A South Korean couple were so addicted to the internet that they let baby, only three months old, starve to death while raising a virtual daughter online.
The couple spent twelve hour periods in a local internet cafe raising and nurturing an online virtual baby but only fed their own premature baby just once a day.
The father, aged 41 years, and the mother, aged 25 years, were arrested in the town of Suweon some five months after they reported the death of their daughter.
The father, a policeman, lost his job and claimed to have lost the will to live a normal life and he and his wife indulged themselves online to escape from reality. They became obsessed with their virtual daughter in an online role-playing game and neglected their own, real daughter.
An autopsy showed the death of their daughter was caused by a long period of malnutrition.