In a recent article, the Guardian reveals that a South Korean couple left their daughter to starve to death while gaming online. Addicted to Internet games, the couple spent most of their time on a role-playing game called Prius Online, in which they raised a virtual daughter. After spending a reported 12 hours at a Seoul Internet café, they returned to find their newborn daughter dead. An autopsy confirmed the infant’s cause of death to be malnourishment.
Bae Hyun-jung from Korea Herald reports:
“The couple, being jobless and almost penniless, could not bear the parental burden and thus ended up escaping reality by abandoning themselves to virtual reality, said police officials. The game which stole their attention away from their baby was ironically a role playing game in which they raised a virtual character of a young girl, according to officials.”
