I still see no connections between desperate (and not educated in math and statistics) people throwing their money away and a videogame aimed to children that happens to have a randomized mini-game. Hell the pokemon Trading Card Game is closer to real gambling than the Game Corner and it's still seen as perfectly fine.
Not to be a prick, but the country you mentioned has far greater issues to deal with than attempt to "educate" kids with censorship, so this sounds like a case of skewed priorities, desperation, or both.
If anything kids who are exposed to videogame gambling tend to learn from a young age how the basics of statistics work (most of us realized that the best way to grind in the Game Corner was spamming the E4 for money and just buy the coins, because the mini-game itself wasn't worth the risk) and how the RNG tends to always screw you over. I for a fact can say that after experiencing several videogames with gambling-like activities (so it's not just limited to Pokemon's Game Corner, but I'm speaking about most randomized mini-games) I have developed a distaste for real gambling because I would never bet my money on something that I have no control over and where the odds are decidedly stacked against me. From my point of view removing this mini-game does absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Yeah I know we have bigger problems, that's not the point here, we can agree on that. In fact, we are the country of contradictions. We cannot stand a little minigame in a videogame meant to be focused on something completely different but having loads of pubs with slot-machines is perfectly fine in the majority of the country. But I absolutely loath gambling as it is a real problem. As you've mentioned, we have "far greater problems", and one of those are mobsters. As a matter of fact, mobsters often use gambling places and machines to recycle illegal money they get from their outlaw activities. People not paying taxes and working irregularly hide their money in that grey gambling area too. Do you know that we have like a 27% irregular GDP/regular GDP ratio? And gambling aids those people in hiding their money, encouraging them to continue to do so, avoiding taxes, shouldering it on the good and honest people like myself and my family. Mafia is a cancer and yet gambling helps her. So yes, gambling is a huge problem here. I absolutely hate it and every measure against it is more than welcome. That's why I said "a drop in the ocean" and where I agree with you. Seriously, fuck gambling.
Coming back to the games, I have absolutely no problem with that, as I'm 24, I'm old as fuck, and postgraduated in Economics, an I only play because this is (by far) the best battling and strategic game ever created, so I know what's right and what's wrong, especially about money. But think about this: I don't wanna see a kid in my suburb that's playing ORAS and hear him saying to his friends: "hey, I've just beaten the E4, let's go play 777 with this money to get a TM!", because that's what a couple of friends and myself did when we were like 10 in RBY. We wasted hours, and I mean 2-3 consecutive hours, to gamble, cause we had money and was easier (and I admit funnier) than going to catch the freaking Schyter in the Safari Zone. I don't want them to do as we did, because now I understand how it translates in real life. It's the same as saying "let's waste 50 euros because I earn 1500, and let's put them on AC Milan beating Barcelona tonight." Yeah, we learnt that paying 10000 for 500 coins, if I recall correctly, was the quickest way to get to 9999, that's basically only a change of currency to purchase something, nothing wrong about that. But that doesn't change the fact that you could walk a couple of steps down and "let's waste some money, I'm rich", that's flat out wrong. EDIT: I especially hate, now that I think about it, that we had people gifting you coins encouraging you to gamble. One of the basics of education is that "you imitate what you see" and people developing videogames adressed to the childhood market should always think about that.
I understand that "From my point of view removing this mini-game does absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things", we all agree on that, there should be waaay better and heavier measures taken, but it's better than it being here.