Toddler killed ‘so his father could return to online gaming’

South Korean police have charged a man for the murder of his two-year-old son after he confessed to suffocating the child so he could leave the house to go back to playing games at an internet cafe.

Police in the city of Taegu arrested the 22-year-old on Sunday, identified only by his surname, Chung, after finding the body of his child in a suitcase wrapped in a trash bag near his home.

Chung had earlier reported the boy missing.

The police initially believed the unemployed man had left his son to starve to death by abandoning him for 10 days while playing games.

Chung later confessed to “covering the child’s nose and mouth with his hand”, more than a month ago, killing him so that he could go to an internet cafe, a police officer said yesterday.

The whereabouts of the infant’s mother was not clear, although local news reports said she had been away from the house for some time working in a factory.

South Korean television aired closed circuit TV footage of Chung 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 case will likely fuel an ongoing debate about the problem of compulsive online gaming in South Korea where parliament is considering a bill to classify the activity as potentially addictive as drugs, gambling and alcohol.

Online game addiction is seen as a serious social issue in South Korea which has near-universal availability of high-speed internet.

South Korea is one of the world’s most wired nations with a thriving gaming industry.

The government has tried to limit minors from going online to play late in the evening by cutting their connections.

The details echoed a notorious 2009 case that shocked the country when a couple let their three-month-old baby starve to death while they played a video game on bringing up a virtual child.

In another case, a woman was arrested in 2012 after giving birth in the toilet of an internet cafe where she had been playing for days, and abandoning the newborn.

A national survey carried out by the Science Ministry last year concluded that 7% of the country’s 50 million population were at “high risk” of becoming addicted to internet use, with the figure rising to 11.7% among teenagers.

Family groups say the problem has been exacerbated by smartphones which enjoy a 75% penetration rate in South Korea.

- Reuters