Virtual Reality met a mother with her dead daughter

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Virtual Reality met a mother with her dead daughter

Some say the video is touching, but others see it as exploitation

 

 

 

The reunion between a mother and her dead daughter via virtual reality on South Korean television has become an online hit, Frans reported.

The footage began with the girl - who died of leukemia in 2016 - appearing behind a pile of firewood in a park, as if playing hide and seek.

"Mom, where was she?" She asks. "I miss you so much. Did I miss you?"

With tears streaming down her face, Zhang Li Sung reached out to her, emotion-filled.

"I missed Yeon," she said to her computer-generated six-year-old daughter, her hands moving to caress her hair.

But in the real world, Zhang stood in front of a cold green screen, wearing virtual reality headphones and touch-sensitive gloves, with a locket on her neck holding her daughter's ashes.

Sometimes the camera was passed on to Zhang's wife and their three surviving children, rubbing their tears.

Many viewers offered Zhang their sympathy and supported the innovative concept.

"My mother passed away unexpectedly two years ago and I wish I could meet her through virtual reality," said one.

But Park Sang Hong media expert said the documentary was an exploitation of personal pain.

It took eight months of filming and programming to create the virtual Yeon, but the makers of the documentary insist that the broadcast is intended to "comfort the family" and not to promote virtual reality in South Korea.

The technology presented "a new way to keep loved ones in our memory," one of the producers told reporters.

Zhang herself - who has tattooed on her daughter's name and date of birth - hopes the program will "comfort" others who have lost loved ones.

"Although it was very short ... I was really happy at the moment," she wrote on the blog.

During the broadcast, the two sat down at a table to celebrate Nai Yeon's missing birthdays, singing "Happy Birthday" together.

Before blowing the candles, Yon wished her mother would stop crying.