Parents play online games, Let the child starve

The Witch

The Witch

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http://abcnews.go.com/International...ents-online-games-addiction/story?id=10007040

South Korea was in shock today after police arrested a couple Wednesday for child neglect that allegedly caused their 3-month-old daughter to starve to death. The husband, 41, and wife, 25, were addicted to online games, spending up to 12 hours every night at Internet cafes, police said.
3-Month Old Starves to Death While Parents Spend Hours in Internet Cafes

South Korean play computer games at the Internet cafe in Seoul. South Korea is in shock after police arrested a couple Wednesday for child neglect which caused their three-month old daughter to starve to death. The husband (41) and wife (25) were addicted to online games spending up to 12 hours every night at internet cafes, according to Suwon Seobu Police Station.

Known only as the Kims because their first names are protected under Korean privacy law, the couple met in 2008 on an Internet chat Web site. Throughout their marriage and birth of their baby daughter in June 2009, the couple, both unemployed, lived with the wife's parents. The Kims spent most of their time playing Internet games at local cafes called "PC bangs," even during the wife's pregnancy, officials said.

An estimated 30,000 PC bangs are spread throughout the country, open 24 hours. The dimly-lit Internet parlors practically sit on every street corner equipped with high-speed broadband, packed with young loyal gamers, and often polluted with cigarette smoke. Roughly half the Korean population plays online games regularly, according to the Korean Game Industry Agency, which is partly sponsored by the government.

"They called in last September to report that they found their daughter dead after coming back home in the morning," Det. Chung Jin-Won of the Suwon Seobu Police Station said. "They had spent 12 hours, all night at a PC bang."

An autopsy by the National Institute of Scientific Investigation concluded that their daughter's death resulted from malnourishment. The Kims also confessed to police that they had been feeding rotten, powdered milk and had often spanked their crying baby.

Neglecting their daughter, who was born prematurely, the parents were instead preoccupied with raising a "virtual daughter" through an online game called "PRIUS,"' police authorities said. The multi-role-playing game allows players to choose a job, interact with others in the virtual world and even earn an extra avatar or a sub-character to nurture once they reach a certain level.

Game addiction has become a serious concern in South Korea. Frequent news of addicted gamers dropping dead from exhaustion, growing number of students skipping school and teenagers showing abnormally violent behavior have prompted the state to start searching for solutions.

The government has built a network of hundreds of counseling centers throughout the country and sponsored treatment programs at major hospitals. Boot camps for addicted kids are offered during summer and winter school breaks.

The phenomenon has yet to be medically researched and defined but experts such as Dr. Kim Sang Eun say it is a brain disease. "There's no certain clinical indicator to define 'game addiction' but our study shows that brain PET [scan] images of suspected online game addicts are very similar to that of a cocaine addict," Kim of Seoul National University Bundang Hospital said.

Kim warned that Koreans are especially vulnerable to the dangers of Internet addiction, living in the most wired nation in the world, with 95 percent of all households having a broadband connection.

Online games are also easily accessible via 3G technology that enables wireless connection on mobile phones. The number of mobile phones has already surpassed more than 100 percent of population.
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It's insane people get THAT into a game.:confused:
 
And I thought I was bad >_>

Seriously, you'd think a real life daughter would be more important to a mother than a virtual one. Did maternal instincts not kick in or something? -__-
 
the governemnt must be corrupted their also.theres a lot of bad people around the world,but for this,if i was there i would give food by force! parents getting into games is so WRONG!
 
.Bayonetta said:
And I thought I was bad >_>

Seriously, you'd think a real life daughter would be more important to a mother than a virtual one. Did maternal instincts not kick in or something? -__-
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Guess so.

I know even if I loved a game that much I couldn't play that long just because I'd need to get away from it for a while. But dang! This is just insane.
 
They seriously need to get their priorities straight, if I had a kid there's no way i'd place some game above the well being of my child. It's stupid that they didn't think the same way, that level of addiction is unhealthy. Didn't they notice their child was starving when they came home? -__-
 
well it is wrong if the parents kid is just a little baby,i even learned once at school that parents having babies but give a shit about something unimportant is very wrong.
 
It is tragic to hear stories like this - and this really isn't the first time I've seen stories about death relating to online games. It beggars belief how this could have happened. Placing online gaming as a priority before that of the baby? What on earth? Is the game that addictive? 12 hours every night is simply not healthy and it is just staggering to think that the poor child was left there neglected to die in such a way. Disgusting.
 
I'll move this to the more serious section of the forums, since it doesn't really belong in spam.

-Thread Moved-

Also, that's just awful that the parents let a game consume their life to that extent. There's playing it a lot, and then there's an addiction.

What I found interesting though, was, if they were living with their parents the whole time, why didn't the parents feed their grandchild?
 
I've moved this thread to Costa del Sol as this is too serious of a topic to be in the Spam Coliseum. I have also deleted the spammy posts. Please remember NOT to spam as this is in the post count section. Thank you!

edit: Mark, I've already moved it. :wacky:
 
Sorry, General Beatrix. :(

That's a good question. I just find it disgusting that someone could forget their child THAT much. I could never do that to a baby let alone my own if I had one.
 
Wow, that's really creepy that their raising a virtual kid was causing them to neglect a real one. If you don't have any obligations that's one thing--you can just sit there and play games your whole life if you want--but when someone's depending on you for something, that's just wrong. I hope if it is related to a neurological disease that they figure out a cure soon.
 
Ok parents like this should Take care of there child tbh. Like why the hell are they gaming and not taking care of there child every day. If parents do game too much it becomes hell but these parents are just too crazy. Seriously who would do this. I feel bad for the daughter. Disgusting idiots :ness:
 
Gamingway said:
Wow, that's really creepy that their raising a virtual kid was causing them to neglect a real one. If you don't have any obligations that's one thing--you can just sit there and play games your whole life if you want--but when someone's depending on you for something, that's just wrong. I hope if it is related to a neurological disease that they figure out a cure soon.
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Yea, it's so weird. I mean, why would they even want a virtual child over their real one? Makes no sense. I wonder if the parents even care?:worried:
 
That's pretty sick.

What on earth possessed them to choose a game over their baby?

And to think they lived with the wifes parents as well. You'd think that maybe the grandparents would have noticed something a bit off about how much time they spent away from their newborn and noticed it wasn't getting the proper care it needed?

All women should have a fucking chastity belt until they are old enough and then they must go through some sort of process to obatin a licence in order to produce offspring. <_<

If they didn't want to deal with a REAL child then they should have kept their bits in their pants or bought condoms/the pill. <_< It's really not that hard!
 
This is just :ffs:
Seriously? Like what the frak were they thinking? I mean that's your child damnit poor thing. =(

I mean to choose your real kid over a 'virtual' one is just pathetically low of the parents. That just really sickens me >_< to know that things like THIS are happening. I mean this poor child! I can't help but feel bad for the kid =(

Like part of your job as a parent is to take care of your damn child! If they werent ready for that responsiblity then they should've done something to prevent pregancy. I mean what kind of parent's are they?
ughh.
Stupid people >_<
 
Good lord, and I thought I was bad ><

If there has one thing I have always made clear, when I finally do have children of my own, I will probably stop gaming all together until the children are a little older in which I can introduce them to gaming as such, but again I'll probably be quite strict in the fact that they will do more outdoors activities and consoles will be more a wet weather thing as it was for me when I was younger.

This just shows the extremes of gaming addiction and just how bad it can get, The problem with Korea is they do not have the same mental healthcare system we have in the west and the dont tend to spot any of the signs of addiction until its far too late, unfortunatley in this case...a young child has starved :(
 
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