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In March 2010, the death of South Korean infant Kim Sa-rang became an international news story. While any child's passing should always give the media pause, it was the circumstances surrounding the loss which catapulted the story onto the global stage: the parents had neglected their three-month-old daughter for an online role-playing game.
Kim Sa-rang, whose last name translates to "love" in English, was found by authorities while her parents were gaming at a local cyber cafe. The child passed due to malnourishment. Kim Jae-beom, 40, and his wife, Kim Yun-jeong, 25, were both arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter. Yun-jeong was pregnant with another child at the time of the arrest and served no jail time. Her attorney cited Korean laws relating to addiction which reduced her sentence. Kim Jae-beom served one year in prison.
HBO's Love Child, which premiered last night, tells Jae-beom and Yun-jeong's story, though without their direct involvement. The documentary aims to explore how our always-connected modern human condition set the stage for the child's death, but ultimately falls short thanks to a heavy-handed approach that steers the film away from any substantive conversation. Director Valerie Veatch relies on some of the very same tactics seen in sensationalist cable news segments here in the states—frozen screenshots of online role-playing games, for instance, address the issue of addiction with all of the subtlety of a keyboard to the jaw.
The South Korean couple became enamored by a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) titled Prius Online; they binged on the game in six- to 12-hour sessions. Prius Online eventually rewarded the couple with an in-game child avatar, Anima. In a cruel twist of irony, Anima is killed in one of the higher levels; using in-game currency, they revive the character. As for the couple's real-life primary source of income, it's indicative of their cyber obsession— they farmed and sold virtual goods in Prius Online's fictional society to, in turn, produce the cash needed to further feed their habit.
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Throughout Love Child, Veatch focuses less on Sa-rang's passing and its impact on the parents than on larger philosophical questions that are never fully answered. How do virtual experiences affect humans in the real world? Does video game/Internet addiction finally merit a place next to debilitating disorders such as alcoholism and compulsive gambling? These questions are particularly poignant given that South Korea boasts one of the world's most advanced Internet infrastructures and has produced some of the most prolific and successful athletes in the world of competitive gaming. South Korea currently has a bill awaiting passage that would classify online gaming and Internet addiction as legitimate recourse in criminal prosecutions. Love Child doesn't help illuminate any of that.
Several other storytelling devices are to blame for the final muddled product. The decisions to not show the parents' faces, the reliance on subtitles, and the awkward attempts to transport viewers inside Prius Online's virtual realm would've been effective independently, but when combined give Love Child a disjointed quality and push the story ever so slightly into the surreal. The film is at its best when it remains a documentary about the case of the neglected child, the arrest of the parents, and the outcome of the trial, but Veatch spends far too little time with those topics. The parents are never spoken to directly and are little more than an afterthought—a glaring omission considering how the parents are the story's emotional core.
Love Child never fully commits to one position on video game addiction, and that inconsistency detracts from what could have been an even-handed documentary. Gamer addiction is either a legitimate affliction or it exists as a social concept that breeds contention and warrants no sanctioned categorization or treatment; while both of these stances are presented, Love Child never settles on one or the other. It's just incoherent and frustrating.
Note: Prius Online has been discontinued in South Korea since December 17, 2013.
Hanuman Welch is an Associate Editor at Complex. He tweets here.
