Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - 58: Murder House: The Korean Cannibal Gang and the Woman Who Escaped Them

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

Rule #1: We Hate The Rich. Rule #2: Death is the only thing that awaits he who betrays this group. Rule #3: Never trust a woman, not even your own mother. This is the story of the Chijon Family, South Korea's most infamous gang, and the woman they kidnapped who lead to their undoing.  TW: Death, Torture, Animal Death Subscribe on Patreon for bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons have access to ad-free listening and bonus content. And members of our High Council on Patreon have access to our after show called Footnotes. Apple subscriptions are now live! Get access to ad-free episodes and bonus episodes when you subscribe on Apple Subscriptions. Follow on Tik Tok and Instagram for a daily dose of horror. We have a monthly newsletter now! Be sure to sign up for updates and more. This episode is brought to you by Quince. Indulge in affordable luxury! Go to Quince.com/hsp for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by Kaelyn Moore. 

September 11th, 1994. A police car pulls up to the scene of a car crash in the southwest part of South Korea. There they see a Hyundai Grandeur with its front and sides caved in and windshields smashed sitting at the bottom of a short but steep cliff. It doesn't take much for the officers to figure that the car most likely took a nosedive off the side of it sometime in the last few days. One officer goes up to the top of the cliff and confirms that there's tread marks leading off the side, directly above where the car lay. The other officer is still looking at the vehicle. Through a spiderweb of cracks in the windshield,

he can see the outline of someone slumped over the steering wheel. He needs to figure out who this man is and exactly why he went off this cliff. The first thing he notices when he pops open the car door is the overwhelming smell of alcohol. Okay, well, we probably have our reason why. The officer checks the ID the guy has on him and learns that his name is Lee Jong Won, a 36-year-old musician from outside of Seoul, over four hours away. The officer calls the local police station

to report what he's found. And as he does, a different police station in South Korea gets another phone call. This call is from the family of a woman named Miss Lee, the secret 27-year-old mistress of Lee Jong-won. They're calling to report her missing. Miss Lee's family hadn't heard from her in two days despite trying to get in touch with her, causing them to worry.

The officers at the scene don't know about that phone call, but they guess that Li Zhong Wan's crash happened about two days ago, around the time that Ms. Li stopped contacting her family. To the cop, this feels, ignorantly so, like a pretty open and shut case. In South Korea in the 1990s, there weren't detectives or special forces dedicated to solving crime. There were only cops. And according to cops from that time, there weren't a lot of resources.

If they heard hooves, they had to assume it was horses because they didn't have the technology or funding to look into it if it were zebras. Just as the officers are about to close this case as a classic drunk driving accident, one of them pulls Li Zhongwon's body back just to get a good look at him. And they see something that changes everything they thought about this case. Li Jianguan is covered in stab wounds. They're consistent with knife punctures. They couldn't have been caused by the car crash.

The police give each other a look. What the hell happened here? As this is happening, just a few towns away in southwest Korea, Miss Lee sits in a disgusting cement enclosure a group of boys are calling the murder house. She's been there since she stopped getting in touch with her family two days ago. Inside of a makeshift cell, she is continuously watched by five boys in their early 20s and one very bored looking girl who Miss Lee figures out is one of their girlfriends. Miss Lee wonders if she'll

ever be let free. She wonders if police have found her boyfriend's body and if that had inspired them to look for her. But what she's experienced since she went missing and what she was about to experience was so unbelievable, so outlandish, she wondered if anyone would even believe her. It's that feeling.

When the energy in the room shifts. When the air gets sucked out of a moment. And everything starts to feel wrong. It's the instinct between fight or flight. When your brain is trying to make sense of what it's seeing, it's when your heart starts pounding. Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I'm your host, Kaelyn Moore.

I just want to start by giving a content warning for today's episode. It's dark and intense. It's the story of Miss Lee, a woman who found herself wrapped up in the world of one of South Korea's most violent and incompetent gangs, the Cheon family. It's another story of one woman's survival against all odds, which is kind of keeping theme with another episode I recently did on Yuliana Kopka's miraculous journey through the jungle after her plane broke apart in the sky. I will say though, this one is a little darker.

There are hardly any resources in English about this case. We had to dig through Korean newspapers, interviews, and books to get to the heart of this story, as well as consult some of our native Korean friends. All of the events I'm going to tell you about today are real ones that occurred. Sometimes there will be some dialogue added that is consistent with those events

to better set the scene. And if you're interested, we'll talk more about that in this week's footnote episode on this case, available on Patreon for the high council tier. And lastly, I am NOT a native Korean speaker, so some words and names will be pronounced with an American accent. This is not meant with any disrespect, it's just to ensure that the focus doesn't get taken away from the story and those involved. But for now, we're going to take a quick break.

And when we get back, we're going to jump into the story of the Chi-Jon family. This episode is brought to you by Quince. There is truly nothing I love more than quality luxury clothing at affordable prices, which is why I'm really excited to tell you about today's sponsor, Quince. Quince has quickly become my new go-to for luxury essentials at affordable prices, like 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters from $50, washable silk tops and dresses, organic cotton sweaters, and even 14 karat gold jewelry and accessories. And also their clothing is usually 50 to 80% less than similar brands.

Recently, I got a cashmere sweater from Quince and I seriously wear it every day. I feel like I can wear it for any occasion. Like yesterday, I woke up and I wanted something comfy so I put it on. And then later someone wanted to grab coffee so I just put jeans on and then bam I had another outfit. And then when I went out later that night, I swapped out the jeans for a black skirt and I put on some jewelry and high black boots. And then I had another outfit. I also have a silk blouse from Quince that is so buttery soft. I love it so much. I want to order each thing in like every color and every size so that I'll have sweaters and silk blouses for any

occasion. Another thing that I love about Quince, basically as much as I love the clothes, is that Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing processes and premium fabrics and finishes. We can all feel good about clothes that were made using ethical processes. Indulge in affordable luxury. Go to quince.com slash hsp for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince, Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash hsp to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince dot com slash hsp. Our story starts just a few days before Lee Jong-won's car was found at the bottom of the cliff. 3 a.m. September 8, 1994.

27-year-old Ms. Lee and her boyfriend, 37-year-old Lee Jong-won, are driving on a dark country road outside of Seoul, South Korea. Their illicit affair had brought them to a motel on the outskirts of town and they decided to head back to their respective homes in the wee hours of the morning. To keep consistent with South Korean privacy standards, I'm going to keep referring to her by Miss Lee, which is how Korean papers refer to her. As the two are driving down the dark and quiet road, out of nowhere, the couple sees two sets of headlights in their rearview. They watch as two cars in the distance speed up to them, getting close enough to make out

that one is a small sedan and the other is a large cargo truck. The two vehicles then slow down and keep a steady pace behind their Hyundai Grandeur. The couple doesn't think anything of it at first, but a minute goes by, then two, then five, and the cars behind them stay steadily on their tail, never changing speed, their bright headlights still blinding their rearview mirror. Miss Li starts getting a sinking feeling they're being followed. So Li Zhongwan decides to exit the freeway and let the cars pass just to show her that they're okay. But as he hits the blinker and starts to exit, the cargo truck revs its engine.

Li Zhonghuang is about to exit off the highway when the truck speeds up and swerves around the car getting in front of it. It then slams on the brakes and forces their car to stop. Li Jianghuang tries to reverse and get around the truck, but the smaller sedan has already pulled up right behind them, trapping them in between the two vehicles. There's a stillness after the cars all stop moving, and Li Jianghuang doesn't know what to do next.

And that's when the door of the cargo truck pops open. And a couple of young men jump out and circle their Hyundai. One man approaches the window, pulls out an air rifle, and fires it into the car. With that, the men rip open the car doors and grab at the couple, but they fight back. Miss Li is beaten during the altercation, and someone whips out a knife and stabs Li Zhonglong as he tries to fight them off. He's injured, but he's alive. The two are then dragged from the car, their eyes and mouths are covered with tape and

their hands and feet are bound. They get loaded into the cargo truck and are driven off. The whole encounter lasts less than two minutes. The next time that Miss Lee can see again is when she's taken from the car and brought into the house. That's when the tape is ripped from her eyes and she's able to look around. The room she's in is concrete and contains a makeshift jail cell that she's been placed into.

There's sterile overhead lighting and in one corner she sees what looks like a barbecue pit merged with an incinerator. The whole situation seems like it's out of a saw movie. This is also the first time that she gets a good look at her captors and for how organized and violent the kidnapping was, their appearance doesn't seem to match. There's five men down in the basement with them that can't be older than 22. They have bad haircuts and acne and they pace around the room anxiously.

It's almost like they didn't think they'd make it this far in their plan. One of the men goes over to the couple and explains what's happening. He says he and his friends, who call themselves the Chijon family, know that the two of them are rich and they're going to need to pay. Miss Lee turns to her boyfriend, who has already shot her a confused look. Um, we're not rich, her boyfriend explains.

Miss Lee was a waitress and her boyfriend was a musician. They didn't have any money. What made you think we were rich, they wonder. You two were driving a car only the rich and famous have, a Hyundai Grandeur, one of them explains. The couple shoot each other another skeptical look. They kind of had them there. Hyundai Grands D'Ors were common amongst executives

and politicians in Korea at the time. Only this car was most likely not Lee Jong Won's. He had a wife at home. This car potentially belonged to his wife or her family who made more money. It was not a car he could have afforded on his own. The captors realized that the two were most likely not going to pay and that made them frustrated. They continued to pace around and swear until one of them eventually brings Miss Lee some bread and milk.

She looks at the gray, sad food and decides she's not really that hungry. The captor who presented her with it really latches on to her response. He calls for the other guys. See? She really is rich! He yells out. Someone who was truly poor would know the value of scraps. They wouldn't ever turn down food. That's it, the group decides. If the two of you are not gonna pay, then you're gonna die. And with that, they unlock the makeshift jail cell and pull the two of them out.

This gang of villainous, self-conscious boys known as as the Chee-Jong family, had been operating in the shadows of South Korea for about a year. The idea came from Kim Ki-Won, a 26-year-old obsessed with Chinese noir films from the 1980s. Sure, that sounds like a random and unimportant detail, but it's the genesis of his idea for the group. Kim Ki-Won was somewhat of a lost soul. He was hyper-intelligent, but he had trouble holding down labor-intensive jobs

in his early 20s. His grade school reports always said that he lacked cooperation. Kim would spend most of his free time watching gangster films by Donald Chow and Andy Lau. These movies were gritty and emphasized humanity's dark side, selfishness and greed. Media critics will say that these kinds of films inspired Kim to lead a life of crime, but I would argue that he had that

inside of him the entire time and sought these movies out because they fed into the way he already saw the world. One night, Kim Ki-Won was playing poker with two other guys. 20 year old Kang Dong-Un, who I'll refer to by his last name, Kang, and 22 year old Moon Sang-Rok, who I'll call Sang-Rok, when they started talking about how polluted they believed the world to be. They thought people were inherently evil and that the system was rigged by the rich so they would never succeed.

Recently, in South Korea, a scandal involving the corruption of college entrance exams had just made the headlines, and that struck a certain nerve with Kim, who was a high school dropout. It proved that the world was unfair. The rich could just buy whatever they wanted. He wished, out loud, that there was something he could do to clean up society. And that's where the initial idea formed. That maybe there was something they could do to clean up society. They decided they were going to form a gang to take out their frustrations on the rich. Kang had been imprisoned twice and knew another guy, 19-year-old Baek Byung-ok, that would join them.

The two had been cellmates during one of Kang's stints. Two more guys were also recruited, 19-year-old Moon Sob, who Kang had met playing poker, and 21-year-old Hyun Yang, who was added from a construction site. The group got jobs working construction to save up enough money to finance their crimes, though they were still unsure exactly what those crimes would be. Kim Ki-Won wanted to raise one billion won, which is around a million dollars. And he knew he wasn't gonna make that much from construction.

But he was also a pretty good poker player, possibly inspired by all the gritty gangster noir he had been raised on. His nickname at the poker table was G-John, which meant supreme. It came from one of the movies he loved. He was hoping that playing enough poker would get them the money that they felt they needed.

The group then added one more guy to their ranks, 18-year-old Song Bong-un, who would act as the treasurer. They needed someone to watch over their finances while they fundraised. With this final edition, they christened themselves the Qijon family and set out to get vengeance on the rich. Before they found their first target though,

Kim Ki-Won decided they needed some rules. He gathered everyone around so he could read them their manifesto. Rule one is we hate the rich. Everyone cheered. Obviously, this was the cornerstone to their operation. Rule two is death is the only thing that awaits the person who betrays this group.

Again, the group cheered. This would discourage anyone from snitching on the group to the police. They were now brothers until they died. The group looked to Kim Ki-Won for another rule, but he had only thought of two. It felt more official to have a third rule though, so he looked down, thinking of what could be next.

Rule three is don't trust a woman, even your own mother. Okay, this one felt a little random, but they could all get behind it. It was brotherhood until the end, no one else. And with that, they all set out to find their first victim. On July 18th, 1993, the family was driving around Daejeon looking for targets. Kim Ki-won has told them they still don't have enough money to do any real crimes against the rich just yet. Again, whatever that meant. So he tells them that they're going to practice first. Around 11pm, they spot a woman named Choi in her early 20s, walking alone under a bridge in the direction of the train station.

She's the daughter of a farmer, she comes from a poor family, she's hardly the type of target that the group is after. And yet, Kim KiWon decides that she will be their first victim. He has the guys pull the car over so they can grab Choi and they throw her in the car. They drive her about 12 kilometers away to a secluded area. Kim Ki-Won thinks that he needs to set the precedent

for the group and murder the girl himself. So he chokes her and he screams, this is how you kill a person. But witness accounts from the group say that the process looked awkward and sloppy. Like Kim Ki-Won didn't know if what he was doing would even work. After this first kill,

they buried Choi right there in the mountains. Though Kim was the one who killed Choi, he thought it was important that all the members of the gang be implicated in the crime. And this was something that he felt was really important to the group moving forward. He'd have all of the group participate in the murders and sexual assaults they committed as a way

to discourage anyone from ever going to the police. Two months later, though, one of the members does start having thoughts about going to the police. The youngest member, Treasurer Song Bong-un, is having a moral panic about the group after Choi's murder, and one night, he runs away. The only problem is, he's the treasurer and he takes the few million won the group has saved with him. That's in violation of rule number two. He's betrayed the group and as the rule states anyone who

betrays the group must die. It doesn't take them long to find the boy. He's hiding out at a relative's house and they throw him in their car and they take him to another remote mountain in the southwest of the country. There, Kim Ki-won tells the group what he told them before, that any crime they commit from now on will be committed together. time they commit from now on will be committed together and so each of them take turns hitting Song Bong-un's head with a pickaxe until he stops moving. But something else occurs on the mountain and no one has really been able to explain why this happened, though it's one of the cruelest acts the group ever performs.

While they're up there, they violently kill and eat a dog that they brought with them. Korean criminologists point to this event as a defining moment in the group's history, as a moment they became truly depraved. They had crossed a line with what they were willing to do, and now they could never go back. After they kill the traitor in the group, the Chijon family decides to lay low for a while. They don't practice killing for a few more months. The following spring, they forego killing

to start building a permanent base for their operations. They've finally saved enough money to do so. They find a quiet area of Bulgap Mayan in the southwest. There's only 19 homes in the area, but they purchase one that's painted light blue and pink, which drew a lot of attention to it. But they didn't care about that. They would just paint over it. What they really cared about was the basement. The basement was completely made of concrete and had three distinct rooms. In one room, they built a makeshift prison or detention center, as they called it. And in another,

they built an incinerator. The plan was they would capture the rich, hold them in the detention center, get as much money as they could out of them, and then ultimately kill them and dispose of their bodies in the incinerator. It was all coming to plan, Kim Ki-won thought. He had his gang, he had his facility, and now he was going to use his influence and leadership over the boys to destroy the wealthy. Korea was never going to be the same once he was done.

Except a few weeks later, Kim Ki-won winds up in prison. It turns out, on top of his plan to kill the wealthy, he also had other plans to commit other crimes, and he was arrested after he attacked a middle school girl. Though he fancied himself a criminal mastermind, Kim Ki-Won was no more than a serial predator. And before the group kills a single rich person, the Jijon family loses its Jijon, the master behind their planning. And not long after this, Moon Sob brings his girlfriend Kyung Sook into the mix. What? I thought we said we didn't trust girls, one of the members says. Kyung Sook isn't just a girl, she's my girlfriend. The group didn't have their leader

to look to to clarify the rules. Kim Ki-won was the brains of the group, he had set the precedent, the rest were unsure how to proceed without him. Okay, so besides Kyung-suk, we don't trust any girls. The group all agreed to that. And that's how they ended up where they are now, with two people who aren't even rich in their detention center and no idea what to do next. All that they know is what they learned from Kim Ki-Won. Kill and make sure everyone is implicated. So they tell Miss Lee that they're going to kill her boyfriend and she's going to help them do it. But first, they make the couple drink a lot of alcohol.

They choose to strangle Lee Jong-won because that's what they saw Kim Ki-won do on the mountain. And as they do, they make Miss Lee put her hands around his neck as well. Next, they bring his lifeless body and his car to the top of a cliff, make it look like there's skid marks near the edge, and push him off, hoping the scene will look like he drunkenly swerved off the road. It seems like they're successful and they breathe a sigh of relief, that is, until they turn around and realize they still have to figure out what to do with Miss Lee. Let's just kill her, we don't trust women, says Sang Rock. He was the one who founded the group

with Kim Ki-Won, and he was the most eager to behave like his incarcerated friend would have. But one of the other guys in the group, 21-year-old Hyeong Yang, says no, they should keep her alive. At just 21 years old, he was one of the oldest guys in the group and the de facto leader after Kim Ki-Won's arrest. Miss Lee couldn't help but feel like he also was taking a liking to her. She noticed him watching her every now and then when she sat in the prison cell. Not with a malicious eye, but almost admiration. Kim Ki-Won said no woman could be trusted. But did he mean every woman? He did say not even their own mothers.

But he just said they shouldn't be trusted. He didn't say they should all be killed, right? Plus they let Kyung-suk in the group. The guys decided that Kim didn't really explain that last rule very well, so Miss Lee can live, for now. And I want to mention here that just because they decided to keep her alive doesn't mean she's treated kindly at all. She is still brutalized by the group, and I'm sure at times she figures she would be better off dead. But as long as she's alive, she can escape. So she takes this as a small win.

When they get back to the house, they give Ms. Lee a stack of books and tell her that if she wants to be part of the family, she needs to read them. Well, one, she doesn't want to be part of the family, but she doesn't really have a choice. And two, they're just noir books that Kim Ki-Won liked. It seemed like the group had a limited understanding of the criminal world they were trying to be a part of. Like everything they knew about crime

came from books and movies. Miss Lee sighed and got to reading. Two days later, the group decides it's time to find new victims. So they hop in their car and drive around randomly, hoping they'll be able to know a rich person time to find new victims. So they hop in their car and drive around randomly, hoping they'll be able to know a rich person when they see one, which so far has not worked

at all for them. They drive all the way back up the country to Seoul, where they see 42-year-old Seo Yoon-ho and his wife, 35-year-old Park Mi-ja at the Dong-seoul Park Cemetery, tidying up their family graves. It was Chuseok, a big Korean holiday, and this was one of the ways that people celebrate. At around 5 p.m. Mr. Seo and Mrs. Park were the only two people in the cemetery. The gang was able to sneak up on them and drag them into their cars.

One of the members took the couple's car with them and they all drove south back to the murder house. They dumped them in the detention center where one of the guys demands Mr. So give them 100 million won. Unsurprisingly, Mr. So is not a rich person and he doesn't have access to that kind of money. He tells them that he operates a factory and can maybe get them 80 million won.

That's the money he had on hand to pay his employees. Mr. So calls the guy who runs the factory for him and says he's been in a drunk driving accident. He just makes something up so the guy will meet him somewhere with the money. He tells his employee to meet him at the Gwangju bus terminal, which is just a little inland from the gang's hideout. It's also all the way across the country to the west, far away from where his factory is and nowhere close to Seoul. When the employee hears that's the meeting location, he starts to think something else might be up.

The gang takes Mr. So to the bus terminal and keeps his wife with them as a hostage in the truck. The deal is that they'll be let go when he brings the money back. Mr. So is nervous that his employee won't even show up. He could hear in his voice that he was skeptical of the plan. Hopefully, he hasn't notified the police. Mr. So still doesn't know what the group is capable of. Then he sees headlights pull up to the bus station

through the dark. Out of the car steps his employee holding a bag. The two make the exchange. But the employee is now even more skeptical of what's going on. Where was Mr. So's car, and why didn't he look like he had just been in an accident? He knows he shouldn't, but he gives the bag of cash to Mr. So and watches as he walks over to a car idling in the shadows. Mr. So hands over the cash to the men in the car. There, here's your money. Now let us go. But the gang breaks

their deal. They don't play by the rules. They grab Mr. So and shove him back in the car, dragging him and his wife back to their house. This is all witnessed by the employee, who immediately reports what he thinks is a kidnapping to the police in Ulsan, back where the factory is located. The police say they can't do anything. It happened in a different district. You'll need to call Guangzhou. The only thing is, when he calls the police station in Guangzhou, they seem to be confused. They don't check out the area where the kidnapping occurred. Instead, they send three officers over

to Ulsan to investigate the factory and its executives. They come to the swift conclusion Mr. So was probably running away with a woman or it was some sort of financial scheme but not a kidnapping or anything to take seriously. As the police come to their conclusion that everything is fine, Miss Lee watches as Mr. So and his wife are shoved back into the detention center in the basement. and his wife are shoved back into the detention center in the basement. Because Mr. So paid up, they tell Ms. Lee they want to kill him painlessly. Wait, kill? But we paid you. We had a deal. Mr. So is emotional. He begs for his wife's life. Even if they kill him, they should spare her life. She had nothing to do with this. It would make sense to let Mr. So go here.

He clearly wasn't rich, so he shouldn't be on their hit list. He cooperated and paid them what money he had. But the group didn't operate on what made sense. They didn't even operate on the rules they had laid out for themselves. So once again, they thought about what their incarcerated former leader would have done, and they decided the couple should die

and that everyone should be implicated. They forced the pair to get very drunk and they told Miss Lee she would be responsible for Mr. So's murder. She was, after all, one of them now. At least, Yan Yang treated her like she was one of them. She still caught him looking her direction every now and then, glancing away when their eyes met.

So the other boys treated her like one of them as well, and they handed her an air rifle and made her shoot Mr. So in the chest at point blank range. Next, the gang attacked his wife with knives and an axe. Her death would not be so painless, they decided. To dispose of the bodies, they put them in their incinerator, but for some reason, they start worrying that this will get them caught. Maybe it's because of all the smoke leaving the house, but they become convinced that what they're doing is too obvious. To combat this, they decide they'll

throw a barbecue and invite all the neighbors over. That way they'll assume the smoke from the house was coming from the barbecue, not an incinerator. But that day when they have the barbecue, the gang does another thing that baffles Korean detectives, investigators, and criminologists. They eat some of the bodies of Mr. So and his wife. Some have suggested the group was illustrating just how far they were willing to go. It was a step beyond what they had done to the dog. It's said that Hyun Yang ate some of Mrs. Park's calf and a piece of liver was force-fed to Miss Lee. The next day, Miss Lee was sitting inside the house watching the group outside. They

were drunk again, shirtless again, and this time they were playing with sticks of dynamite. Hyun Yang's brother had gotten them from his construction job and given them to the group. They decided that's how they were going to break their leader, Kim Ki-Won, out of prison. But as Ms. Lee watched them drunkenly light the dynamite and run away squealing, she knew that they'd never be able to get Kim out of prison that way. They'd never be able to do anything out of prison that way. They'd never be able to do anything. They had no direction, no plan.

They didn't even have any principles they were really operating on. Eat the rich? Okay, well all they've done is eaten a dog and two middle-class people. They hadn't gone after a single rich person. They were just cannibalizing their own class. It's then that Xianyang runs into the house, holding his hand. There's blood dripping all down his arm.

Did you hold the dynamite while it exploded? Miss Lee asks. Xianyang nods on the verge of tears. Hyun Yang nods on the verge of tears. Here, let me see. The wound is pretty bad. He's going to have to get it checked out at the hospital. Miss Li perks up a little. He can't go to the hospital by himself. And if she could just go with him, she'd be out of the house, away from the whole group. It would be much easier to get away from one of them

than all of them. A doctor needs to check this out. You shouldn't drive there by yourself though, she tells him, nervously awaiting his response. He looks at the wound. She's right. He's going to need stitches and he's in a lot of pain. Will you drive me?

He asks. Hyun Yang had allowed Miss Lee to live, and now he was allowing her out. Was this intentional? She didn't have time to figure that out. She grabs the keys to the gang sedan and quickly helps him into the car. Her heart is racing the whole way to the hospital. Hyun Yang is pale and sweaty. His body is definitely in shock. When they arrive at the hospital doors, the nurses check him in and the two have to sit in the waiting area.

While they're there, Hyun Yang empties his pockets, giving the contents to Ms. Lee to hold onto for just a second. This includes a cell phone and about $500 cash, so he keeps his car keys. Ms. Lee looks down at the items in her hand, almost salivating. These are all she would need to escape. Kim Hyun-young, a nurse calls out, beckoning him into the doctor's office. He gets up, walks through the waiting area over to the doctor who closes the door behind them, leaving Miss Lee with his belongings. She can't hear anything but her heartbeat and her ears

as she holds onto the phone in cash, alone in the waiting room. She wonders if this was some kind of test of loyalty, like he was testing to see if she was really one of them. They had been treating her as one of their own, and they had made her take part in some horrible crimes. Did he think that would keep her in her chair? Would it?

It turns out, no. Because in a split second, she jumps up and books it out of the hospital. She gets a cab outside by the curb. The money should cover a far ride. She knows she can't go to the local precinct. Within two hours, the group would know about her escape and come looking for her, and she

didn't want to know what would happen if they found her. Once she's in the cab, she tells him to take her to Seoul. That's four hours away, the driver protests, but she tells him she has the money, and they're off. The driver can tell she's anxious, so he tries to make a joke. Don't worry, he says, I know all the gangs in the area. It's maybe meant to jokingly calm her down, like she's safe as long as she's with him.

But Ms. Lee does not take it as that. She thinks he means that he knows the Cheon family. They had told her after all that they were part of a larger group that had spread all throughout Korea. So she has him stop the car near a farm and she takes off running. She gets to the farmhouse and is able to convince the man who lives there to call her a different cab and then she takes that one to Seoul. Meanwhile, Hyun-young emerges from the doctor's office to see the seat where Miss Lee once sat is now empty.

He rushes back to the group and tells them what happened, and they insist that they should go stake out the local police station. But when they're there, they don't see Miss Lee ever go in, and it never looks like the police are mobilizing for a raid. Hyun-young tells them that she's probably just hiding out and she'll return later. She can be trusted. But Miss Lee is in a police precinct on the other side of South Korea telling the police everything. It's an unbelievable story and the cops think she's on drugs. They almost turn her away. But she knows

about Mr. So and his wife, who show up as missing in the police database, and she knows about the crash of Li Zhonglong and how it wasn't an accident. The police are able to ping Mr. So's cell phone, and they see that it's pinging where she said it would, near the murder house. They also confirm the cell phone she brought is registered to one of the guys. So very early the next morning, a team of nine police officers with only four guns between them

head southwest to the place where Miss Lee's boyfriend was allegedly pushed off the cliff. And they see that everything at the crime scene checks out with what Miss Lee told them. So they start putting a plan together to catch the gang. With Miss Lee's help, they identify the murder house and begin a stakeout the next day, around 5am. And to their surprise, the whole gang is inside.

Why would they be there if Miss Lee had escaped? They must have really trusted her. Around 7 30 in the morning, Kang comes out and hops in the truck to go into town and get groceries. As he's driving, he notices police behind him. He tries to lose them, but they run his truck off the road and capture him after a fight. Now they know that the rest of the gang is holed up with explosives so they want to lure them out. They decide they'll call the house and tell them Kang was in a bad accident and they'll need to come to the hospital to claim the cash and some other items he was carrying. Moon Sang-rok, Hyun-young, and Lee Kyung-suk show up to the hospital and as soon as Moon Sang-rok gets out of the car,

he's arrested. Hyun-yang and Kyeon-suk take off in the car and lead police on a 20 kilometer chase that ends when they crash into a private residence. At this point, only two gang members remained, Moon Seok and Baek Byung-ok. So after the arrests, nine police officers finally request backup to go into the actual house where they know Dynamite and weapons and two remaining members are. A team of 20 descend on the house and arrest Moon Sob. Baek breaks out of a window and escapes into a bamboo forest behind the house, but he's no match for the detectives that chase him down.

Everyone in the family is now in police custody. In the end, the Chijon family never killed a single rich person, and what did them in was trusting a woman. They were a disorganized group of men that couldn't follow the rules they made up for themselves. And they hadn't even inspired any fear in the country because no one knew who they were until they were caught. And that's including the police. It's tragic that they were still able to take so many lives.

The group went on trial where they revealed that they were not remorseful at all. They were proud of their crimes, even saying they wished they killed more people. And one member even said he regretted not being able to kill his own mother. They gave the rich-poor divide as their reason, but admitted to not necessarily killing the right people. During the trial, it was also revealed that the group had in their possession the VIP list of customers at the Hyundai department store in Gangnam, the premier department store in South Korea. There were over 1,300 names on the list and around 70 had been highlighted as targets.

When asked what they were going to do with it, the gang said they planned on beginning their real work of targeting the rich after the holiday, which would have been the very next week. Ultimately, the gang was all given the death sentence and it took only 25 days after their arrest for their sentencing to be decided. The only member that was spared was Lee Kyung-suk, the girlfriend. In a strange and almost poetic manner, the only two survivors of the gang were the two women they decided to trust. women they decided to trust. This has been Heart Starts Pounding, written and produced by me, Kaylen Moore.

Also produced by Matt Brown. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Also, thanks to our new patrons. You will be thanked in the monthly newsletter, by name, which you can sign up for on our website. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? You can check us out at heartstartspounding.com

to submit those. Until next time, stay curious. Ooh. Until next time, stay curious.