Korean netizens have expressed a combination of shock and sympathy at the extraordinary case of a woman who delivered her child in the bathroom of a PC Bang in Seoul, before placing the child in a black bag and abandoning it among the rubbish. The story was one of the most-commented on stories when it was posted on Naver, the largest South Korean internet portal.
On April 5th Seoul police revealed that a woman in her twenties, who had given birth in a PC bang toilet after going into labour while playing online games, had been taken into custody on suspicion of child neglect and infanticide.
The woman (26), referred to only as Ms. A, went into labour on the morning of March 25 at a Songpa-gu PC bang, and immediately after giving birth to a boy she placed the child in a black bag and left it in a bin opposite the PC bang car-park. In an SBS news report, footage showed the bathroom where the child was born, the bin in which the bag was disposed of, and some CCTV footage of the woman allegedly leaving the PC bang with a black vinyl bag.
From January up until the moment she gave birth, the woman had apparently been wandering around the various PC bang in Songpa-gu, playing games for the entire day. A police statement confirmed:
“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.”
It is understood that Ms. A was having a baby with a man she had met through internet chat. They had been living together, but when he learned of her pregnancy last December, he left her and she began going to PC bang.
Though the woman had some part time work in convenience stores and restaurants, she had been asking her online gaming partners to send her money, saying that she was hungry. They would give her amounts between 30, 000 and 50,000 won – enough to cover her gaming fees and money for food.
A police spokesperson stated:
“Ms. A is unable to contact her parents and so on, and has received cold treatment and neglect in an underprivileged environment. She had even been unable to have her pregnancy confirmed at a hospital, and is in a worsening state of health.”
The police plan to apply for a warrant for Ms. A’s arrest.
South Korea is generally considered to be a socially conservative nation, where family values and old Confucian morality still loom large in the everyday lives of many, and this incident is bound to bring issues of abortion and single mothers back into public debate. But how are netizens responding to this sad state of affairs? Should Ms. A be arrested, or is she just another casualty of modern Korean life? And what about the father?
Comments from Naver:
dkvm****:
Don’t go blaming it on the man, on the parents, on society. If you were clearly a woman who is stuck in life, no matter what you do, you have to spare your kids. I’m a woman like you, and as someone with children I really beg you, don’t kill them. Do you know how many youngsters want to become mothers with everything that’s in them? No matter what you do, you have to let your child live, you offensive sods.
* dark****:
Who reads comments comments and stuff…? But it just seems like this is an article that for some reason makes me feel uncomfortable…Furthermore I have lived like that but no one knows how [that child] might feel when it grows up. If even now it was living and hadn’t died. It’s a bit irrelevant but I still resent and hate my parents. It’s really awful to grow up under a mother who’d had a child with a father who couldn’t even cope with the responsibility of being a parent, and who’d tried to get rid of the child in such an awful way. Even I, a child whose parents weren’t even capable of morals, have come to live without thinking of morals myself. This is an article that makes me think if in the end that child had grown up, what would it have become?…In the end, this is the kind of crappy world we have these days.
*sher****:
This is a bold article – a girl who’s lost her senses driven to gaming addiction…
*dark****:
That seems over the top. Things will come back to you in this world where people are killed one by one…is it reasonable to make someone pregnant and then disappear?…That’s right, it’s not just being emotional, I really want people to grasp the fundamental point. I am still twenty years old, but as I see these dirty things around me, I sometimes wonder if I didn’t subconsciously learn things from the way I was brought up. I am a student at vocational school, and I saw so much of this dirty environment, so I did that kind of thing too, but nowadays, I think that it’s as though the world is gradually getting dirtier. People just don’t get this, they can’t even get the slightest inkling of this, so it seems to me that Korea is getting more and more pitiful. I wonder if it’s because of people who think that even divorce is not that big a deal.
*choi****:
There are those bastards on the TV who say she’ll be arrested, laughing sickeningly and sucking up to the camera, but in this Korea, in this country, this type of woman, who rather than being arrested should be taken into a psychiatric hospital, is arrested because we have no other way to try her, and her life will just be pushed further into hell. Arresting a psychiatric patient? And those swindlers in politics and economics have power? While you’re making election pledges with my taxes, go arrest those guys who are gambling away the country’s money!
*vsha****:
Gaming-addiction is a problem, but the responsibility of the parents who drove her to gaming addiction is greater, and the responsibility of the social systems that create those parents is greater still. Now, social ills are so widespread, and looking at these things as the problems of individuals is the cause of it. This is not something the government must solve alone; we all have to step up and solve it.
*rabe****:
If you’ve got a gaming addiction, you’ve lost all powers of judgement and control, and you’re in a weak state, then according to the courts, they say men are ignored and punish him harshly but he is the least accountable. But addiction has no relation to this crime. If addiction is the cause, and there was a cause and effect relation with that woman then it will be reduced but even in a state of addiction you can still sufficiently make decisions. The fact that I also have a gaming addiction means that I can distinguish this. And to abandon a baby with no future, that’s the responsibility of both the man and the woman. It’s not like the man was forced into [having sex], but the woman is responsible for murder. Of course the woman must be the one who is more responsible for what happened, I guess.
* mand****:
It’s not that that woman did that thing because of a gaming addiction, it’s that a woman who is fit to do that kind of thing would have a gaming addiction.
*inst****:
So you’re saying the woman is guilty for aborting a child but the man who buggered off has no responsibility? You ad-lib kids… That’s right, don’t have sex, who’s going to force you to have sex? It’s consensual sex, you both agree, it comes to this and you’re confused? Didn’t you have sex before you got married? Of course, is there nothing that could have prevented this? Does the man nag you to do it? Does this mean the woman can’t refuse? Is she asking for a bruise? What the hell is going in their heads… if the man presses for sex she’ll do it for him? Will you do it for me if I harass you? Women are funny, so clearly it’s the woman’s fault. You have sexual rights: if you refuse to have sex, then that’s where it ends, right?
* aron****:
Every naggomsu-lover is not a game freak but game freaks are for the most part Naggomsu-lovers it seems tsk tsk
* qkfl****:
Little baby, don’t hate your parents in heaven, and please forget all the pain, I love you, little baby.
* shau****:
I’m aghast. Shouldn’t we get rid of these chatting sites like buddy buddy? The man bums around and if he didn’t provide for the kid before he runs off then we wouldn’t have this kind of thing. The woman wandering round and doing what she wants is at fault, right? Just knocking about here and there, not even taking responsibility for the crime, and can do that kind of thing without hesitation ~ Bumming around and then running off? Always living wildly, not using contraceptives… If the partner she met on the chat site knew how to take responsibility and had done so…they’re just retards.
* shai****:
This is definitely the end of the women who live like players in their youth
* meso****:
Those twats who have abortions are all murders, right? ke ke Use contraception properly, and don’t bum around.. tsk tsk
* meso****:
I know some guys like this! It’s all good and they live together, but the woman gets pregnant and so the guy’s like “I don’t know about this” and runs off, the woman begs for money, a message comes, and even if you don’t see it there’s a video!!! These days people like having sex but they can’t face the music.
* noa5****:
If you’re not capable of bringing up a child you’ve given birth to, for god’s sake use a condom – so sex is good for the two of you; why must an innocent child be born to just die like that?
* keja****:
That’s not human…I have no words…
* tlqq****:
That man is a total fucker…And as a man myself, the murders will start with you, who abandoned a woman who’s having a baby! I want to catch this man and carry out a maruta on him.
do_o****:
The woman who abandoned the baby was brought up not to know what love was herself, ever since she was a child, so she could have had very little love towards children, or towards family. (I guess that’s why she could throw away a life so easily…. ㅜ.ㅜ) I suppose that these days, they want to get as much attention for an article as they can…it seems like they write articles from their own subjective view-point with really extreme contents!? Absolutely! Like [an article about someone who] abandons a child because they’re obsessed with gaming…that woman’s circumstances are completely rotten…..
oore****:
What a pitiful reality…I mean, in our country the social systems are very advanced so until you can give birth they will help you for free…If I knew that young lady a little even now, there wouldn’t be this kind of incident. The man who dumped the woman is a problem, as is the woman who didn’t care; it is only that poor, abandoned, dead baby that I feel sorry for. It’s the two of them, the man and woman, who are the problem, I hope that they live the rest of their lives in regret.
