A fifteen-year-old Korean boy murdered his mother, then killed himself, following a dispute over Internet games.
The mother scolded the boy after playing too many games this past Monday night. The fight escalated, with the son strangling his mother to death. He then hanged himself. Apparently, the boy's younger sister says he's been playing "violent" games for around three years.
This isn't the first Korean death in which Internet gaming was implicated. Around 90% of Korean homes are online, and two million citizens are estimated to be addicts. At least the streets are safe.
SKorean police: Gamer, 15, kills himself, mother [Associated Writers Of Functional Headlines]
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Contest:
12:00 PM on 11.17.2010 | 
After happening so many times, videogames do start to play a role maybe.
Just thinking.
The kid was stupid, selfish, spoiled and immature. Not sorry for his death. I am very saddened by the death of the Mother and the pain the family has to go through though.
And as Sir Legendhead said, it's only indicative of the individual. He was messed up and immature. His actions don't speak for gamers, just for himself. And what a sad individual his actions showed him to be.
@ Neroisonfire: I agree with you, but the video game community at large is not willing to implicate their beloved past time in the slightest with any negative side effects. It's like a wine enthusiast insisting that drunk driving isn't a problem. Things that are good can still create problems that don't necessarily outweigh the pro's for having that thing exist at all.
But as for your comment, watch how quickly the comments pile up, falling into two categories: 1. Bad people do bad things without needing a motivator and 2. FUCK YOU YOU'RE AN INCOMPETENT, WORTHLESS ASSHOLE!
But what would the alternative be? Mandatory psychological evaluations for violent videogame purchases?
There very well may be a correlation between violent videogames and violent actions, but does that mean that the majority of mentally balanced, normally functioning game players and developers should have to sacrifice their own personal freedoms for the minuscule amount of outliers that simply cannot control themselves within the realm of society? I hate to sound trite, but freedoms have their costs.
What a sad story :(
Murderous nutcases, not so much.
Or slowly decompose in the ground, at which point his jaw will drop, and he'll be stuck in that permanent opera singer pose for years to come.
Obviously this kid was fucked before anything went down, maybe his mom beat him or sexually assaulted him, we will never know.
See this hammer?
I can build a house with it, or someone can crack your skull in and because someone used a hammer to kill someone with does this make all hammers bad?
So brutal totalitarianism, secret police, imprisonment or killing of dissenters, violent political reeducation/brain washing processes, extremely widespread poverty, and mass starvation are the cure for occasional violence from video game players? Yeah, that's great to know. No doubt this important knowledge will revolutionize sociology. FFuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Also: It's not that he's a gamer that killed his mom over games. He's a human who got in a fight with his mom and responded violently. It just so happens that games caused the fight. As games become more prevalent (thank you wii, kinect) people will stop attributing things like this to the games. When someone kills someone because of some other dispute, we don't blame the item that caused the dispute. When games are part of everyone's culture, not just gamers, we won't have to live under the shadow of our hobby.
kekekekekekekeke
We regret nothing!
But seriously though, internet addiction is a serious problem in Korea and even the government is taking actions to "cure" it.
With games, you could argue that a dude played violent vidja gaems and his aggression was heightened, but the same evidence you cite for this could also simply indicate that a person with naturally aggressive tendencies will enjoy violent video games. In this situation, correlation is not only not equal to causation, it doesn't even necessarily imply it.
And that's pretty much everything that most studies on this subject can determine, that violent people who play violent video games are, well, violent people who play violent video games. Tautologies galore!
*The more you know...*
Now you're talking.
While that is true, that isn't how a lotof people look at it. People will still blame video games and they will continued to be banned because of morons.