Korea: Man kills son so he can go to internet cafe to play games
In a disturbing story from Taegu, South Korea, a 22-year-old man has confessed to suffocating his 28-month-old son and putting him in a garbage bag because the child wouldn’t sleep and kept him from going to the Internet Cafe to game, according to a report in the Korea Herald.
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The man, surnamed Jeong, an extreme case of a gaming addict, told the police he committed the murder because he grew angry at the child for not going to sleep as he prepared to go to an Internet cafe to play video games. He then put the child’s body in a trash bag and abandoned it outside.
His crime was uncovered Sunday after the child’s body was found in a garbage bag in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province. Jeong told police, he killed his son by “covering the child’s nose and mouth with his hand,” more than a month ago.
South Korean television aired closed circuit TV footage of Jeong that showed him getting into an elevator with a suitcase and checking his hair in the mirror, apparently on his way to dispose of his son’s body.
The brutal crime has triggered a national debate in South Korea concerning the underlying factors behind this crime. “Alcohol addiction, gambling addiction, and excessive dependence on games all make people do things that seem incomprehensible to most people,” said Kwak Ho-sun, a Daegu-based psychiatrist. “In the case of game addicts, they tend to forget or deny reality. As in Jeong’s case, they end up doing absurd things.”
But others cautioned against pinning the whole blame on gaming, and said a combination of social causes is responsible for rampant child abuse.
