Straight from Korea, we have a story that seems to meld all the most awful components of video game stories that hit the mainstream media: Gaming addiction, an Internet cafe, a neglectful mother, and a dead baby in a dumpster.


Reports koreaBANG, a woman at a PC gaming cafe in Seoul (where they're called PC Bangs) delivered a baby in the restroom on April 5, then placed the baby in a garbage bag and the bag in a garbage bin outside the cafe. It couldn't be determined if the child was born dead or died as a result of its neglect/suffocation/being placed in a dumpster. God that makes my skin crawl. That's a security cam picture of her leaving the cafe.

From January until the child's delivery, the woman had been wandering around the gaming cafes in the city, playing games for the entire day. "In a state of gaming-addiction, Ms. A seemed to have a vague attitude in which she was unable to feel any responsibility or sensibility as she gave birth and killed/neglected the baby," said a police spokesman.


I don't toss these stories out there to suggest this kind of thing is a crisis, but I do think you identify with me when I wonder just how in the hell someone gets to this point in his or her life. I play video games like it's my job. Well, it is my job. And I have seen the sunrise playing things like Borderlands, Fallout and even Tiger Woods PGA Tour. But I have no idea if any game could ever take over my life to the degree another person gets harmed, and I think that's the point. They don't. The person involved is probably severely depressed to begin with.

Woman Gives Birth in Gaming Cafe, Dumps and Kills Baby [KoreaBANG, h/t belgium]