Apr 6, 2012

South Korea - S. Korean game addict accused of killing baby


The 26-year-old gave birth while at an Internet cafe in Seoul on March 25. She allegedly put the infant in a plastic bag, sealed it and dumped it in a nearby parking lot.

SEOUL - A South Korean woman has been detained for killing her baby who was born while she was playing online games, police said Thursday.

They said the 26-year-old gave birth while at an Internet cafe in Seoul on March 25. She allegedly put the infant in a plastic bag, sealed it and dumped it in a nearby parking lot.

The woman had visited Internet cafes almost daily, police said.

"She was playing games until right before she gave birth in the cafe's bathroom," a police spokesman in the city's Songpa district told AFP. "She didn't even know her waters had broken."

Police said the woman was being held in a state nursing facility and would face trial for infanticide.

There have been other reports of deaths related to Internet game addiction in South Korea, one of the world's most wired societies.

In 2010 a mother killed her three-year-old son while she was tired from Internet game-playing. Also in 2010, a 15-year-old boy committed suicide after killing his mother for scolding him over excessive playing of computer games.

A 41-year-old man was sentenced to two years in prison in the same year after he and his wife left their baby daughter to die at home of malnutrition while they were in Internet cafes.

Official figures estimate there are two million Internet addicts.

The government has adopted a "Cinderella" law to ban youngsters from playing online games past midnight as concern grows about Internet addiction.


Man "lost" use of finger from playing games on smartphone

TAIWAN - Sin Chew Daily reported about a Taiwanese man who "lost" the use of his index finger after playing games on his touch-screen smartphone for up to six hours each day.

The paper said the finger had stiffened because the cartilage between the joints had weakened.

He said he would feel excruciating pain each time he tried to bend the finger.

Five months of physiotherapy had also failed to improve his condition.

He is facing difficulty in writing, holding objects and carrying out chores.

The man has vowed never to play games on his mobile phone again.


Taiwan baby dies as parents play web games

TAIPEI - A young Taiwanese couple has been accused of letting their baby girl starve to death because they were obsessed with playing games online and forgot to feed her regularly, police said Friday.

The one-year-old weighed only four kilograms (nine pounds), or half the average size of a girl her age, when the couple reported her death earlier this week, the police said.

According to the local Apple Daily newspaper, when police arrived, they found a girl reduced to "just skin and bone and with sunken eyes", while a gaming website was flickering on the computer monitor next to her crib.

Prosecutors will look into the cause of the girl's death and determine whether her parents, in their early 20s, were responsible. They face up to two years in prison for manslaughter if convicted.

Similar incidents occurred in other parts of Asia, and also in the US. Last December, a South Korean woman was arrested for beating and strangling her three-year-old to death after an Internet gaming spree.

In the US, two women who were addicted to playing Facebook games caused the death of their young children.
One woman who was angry that her baby's crying interrupted her game,shook her baby to death. The other woman, engrossed in a Facebook game,neglected her child while he drowned in the bathtub.


Gamers ignore corpse in Internet cafe

A Taiwanese man died while playing video games at an Internet cafe as dozens of other patrons carried on for hours afterwards apparently unaware that they were sitting near a corpse, according to police.

The 23-year-old checked in at the cafe in New Taipei city on Tuesday night and was found dead but still sitting rigidly on a chair with his hands stretched out the following night by a waitress, police said.

The waitress last saw him talking on the phone around noon on Wednesday and his body had apparently been sitting there for up to nine hours without any of the 30 other people in the cafe noticing.

An initial police investigation found he might have died of a cardiac arrest triggered by low temperatures.


Child drowns while mother plays Facebook game

COLORADO, USA - A 34-year-old woman was playing games on Facebook while son drowned in the bathtub.

Shannon Johnson told police she was busy playing a Facebook game called Cafe World, and also browsing the Facebook site while her son was alone in the bathroom.

She said she only checked on him once during the 10 minutes that she was using the computer.

Johnson claimed she left him to bathe by himself because she felt that her son was independent enough to be left alone.

She only rushed to check when the bathroom became "oddly silent". That was when she found him lying sideways in the baththb, with his face submerged.

He was pronounced dead when she took him to the nearby hospital.

Johnson may face charges of child abuse resulting in neglectful death.

A similar incident occurred in October 2010 when a woman became angry with her baby while she was playing Farmville on Facebook.

She was charged with murder after shaking her baby to death.

AFP



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