A father from South Korea was arrested Monday after reportedly allowing his infant son to starve to death in his apartment as he played online video games for days at nearby internet cafes.
The 22-year-old father, surnamed Chung, has been arrested by the police officers of the city of Daegu, southeast of Seoul after authorities found a garbage bag containing the badly decomposed body of his son, according to Hindustan Times.
A CCTV footage of the father casually fixing his hair while carrying the said garbage bag inside an elevator has been revealed and aired in different TV stations in South Korea, bringing shock and anger to citizens across the country.
The incident was reported just as the debate of whether online games are as addictive as smoking or drinking was at its peak in the Asian nation. Shortly before the incident, the ruling conservative party was in the news for pushing the bill to classify online gaming as being potentially addictive as other vices, such as cigarette smoking and alcohol.
According to reports, the infant son’s mother left the city February to work as a factory worker, leaving the 22-year-old father alone in the city with their child.
However, Chung, reportedly heavily addicted to video games, failed to provide proper nourishment to their infant child, opting instead to spend his days inside internet shops while leaving his infant son to suffer in the house without food. Allegedly, the father only went home every two or three days to sparingly feed his son.
According to official police reports, the father discovered that his son has succumbed to starvation on March 7 and left the body to rot inside his apartment for another month until he decided to dispose the corpse of his infant son in a garden one mile away.
He then initially reported his baby missing, but soon confessed to disposing the body of his own infant son.
Online video games have been a problem in South Korea for years. The country boasts itself as one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. According to Statista,South Korea’s internet connection is the fastest in the world, with speeds averaging at 13.3 mbps.
However, their advancement in the field may have indirectly caused many cases of gaming-related parental neglect that has been reported to happen in the country for the past years.
In 2010, a Korean couple was arrested for starving their real life child to death while raising a virtual child online.
What should be the punishment for Mr. Chung, the 22-year-old father who starved his own infant son so he could play online video games for days
(via Inquisitor)
