S Korea child 'starves as parents raise virtual baby'

[Generic Other]

A South Korean couple who were addicted to the internet let their three-month-old baby starve to death while raising a virtual daughter online, police said.

The pair fed their own premature baby just once a day in between 12-hour stretches at an internet cafe, the official Yonhap news agency reported.

Police officer Chung Jin-won told Yonhap they "lost their will to live a normal life" after losing their jobs.

<snip>

The couple had become obsessed with nurturing a virtual girl called Anima in the popular role-playing game Prius Online, police said on Friday.

The game enables players to interact with Anima and as they do so, help her to recover her lost memory and develop emotions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8551122.stm

The world has gone mad!

[Jackpine Radical]

1. The couple obviously became extremely depressed

and dissociated into the online game. The poor child died of her parents' flight from reality.