The Committee to Nuke Elysium

The couple had “raised” an online girl character while neglecting their own prematurely born daughter, feeding her just once a day in between 12-hour stretches at a neighbourhood Internet cafe, Yonhap news agency said.

It quoted police as saying they had become obsessed with raising a virtual girl character called “Anima” in the popular role-playing game “Prius Online”.

“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,” Chung Jin-Won, a police officer, told Yonhap.

“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.”