BABY DIES AS PARENTS RAISE VIRTUAL CHILD

KOREAN COUPLE LET BABY STARVE TO DEATH
WHILE CARING VIRTUAL CHILD IN ONLINE GAME

SEOUL (BBC News) - In a shocking case of parental negligence, a 3-month-old baby was starved to death after her parents forget to feed her as they were busy honing their parental skills in raising a virtual child. A South Korean couple who were addicted to the internet let their three-month-old baby starve to death while raising a virtual daughter online, police said. The pair fed their own premature baby just once a day in between 12-hour stretches at an internet cafe. Kim Yoo-chul, 41, and his partner Choi Mi-sun, 25, fed their three-month-old baby only on visits home between 12-hour sessions at a neighbourhood internet cafe, where they were raising an avatar daughter in a Second-Life-style game called Prius online, police said. Leaving their real daughter at their home in a suburb of Seoul to fend for herself, the pair, who were unemployed, spent hours role-playing in the virtual reality game, which allows users to choose a career and friends, granting them offspring as a reward for passing a certain level.

The pair became obsessed with nurturing their virtual daughter, called Anima, but neglected their real daughter, who was not named. Eventually, the couple returned home after one 12-hour session in September to find the child dead and called police. The pair were arrested on Friday after an autopsy showed that the baby died from prolonged malnutrition. "The couple seemed to have lost their will to live a normal life, because they didn't have jobs and gave birth to a premature baby," a police officer said. "They indulged themselves in the online game of raising a virtual character so as to escape from reality, which led to the death of their real baby." he added.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

The nature of the borderline energy, the tatasthā-śakti, is that it can go in either direction. However, the living beings who belong to this energy are constantly attacked by temptation. They see the "marketplace of pleasures" and are distracted from their purpose, ultimately falling into a hellish existence. This is the illusory nature of this world, and everyone is immersed and entangled in this illusion. Try to understand this yourselves and try to make others understand. It is our duty to make this effort. Let everyone know this truth.

Śrīla Bhakti Promode Puri Mahārāja :
“Vyasa Puja Lecture” - 100th Birthday
October 1997 - Mayapur, India.
http://bvml.org/SBPPG/100vyasapuja.html