the Informer

Some people just shouldn’t have children. Prime example: a couple in South Korea let their real child starve while they played with a virtual child online.

When I first heard the story, I couldn’t fathom how a couple could let this happen. When you have a child, that being becomes your life. It is a new life that you have brought into the world, and if you plan to raise the child yourself, you make the child the priority and nothing else.

But this couple didn’t get the memo. Rather, they decided to spend their time online. According to a report on CNN, the couple fed their 3-month-old daughter once a day. The rest of their day? It was spent in an Internet cafe. What were they doing? Essentially, playing a video game.

The game is called Prius Online, which is a “3-D game in which players nurture an online companion, Anima, a young girl with mysterious powers who grows and increases her skills as the game progresses,” according to the report. So the couple put their efforts into raising Anima, rather than their tangible child.

According to the information released by South Korean officials, the couple had recently lost their jobs and, to escape from the grim reality, played the video game. I can understand wanting to escape life for a little while. It’s completely understandable, and we all get urges to just sort of leave this life behind.

But this couple put another life in danger; they killed their own daughter. She died five months ago. The couple must now start to face the consequences of their actions.

It’s hard to tell if they even knew what was going on when it was happening. Perhaps they were so wrapped up in this game that they couldn’t begin to separate their virtual life from reality. Perhaps they believed that their daughter wasn’t that sick. Perhaps they didn’t understand that they needed to feed their daughter more than once a day.

The couple has not been identified as of press time, but the father did say this apology to reporters: “I wish that she hadn’t got sick and that she will live well in heaven forever. And as the father, I am sorry.”

It’s hard to read those words and really feel that he is sorry for what has happened. It’s something he should have thought of for the three months of his daughter’s life that he spent online rather than nurturing her.

Is there a lesson that can be learned from this story? I think so. I think it is essential to be both financially and mentally prepared to have a child. It is a big step in a couple’s life, even if it is an adoption. It is a huge change in lifestyle, and clearly this couple was not ready for that.

I’m curious to see what happens to this couple; I wonder what they will be charged with and what type of media attention this story brings.

More people should learn from this story: you can’t escape reality forever. At some point, you have to come back and face responsibility.