A Korean couple addicted to computer games let their real-life baby starve to death while raising a virtual daughter online, police said Thursday.
The couple spent up to 12 hours a day at Internet cafes, leaving their three-month-old daughter home alone at their apartment in Suwon, South Korea.
Police said the couple became obsessed with living online and neglected their real lives.
They raised an avatar baby through their profiles on a Second Life-style game called PRIUS, while their real daughter was given just one bottle of milk a day.
Father Kim Yoo-chul, 41, and mom Choi Mi-sun, 25, called the emergency services when they returned from one online session in September last year and found their daughter dead.
“We found she had passed away when we woke up in the morning,” they said.
But cops became suspicious about how severely dehydrated the baby was.
A spokesman for the National Scientific Criminal and Investigation Laboratory, which carried out an autopsy on the girl, said, “She appears to have starved to death because she was not fed for such a long period of time.”
The girl was initially well cared for by her grandmother, but her health deteriorated after she moved back in with her parents.
Police tried to arrest the parents, but they disappeared after the baby’s funeral.
Authorities caught up with them Tuesday and charged them with child abuse and neglect.
The couple told police of their guilt after their arrests.
“Due to our sense of guilt, we have not been to a PC gaming room over these five months,” they said.
Online games are massively popular in South Korea.
A 28-year-old man dropped dead recently after playing his favorite game Starcraft for 50 hours nonstop without eating or drinking.