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Starting in October, about 1,200 elementary school children in Anyang City, south of Seoul, will receive matchbox-sized GPS-embedded beepers. The devices can notify authorities of the kids' location and activate surveillance cameras.

The move comes a month after a 44-year-old habitual sex offender was arrested and accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl. That case, as well as other crimes against children, shocked the country and mobilized the government to declare war on child molesters.

The 8-year-old girl was abducted from her school, and officials have stepped up school security in response. After a trial run, the government might expand the GPS devices to the rest of the country, AFP says.

[AFP]

Warning: this game may have beneficial real-life consequences

In the game, players navigate photos of Cambodian jungle landscapes in search of photos for several adorable cartoon pets -- no cartoon landmine characters here. The point of the maze-like game is to train players and embed warning signals about landmines in their minds.

The game arose from a request by the Golden West Humanitarian Foundation, a Californa-based nonprofit, which expressed frustration with the ineffectiveness of informational pamphlets and other existing methods of teaching landmine avoidance. The project also received a $78,000 grant from the U.S. State Department's Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement.

Copies of the game should be compatible with the low-cost laptops made available to many developing nations through the One Laptop per Child program, according to Corey Bohil, a media researcher at Michigan State University.

Leaving aside a faint resemblance to Nickelodeon Jr.'s Dora the Explorer, we like the idea of a video game that can teach kids to avoid the deadly consequences of warfare's long legacy. It's also a nice change from all the "militainment" video games designed with warfighters in mind.

[Michigan State University]