Importing Korean video games?

Recently, I've gained an interest in the South Korean games industry. There seems to be little to no information regarding many games that come out of South Korea (or, more often, stay in South Korea). As such, I also can't find resources for importing these games. At the moment I'm primarily interested in trying out Maple Story DS (I've always thought it looked neat, and the DS' region free really helps) and an old PC beat-em-up called "Eojjeonji...Jeonyeok" as detailed in this article.

Does anyone have any knowledge of websites wherein I can get a hold of games like this? My Korean isn't good enough to do the googling myself, unfortunately.

I'd assume play-asia would have Korean games but I dunno.

From what I can tell, it's mostly mobile games and MMORPG stuff. I don't recall seeing any console stuff. But that's just what I've seen on my brief trips so ymmv

A quick Google search coughs up a rather extensive list of Amazon partners who sell the Japanese version of Maple Story DS: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B005NY1ITK/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new

Can't help you further, but you could have a look at the Magna Carta series, or the slew of grind-a-thons MMOs like Ragnarok Online, Lineage, and the like that come from South Korea.

If you get a chance to visit, the location of choice is "video game alley" (doesn't really have a name) in Yongsan Electronics Market in Seoul. It's a hundred meter stretch of video game stores selling everything imaginable. Except for PC games, they're in the basement in Seonin Plaza across the street.

Outside of Korea, Gmarket is probably your best bet. It's essentially Amazon-Korea. Many of the retailers will happily ship internationally, and some of them even speak some English. There's an English version of the site, but the Korean version has significantly more extensive listings. You'll need East Asian language support on your computer and the ability to read some Hangeul if you want to go the Korean route.

Korean Site: http://www.gmarket.co.kr/

English Site: http://global.gmarket.co.kr/Home/Main#

The English version of the site lists Maple Story DS for $22.92.

I did some more digging and found the sequel to Eonjjeonji ... Jeonyeok (whose full title is Eonjjeonji Joeunilee Saenggil Geot Gateun Jeonyeok [어쩐지 좋은일이 생길 것 같은 저녁 in Korean] and roughly translates to "It feels like a good thing is happening this evening.") The sequel is called "Storm" and here it is on (Korean) Gmarket for $2.

I can't find the original. Since the sequel on a CD costs $2, the first is probably free to download somewhere. I might be able to get you a link. Or, if you want, here's the search results on Naver (Korea's search engine of choice.) If you dig through those, you might find it.

Edit: Found it. You might need to download a Korean zip archival tool called alzip in order to unzip it. File links are at the bottom and end in extensions a00, a01, alz. Also, you'll need DOS Box to run that.

No idea why you would want to play MapleStory DS. It will be like the MMO but worse. Just play the MMO.

@sinusoidal: Wow, thank you for going out of your way like this! That's a lot of super useful information!

@49th: I realize that, but it's a cool oddity that I want to check out / would be cool to own in Korean, I think. I could easily buy the Japanese version (which I could actually read) but the Korean version is much more alluring... I'm also interested in playing games in their original languages.

@dadjumper No problem. I live in Korea and spend a not-insignificant amount of time traversing the madness that is Korean Internet. I just today got the Korean-English version of Aquanaut's Holiday: Hidden Memories for PS3. It's one of the rarest and most expensive PS3 games there is because it never had a western release and the Japanese version has no English support. I guess the translation is riddled with Engrish. Looking forward to playing it.

I'm back again! I've been doing research on Korean game development through the 90's and 2000's. I've determined that I kiiinda want to get a GamePark 32, which is a handheld notorious for homebrew/emulators but also has its own original games, available at retail, no less! That said, I can only find the system on ebay (for a pretty penny) and have only seen a single game show up there. GMarket doesn't seem to have any sellers of GP32 stuff, either.

Are there any other popular auction/retail sites where I might search for this stuff? Perhaps I could bother @sinusoidal for a little more help? Furthermore, I've used forwarding services to get stuff shipped from Japanese sites that don't provide international shipping, could I maybe do a similar thing for Korean stuff?

p.s. i bought that copy of Maplestory DS. Shipping came to another $20 (New Zealand, ugh) but I've been told that's still a pretty good price.

Here's a really interesting index of articles about the history of South Korean game development. It's a pretty fascinating read, and the fact that there is so little information on individual games makes me all the more interested to get into this stuff. This was basically all prompted from me starting to learn to read and write Hangeul from a textbook last week and suddenly deciding to google Korean video game stuff.

@dadjumper Apparently Game Park is bankrupt. The best I got is a used GP2X-F300 which was the successor to the GP32 listed on auction.co.kr. Apparently they also re-branded the devices as electronic dictionaries (Voca Master) at some point before going bankrupt. Auction is not very English user friendly, so your best bet might be finding the seller's email address (on the bottom of the page) and contacting him directly and hoping he knows some English. Here's a white one, slightly different version on the same site.

If you really want what's basically a Linux running handheld emulation device, I'd go with a Pandora or something before some 10+ year old Korean curiosity. They're not cheap though.

@sinusoidal: I'm not really after a GP32 for the emulator aspect, but to play the original games that came out for it, so I guess I'm just gonna have to keep an eye on ebay!