one of the many gambling outlets of the Hong Kong Jockey Club to place their bets.

Serious-looking men and a few women stand around studying the odds of the day's races in newspapers and on TV screens.

For most people here, gambling is just a form of leisure and entertainment. But for some, it becomes an addiction that ruins their lives.

One of them is "Tony", a government official in his forties, who declines to give his real name. He says betting on horses started out as a pastime. He won a few times at first, played more and more often and couldn't stop once his lucky streak was over. Tony continuously lost money until, four years ago, he had amassed a debt of more than $100,000.

"I had to sell our apartment," he said. "My wife and I and our two daughters had to move in with my father-in-law, where the four of us shared one single room."

In Hong Kong, where betting on horses and football is legal, people have one of the highest per capita betting averages in the world, about $2,000 a year.

A study by Hong Kong Polytechnic University shows almost four out of five people in the territory participate in some form of gambling. That includes betting on horses or football, lottery games, casino gambling in neighboring Macau - but also mahjong games with family and friends.

People in Hong Kong are not the only Asians who love to gamble. Psychologist Samson Tse is a founding director of the Center for Asian Health Research and Evaluation at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He says gambling has strong roots in Asian culture, especially Chinese, and reflects the world-view of many people in the region.

"For example the notion of fatalism, the notion of luck and so forth," he explained. "We tend to think about life as a form of gamble and push our luck to see how far we can go. We work very hard, we try to survive in a very hardy environment - so anything that can help us improve our lives, anything that can help us to have fast, quick-fix solutions, we all will try."

Tse says while the participation rates of Asians in gambling activities is high, there is no evidence that more Asians are addicted to gambling than non-Asians. But he says this is partly due to psychologists' Western methods of evaluation, which may not be applicable to Asians. In addition, many people in Asia may be too ashamed to reveal they have a gambling problem.

Tse says it is hard to make exact predictions, but it is very likely more people will get addicted in the future, as an increasing number of gambling outlets open up in the region.

"Macau is one of the examples. And we know for a fact from the public health research - when people have increased level of participation, that usually leads to the increase in the scale and also the severity of pathological gambling," he said.

The number of gambling outlets in Macau, Asia's gaming capital, has more than doubled to 27 in the past few years. The city's revenue from gambling was seven billion dollars last year, making it the biggest single gaming market in the world.

Inspired by Macau's success, other Asian countries are jumping on the bandwagon. Singapore ended a decades-old ban on gambling two years ago, and will have two casino resorts by 2009. Japan and Taiwan are considering legalizing casinos.

And construction began earlier this year on a four-billion-dollar luxury gaming resort in southern Vietnam.

According to investment bank Merrill Lynch, casino companies are expected to spend as much as $71 billion in Asia over the next five years.

Janet Wong, a counselor at the Caritas Addicted Gamblers Counseling center in Hong Kong, says an increasing number of people who seek help at her center are gambling in Macau casinos. She says, in many cases, it is their family members who call, because they are at their wits' end.

"Some loan sharks escort the gambler from Macau to Hong Kong and make a phone call to the gambler's family members and ask them to help the gambler pay the debts," she said. "Usually, they don't have any information how to deal with the situation."

Samson Tse says what particularly worries him is that in some countries, such as South Korea, casinos are integrated with or close to resorts where families spend their holidays. In other countries, for example in New Zealand, gaming machines are set up in family restaurants.

"The problem of that, or the challenge of that is almost normalizing gambling to such an extent that it becomes a very daily, ordinary activity," he said.

Even more dangerous, he says, is the increasing trend of Internet gambling in the region. In South Korea, for example, according to South Korea's Cultural Information Center, about seven percent of the population is addicted to online gambling.

Addicts can gamble 24 hours, seven-days a week - without any social interaction that may stop them from doing so.

A number of governments in the region have started to address the problem. Two years ago, the first Asia Pacific problem gambling conference was held in Hong Kong. Singapore hosted another problem gambling conference last July.

South Korea provides educational material and school counseling in an attempt to stop the country's rampant Internet and online gambling addiction. In Macau, Singapore and Hong Kong, problem gamblers can call hotlines and seek help from several counseling centers that have opened in the past few years.

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