Love Child (2014)

In 2010, South Korean police were contacted by a couple whose 3-month-old daughter Sarang (“Love” in Korean) had died. Born prematurely, the baby’s cause of death was suspicious; she “was just lying straight,” Detective Young Jin-Park recalls, adding “It was obvious she had starved to death.” Upon further investigation, police learned that the parents, who met online, spent 6 to 12 hours a day in a local Internet café (“PC room”) playing the 3-D fantasy game Prius, leaving their daughter at home alone and hungry. The couple’s main source of income was “Gold Mining,” or trading points in the game for cash; they attempted to cut costs by paying for large blocks of computer time – 10 hours – at a PC room discount. In Prius, the couple cared for “Anima,” a child-like mini-avatar earned after completing a number of quests, whose “personality changes based on interactions it has with the player.” Journalist Andrew Salmon, who followed the case from its start, notes the irony “that [the couple] was raising an un-live child while essentially abandoning their own.” (Source: HBO)