The Korea Herald said that South Korea’s online gaming and Internet cafes have expanded thanks to Starcraft over the last 7 years.  From 500 Net cafes in 1998, today over 30,000 Net cafes have spread throughout South Korea.  The huge success of Starcraft led the local game industry to an online games transition.  Korea Herald interviewed Hahn Jung-won, managing director of Blizzard Entertainment Korea, who said—
“A lot of people inside the industry doubted our ability to succeed in the online game segment. However, these are the same people that easily forget that the online game genre itself was started by the success of StarCraft, which allowed users to play against each other on the Internet”.