In Hangame's 7 Poker Friends Arena, the users, assumedly the money dealers, are waiting their customers after making a public room./ Screenshot of Hangame website

Guess where South Korea's largest casino? Some may think it's Kangwon Land Casino. But it's not. Kangwon Land limits entry and exit time. It also limits number of persons to be admitted.

Meanwhile, there's a casino which operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Excluding its server maintenance period, which lasts only a few hours a month, the casino accommodates thousands of players every day to allow them play poker or go-stop games and use cyber money that may be cashed later at virtual black markets within a minute.

The place is called Hangame, a popular gaming site operated by NHN. NHN is also the operator of Korea's largest portal, Naver.

Hangame is also aware that its poker or go-stop have become the gambling hub with the appearance of illegal cyber-money dealers. Hangame's official position is the following: "It is not at all our intention and we are making efforts in order to prevent the money transactions."

However, people who have lost several hundred million won and their health due to Hangame poker, claim that the players and money dealers are not the only ones to be blamed at.

Hangame allows users cash out their cyber money through many game items and rules.

[Friends Arena is where cyber money can be cashed out to real money]

As of July 15, Hangame poker provides 7 different pokers. Users are classified into different levels and they are limited to enter to their level corresponding arena with their poker money.

However, there is a free public arena called 'Friends Arena' among many rooms. Literally any users can enter and play games.

In most cases, users play games with other users with similar amount of game money, since it's obvious that a player with small amount of cyber money loses the game against the other player with huge amount of money in poker game.

Then how does the Friends Arena work? It's the place where cyber poker money can be exchanged to real cash.

Hangame sells game avatar with poker money. When you purchase an avatar with 10,000 won (approx. $10 dollars), you will also get poker money of 600 million won. If users purchase poker money through avatars, the Friends Arena is practically unnecessary.

There is no need for users play games with another player with extremely different amount of money. The Friends Arena is just a place where money dealers deal money with users. For users who have lost all of their cyber money, the money dealers intentionally lose games after the users make the deposit to them.

The black currency exchange market would disappear if Hangame removes its Friends Arena. But many suspect that Hangame is just sitting by and watching the situation as it is with over a hundred monitoring agents who claim to crack down the illegal money transactions. Once in a while, they filter out only a few of the money dealers as a part of demonstration effect.

If Friends Arena can be blocked, Hangame may lose a lot of profit. But many point out that it will certainly stop Hangame being 'Korea's largest gambling hub'.