Rotten Mango - #266: Viral Video Exposed Korean CEO Running Massive “Revenge Video” Site - The Real Life K-Drama “Taxi Driver”

Episode Date: June 4, 2023

A video went viral in South Korea of a CEO slapping an employee on the face in front of all his employees. Netizens were enraged - but as new details emerged, they realized the truth was even darker. ...The sadistic CEO would force his employees to decapitate live chickens during company retreats, force them to drink beer till they urinated themselves, he force-feed them multivitamins till they threw up, and shoot at them with BB guns for fun. The terrifying part was that this was just the tip of a very dark, cold iceberg. This is the true story that inspired the hit K-Drama series “Taxi Driver.” Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:27 at thefarmerstog.com slash time together 23. Badaebing Badaebing. There was a South Korean tech startup that went viral recently. Well, okay, not recently, a couple of years ago, but in order to understand it, we need to get into the tech startup world. I imagine it's very similar to the ones here in the US.
Starting point is 00:00:45 The CEO likes to be perceived as chill as one of the relatable workers as one of the The nine of fiveers at this tech company. We disk is very similar The CEO Yang Jin-ho would ride around the office in his electric scooter Probably wearing his little Patagonia vest. He would ride around all the little cubicles to make sure everyone's having a good time at work. Then he would ride into the little conference room. Okay, so the meeting rooms, the conference rooms in this office, very pertinent to the story.
Starting point is 00:01:17 They're encased in glass. So think of your very modern office building. You've got all these employees on these rows and rows of desks just sitting right next to each other. It's an open format. It's an open floor plan. And then in the middle of the office building, you have these glass conference rooms.
Starting point is 00:01:35 So technically, everyone can see everyone. There is no privacy. You don't even have a cubicle with tall little borders. Nothing just completely open. It's that cool modern open workspace vibe. Other than that, other than the floor plan of this company, we disc was not like the other startups. We disc was a whole different animal. The CEO and founder made tens of millions of dollars a year. And right now, all of the employees could see him through the glass conference room with four
Starting point is 00:02:09 of the high up executives. So think about like the top five people in your company in a glass meeting room, and they are actively jumping an innocent man beating up. Like a salt physical assault. Physical assault. OK. Chairman Yang believed that this man, a professor at a local university was sleeping with his wife.
Starting point is 00:02:29 So he summoned this professor who has no affiliation with his company into his office, took four of his VPs, and is now jumping the guy, is beating him up. The professor is trying to clear the air like, it's all a big misunderstanding. I would never sleep with your wife I don't know what you're talking about please you have to just hear me out They beat him in that glass conference room in front of all tents if not hundreds of employees for three hours straight They held his arms down they beat his face They tied his hands behind his back and then stomped on his fingers, crushing them.
Starting point is 00:03:07 They would mock him. Hey, if you hit your head really, really hard on this desk, you might just die. And if you die, we don't have to torture you anymore. So what do you say? You want to do it? They went through his phone. They took pictures of his credit card, his ID, the contacts on his phone list, they gathered all the numbers and addresses of all of his loved ones, they
Starting point is 00:03:32 threatened to hurt them. The executives laughed, they mocked at his injuries and they grabbed the back of his head with his hair, shoved his face to the ground, look at you. Look it. He was forced to lick the CEO's shoes. But even that wasn't enough. They all took turns spitting on his face and forced him to lick up all the saliva that they had just spat. This is a respected university professor.
Starting point is 00:04:00 There are dozens, if not a hundred employees outside watching this happen, letting it happen. Nobody is coming in to stop the executives. Nobody is coming in to call the cops for three hours. The professor actively feared for his life. And in the end, the CEO, Mr. Yang, the CEO of a multi-million dollar tech startup, laughed at him and threw $2000 on the ground. This should be enough for hospital fees. Hey, by the way, million dollar tech startup laughed at him and threw two thousand dollars on the ground. This should be enough for hospital fees. Hey, by the way, you can call the cops if you want, but I'm worth two hundred million dollars.
Starting point is 00:04:33 And money talks. So who do you think they're going to listen to? And with that, he and the executives walked out of the meeting room. The professor knew that this was the truth. I mean, the police are not going to listen to him. I think in any country money talks and you are talking about a very powerful, influential, wealthy man with probably prosecutors,
Starting point is 00:04:50 police, politicians in his pocket. The professor stood up and he looks out the conference room and he just sees the most bizarre scene I think you can ever imagine. Rose and Rose of employees. That's all him too. That's all I'm get beat up. And they all have almost skittled colored hair. Each one of them is like a giant skittle on their head. So they have brightly red colored hair, like the full head of hair is red, not streaks, not accent
Starting point is 00:05:20 hair, not highlights. Then the one next to them has blue hair. And it's like fluorescent blue. The next one is sky blue, then you've got like this neon green colored hair and then pink. Now in South Korea this is kind of wild. That level of dyed hair. Each one had like a new neon dyed hair color and it was just very strange to see them sit in a row with all their backs erect just so straight like the good little employees that they are and they're all staring at their computer screens and he walks by and he looks at all the computer screens and each single one of them is playing non-stop x-rated porn videos. All the employees are sitting in rows watching explicit films.
Starting point is 00:06:07 What? What the hell is going on at We Desk? Who is CEO Yang? How does he even run a tech startup like this? What even is their business model? How does he end up in jail? Let's get into it. As always, full show notes are available at rottonminglepodcast.com.
Starting point is 00:06:25 We are talking about a case that was massive in Korea a few years ago and with a new K-drama that has come out, this case says, I guess I had a comeback. I don't know if I can say it like that, but remember the K-drama case that we talked about the glory where there is this revenge drama and they were inspired by true real-life stories of school bullying. What's fascinating is a lot of people don't know that the hit-k drama Taxi Driver was inspired by a ton of true stories. So if you guys haven't seen Taxi Driver, the premise is you call this Taxi Company.
Starting point is 00:06:56 And when you look at their business logs, they look like a regular Schmecker Taxi Company, but it's actually vigilant to justice pursuers. So you call them if you've got a case where the police cannot help you, the government cannot help you, you call them and they will take care of it. Whether it's a school bully or in this situation, the most insane boss of all time, they will take care of it. If you watch these scenes about this real life case in the taxi driver, they're pretty similar to what happened in the real world,
Starting point is 00:07:27 but it looks so bizarre and outlandish that you would never believe that it's true. I mean, I don't see a lot of people in the US talking about it because I genuinely don't think that anyone would even think, oh, I bet that's inspired off of a true story. It's that crazy. Like, if I told you that at a massive company retreat, employees were all handed a giant sword. And the boss said, okay, here's what I'm gonna do.
Starting point is 00:07:52 I'm gonna throw a live chicken at you and I want you to slice it mid-air to kill it so we can cook it. Play Fruit Ninja with the chicken, that's a life, do it. Would you not be like, this is literally so bizarre that it's gotta be fake. If I read this in a book, I'd be like, I hate how unrealistic this is.
Starting point is 00:08:11 Would you not think that? Yeah. It's insane and this man is literally insane. He was able to get his hands on insane amounts of money and power resulting in, I don't even know how to describe this case, but as always, with international cases, we did get someone that is a native Korean speaker to help with the research.
Starting point is 00:08:29 We had our Korean researcher work on this and let us know in the comments what you think about this case. Have you heard of it? Are there any other cases you want us to cover? And with that being said, a shocking video went viral in South Korea 2018. From context, we can gather, an ex-employee of a massive company had gone online to anonymously trash-talk the company, the company CEO, as well as a couple other high-up executives. I mean, it seems normal. Somehow, the company CEO is able to track down which
Starting point is 00:09:00 employee it was, forces them to come into the office and apologize. They keep DMing them like you better come in. I'm so upset with you. I knew that you wrote this post, so you better come in and apologize. The video will most likely be taken down if I posted on here. If you want to see the uncensored version, you can go to Rotten Manga video on Spotify to see it. I'm going to describe it though, okay. You will see the ex employee, a man, walk into the office filled with workers. There's just rows of office workers sitting at their desk, staring at their computers. Again, no cubicles, it's open air.
Starting point is 00:09:34 You can see everything going on. The ex employee comes in wearing all black. The CEO of the company demands the... Oh, you're saying ex employee, like he was working here. He doesn't even work there anymore. Oh, okay. So he quit his job and then anonymously posted it, anonymously posted on the internet. On like a forum and was like, hey, this company sucks.
Starting point is 00:09:53 And he did make fun of the CEO. We're gonna get into all of it later. But he was forced to come in, even though he's not an employee anymore. Okay. The CEO of this multi-million dollar company demands the employee apologize for his online post. He forces the ex-employee to get on his knees and beg for forgiveness. He continues to slap him across the face over and over and when he's on his knees, he slaps him on the back of the head because he's got his head bowed down
Starting point is 00:10:26 And these are not little slaps. These are loud Echoing off the walls aggressive painful scar leaving slaps He continues to slap this ex-employee while asking him what kind of human are you? How trash must you be to shit talk your former bosses on social media? You don't have respect? He berates the ex-employee for not apologizing correctly. He is forced to get on his knees twice. In front of all of his former colleagues,
Starting point is 00:10:58 all of his former managers, and in front of the CEO to beg for forgiveness. But the CEO doesn't stop. He continues to curse at him, calling him all sorts of degrading names. Piece of shit, fucker, asshole. At one point, the CEO of the company even threatens to end the ex-employee's life if he doesn't apologize correctly. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:20 He literally says, if you want to live, learn to apologize better. After all of that abuse, which the ex-employee never fights back, never incites any further violence, it's actually really heartbreaking to watch him. He looks terrified just the way that he's on his knees with his head tucked, trying to stay safe, it's pretty sad. The CEO gets in his face and said, Are you fucking crying? Are you seriously fucking crying, you little shit? This video proceeds to go viral on social media and mainstream news because,
Starting point is 00:11:51 I mean, just how shocking the situation is, I think the video is visceral, it elicits a reaction from people. It's very hard to watch it and just go, oh, that's crazy, like you get angry. A few things stood out that really felt unsettling for netizens. One was the sheer violence enacted on an ex-employee who genuinely does not fight back. The CEO is fighting someone that's not fighting him back.
Starting point is 00:12:16 Two, the rest of the employees in this office can clearly see what's going on and not a single person steps in to stop the CEO to put their foot down and say, hey, maybe we shouldn't try doing this. Third, this is not a random small company that has three or four employees. This is not a random mom and pop business with a tyrant that's running it. Not to say that that's acceptable, but it's just more shocking when massive corporations
Starting point is 00:12:42 get away with such abuse for so long. I mean, how many people were impacted? How many people didn't report the abuse? The CEO of this company is probably worth around 200 million dollars. How is he getting away with this? And lastly, whoever recorded this was not the victim. The victim was not the one who released this video to the public. So who was even allowed to record it? It's very interesting. So the CEO is clearly not a reasonable man. I imagine if you were recording him committing a crime to use it as blackmail against him
Starting point is 00:13:15 later, he would probably slap you too. He would probably break your phone. But someone is getting a very good clear angle of this. There is no way he didn't see that person recording. And this video was taken three years ago. It went viral in 2018, but it was actually taken in 2015. So now the netizens, they got a lot of questions. They start digging into who this CEO is and what company he runs. Let's talk about WeDisk.
Starting point is 00:13:45 WeDisk would be a company that has some of the most outrageous behavior I've ever heard of. The head of the company, the CEO with the red palm in the video was Yang Jin-ho. He was born August 12th, 1972, making him like 51, 52. And I couldn't find much verifiable information about his upbringing or his parents or even his schooling. All we have is like this stereotypical CEO story.
Starting point is 00:14:12 The rags-to-richest story. The story goes like this. Average guy, probably rich parents but he does not say that. Average guy. Average guy was just out there hustling selling green juice machines. Green juice is healthy for you. Start by this machine and you can make fresh green juice every single morning, save yourself $100 over time. And then in 2003, he had a dream for something more. He took a risk. He quit his job, sold everything and became the massive founder of a massive multi-million dollar business called WeDisc, and that would result in trauma and death. Have you ever been on a corporate retreat?
Starting point is 00:14:50 So you and your colleagues will take a weekend off your fun life to be surrounded by each other once again. It's like you don't see each other for 40 hours a week, but this time instead of being at the office, stuck in your cubicle, you are stuck in the woods in a cabin with your amazing co-workers. So now, instead of listening to them chew with their mouth open for lunch, you can hear it for breakfast lunch and dinner.
Starting point is 00:15:14 Look, in most instances, it's an effort from the higher ups to get everyone on the same page, aligned with the company goals, repassion it, reinvigorated about the company mission. Maybe if you work at Google, it's a blast because of how much money they shovel into stuff like this, or if you work for a small business, maybe it genuinely can be fun, but for the workers at WeDisc, it was the most miserable times of their lives. The CEO would go around passing out weapons in the middle of the woods to his terrified employees. It feels like some squid games, hunger games is about to start. You want the bow?
Starting point is 00:15:48 Or you want the katana, the big knife? Which one? Hurry, pick. Sir, let's just take the goddamn bow. He would pass out bow and arrows, katanas, like the Japanese swords. They did not understand how is this to refocus ourselves with the company mission, right?
Starting point is 00:16:05 This doesn't make sense. So this year, we're going to be killing our targets. Just like you're killing these chickens. Are you kidding me? Oh my god. Excuse me? A dozen or so tiny little chickens are brought out of their coop. Here's a plan.
Starting point is 00:16:22 You with a knife. You stand here and hey, you, what's your name? Scott, come here. Scott, you're gonna catch a chicken, throw it in the air and you with the knife, you're gonna slice it mid-air. I want you to decapitate it while it's in the air. Do you understand me? Or else you're fired.
Starting point is 00:16:39 And Kim, your name Kim, right? Kim with the bow and arrow. What you're gonna do is you're gonna run over there. There's three chickens. They're running around. They're scared. You're gonna shoot them with the bow and arrow. And if you guys don't kill these chickens, then we don't have dinner. And if we don't have dinner, then you're all fired.
Starting point is 00:16:58 Not only were you being abused, but you were forced to abuse live chickens. And, I mean, at the risk of your livelihood, if you don't do this, you're going to lose your job. And in South Korea, some context to add, I think it's a bit different in the US where you lose your job. It's rough, it's life-changing, but you can find a new job. South Korea, if you get fired from a job, it is incredibly hard, so difficult to find a new job.
Starting point is 00:17:25 Like, people do not care about suing your former employer for bad-mouthing you to potential new employers. No, that like doesn't exist in South Korea. So the employees, they're tearfully slaughtering chickens in the most inhumane, cruel, and foul ways possible. There is a video of this. Again, I think that it would be very hard to post on here, but I also think if you just saw this in a drama,
Starting point is 00:17:49 you would never believe this is real. I am gonna post the uncensored version on Spotify, but you've been warned, it's a lot of animal abuse, it's very sad. Other employees were instructed to shoot at the frantic chickens and if you couldn't do any of those, if you were really sad about it, he wanted you to get up close and personal. So you would hand you a tiny little knife and say, stab the chicken to death. And you would have to hold
Starting point is 00:18:12 the chicken in your hands while you did this. This was his idea of team bonding. And when they were all done, he would have them all gather around, standing around him in a circle with a big bag of garlic in one hand. And he would just reach in and grab a fistful of raw garlic, walk up to an employee, open your mouth, and shove the garlic into their, the raw eye-watering garlic into their mouths. Choo! Garlic's good for you. Who's next? This is like, just like those glory, bully torture, but like workplace adults.
Starting point is 00:18:52 Like your boss. Yeah, your boss, exactly. It's like, you can't escape. No. Or you get fired and your whole life is over. And it wasn't just the company trips. Okay, it's not like, oh, once a year we go to this company trip that's like hazing hell. It's actually all of these afterwork hishiks. Okay, these are like the bane of the employees existence. Korean culture is very big on hishik and it's like
Starting point is 00:19:18 Yang's favorite part of being a CEO. Basically, you get called out to dinner or for drinks after work with your boss, your manager, all of your colleagues, and it's a miserable existence. It's not like the US where you get to just eat a bunch of good food on the company card. You're there to entertain your boss. You're there to pour soju in your boss's little glass and hope that he doesn't try to touch your butt afterwards. You have to spend your free time, your off-work hours with these people, getting drunk and eating food that you don't even want to eat and laughing after not funny at all jokes. So what? The managers can get a bit of an ego boost.
Starting point is 00:19:55 There's not even work talk. It's not even about team bonding. Yang would get a private room in these restaurants. He would sit down all of his new employees and a few of his old ones, and he would have ordered a bunch of beers already. And they're all over the table. Each cup was filled to the brim to give you like an exact measurement
Starting point is 00:20:13 because I don't know why they all measured it. Two cups of glass. So like 16 fluid ounces of glass, that's a lot, okay? And oh, sorry, I don't. If you're trying to tell CEO Yang that you don't drink, even just the angry look on his face would make you stop talking. You felt like you just have to do what he says. What you watch depends on what kind of major in.
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Starting point is 00:21:23 Quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 29 million drivers who trust progressive. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates comparison rates not available in all states or situations prices vary based on how you buy. So he would order every single employee to chug the beer and when you're done you get an immediate refill and when you're done you get an immediate refill and when you're done you get an immediate refill until you're throwing up because that's the point he wants you to throw up. He's already actually prepared vomit buckets so you don't throw up on the chairs. Another employee will slide a vomit bucket to you and you throw up, he's out the contents
Starting point is 00:22:00 of your lunch and when you sit back down with tears in your eyes and like this nasty smell in your throat, he slides over another glass of beer. And you know what he wants. He wants you to do it again. Sometimes the game was different. Sometimes it wasn't about throwing up. He would take everyone out to eat. Oh, eat more of this. It's so salty, but it's good. Salty, right? Here, drink this, chug the water, chug the beer, chug the soju. And at the end of the dinner, he would sit back and smile.
Starting point is 00:22:35 For the rest of the night, nobody is allowed to use the restroom unless you pay me $100. Actually, let's do 150. That was when he was in a good mood. Sometimes he just straight up forbid anyone from using the restroom or else they would get fired, which would result in employees wetting themselves in public in front of all of their colleagues, in front of their bosses, in front of the general civilian population. The humiliation, the mental, and oftentimes physical torture that these employees had to go through is insane. Imagine working for
Starting point is 00:23:06 an evil creative, bored, sadistic man. You never know what you're going to get. Sometimes he would walk into the office in a foul mood and just scream at everyone. Other times if he was feeling extra creative, he would, um, he would write around in his electric scooter and shoot at people with his BB gun. This feels like a show, a parody of like a taxio. Yeah, if you look at SNL skit, writing around an electric scooter, like just what is going on? One employee alleged that he loved testing for cancer.
Starting point is 00:23:39 So, you know how a lot of these big companies will provide benefits and sometimes they'll do like extra health screenings on top of that. So he said, okay, I'm going to do a cancer health screening. And Yang would allegedly walk into the office with bottles upon bottles of vitamins, just supplements that you get over the counter, vitamin D, vitamin A, and the employees were told, stop doing your work, line up in the break room. They would run and stand in line, and each one was handed a little plastic cup with just all these different vitamins in there. This one is said to have been the most awful torture.
Starting point is 00:24:12 The employee said that they were forced to take more than ten times the normal dosage of a bunch of different vitamins, including vitamin A, D, E, and K. To explain how dangerous and reckless that is, You can actually get intoxicated off of vitamins. Vitamin A intoxication leads to a risk of seizures, headaches, blurred vision. It elevates intercranial pressure. Chronic toxicity can lead to anorexia, muscle and bone pain. Vitamin D intoxication can lead to confusion, recurrent vomiting, abdominal pain, dehydration, vitamin E, bleeding, muscle weakness, fatigue, nausea, diarrhea, vitamin K, anemia, enlarged liver, shortness of breath, irregular breathing, and they are taking 10 times more.
Starting point is 00:25:01 It was really bad. People said it was almost immediate. You would double over in pain. And then you would have explosive diarrhea from the combination of vitamins. Now, there was not one toilet per every employee in the office clearly, because no one expects that the whole group is going to get explosive diarrhea. So it was a mess. They would run to the bathroom.
Starting point is 00:25:22 And when they came out, they're sweaty. They're exhausted. They're holding their stomachs in pain, and Yang would say, you're welcome. Excuse me? Did you know that when cancer patients are given too many vitamins, like when they overdose on vitamins, they still don't use the restroom. This is the cheapest way to test if you guys have cancer. And since you use the restroom, you don't have cancer. Anyway, this is your work sponsored health checkup. You're welcome. Other employees alleged that he would force them to do illegal drugs, like smoking weed.
Starting point is 00:25:53 Now smoking weed is super illegal in South Korea. I mean, the equivalent in America would not even be like doing meth. It would probably be like you getting caught trying to shove meth up a police officer's butt crack. Like that is the level of seriousness and punishment that you will be dealt with if you ever smoke weed in Korea. Yang would later deny the drug allegations, but a lot of the employees alleged that he would force them to smoke weed so that they really can't even leave the company. Because then he threatens to expose them for doing drugs.
Starting point is 00:26:29 Now, as for the garlic and vitamins, he would argue that he just wanted his employees to be healthier. I mean, think about it. People spend lots of money on supplements and garlic every year because it's good for your health. I'm just looking out for my employees. I don't know what you're talking about. Now let's talk about the brightly dyed hair.
Starting point is 00:26:47 Remember in the beginning of the story I told you it was like a bizarre skittles commercial inside of that office building? There is a picture of CEO Chairman Yang with his employees. He's got green hair. All of his employees have like these bright red hair, blue hair. It is said that he liked to force everyone to dye their hair a fun color because he thought it was funny. So basically what he would do is he would go out to these restaurants with his employees while they're getting drunk off beer and forced to wet themselves, he'd be like, wait a minute. Look at that robbie for over there. It's a good color. You, I don't need to know your name. Dye your hair that color tomorrow, show up to work or you're fired.
Starting point is 00:27:26 They would bring out green onion salad. That's a good color. You, I want that on your head. You would have to die your hair and show up to work with that color or else you would be fired. How did he do this? He actually had a salon that he worked with in Korea where he had a company card on there and all the employees would have to go and die their hair.
Starting point is 00:27:47 For the fun of it. Now, extra added layer of nuance in South Korea, dying your hair these colors like in America, it's cool. You have a sense of style, you're an individual. In South Korea, it's weird. Like people will stare at you, you will not be treated as well. You will be judged by adjumas and adjushis at the market. Like your whole life will be impacted by the color of your hair, which is annoying, yes.
Starting point is 00:28:10 But that is literally how it is. There is a different explanation out there on why they all had funky hair. One allegation is that Yang actually would get everyone to dye their hair colors because when you test for drugs in the hair, the hair dye can mess with the test. So maybe that's why he had a company card at the hair salon, but either way, what a bizarre thing.
Starting point is 00:28:31 Yeah, I don't know how he comes up with these tortures and... Yes, that's what I'm saying. It's so creative and so sick. Yeah, so sick. So sick. Like, if you use that creativity to come up with like a Netflix show, you would be the next Shonda Rhymes. Yeah, it will be a next squigain. Exactly. But instead, he's like, no, I'm going to do it in real life and torture people. Oh, and of course, at his company, it was raging with sexual harassment.
Starting point is 00:28:58 This guy is the epitome of evil. So of course, there's going to be sexual harassment because that is the sad world that we live in. He would force his female employees to sit on his lap while he played explicit videos. He would take pictures of female employees without their consent and apparently he had files upon files on his computer of his female employees. Yeah. He would also write his name on them. Their thighs, their inner arms, he would take pictures of his name written on there as some sort of way to degrade and humiliate them in front of their peers. And this one, I really don't know what to think or how to feel about it, but it would really freak me out. He was really into shamanism.
Starting point is 00:29:41 So he would collect and force employees to hand over fingernail clippings, hair, and blood. If he was really upset with you, he would let you know that he performed a ritual and buried a doll with your name and your DNA as he prayed for your inevitable death to be long and painful. Like imagine you come to work on a Tuesday and your boss sits you down and is like, okay, so this weekend you know what I did? Yeah, I buried a doll with your name on it because you didn't hand in the project on time. Yeah, this is absolutely unreal.
Starting point is 00:30:11 It's unhinged. It's so unbelievable that someone like this out there exists. Yeah. So clearly, the work culture here is horrendous. I mean, the worst that I've ever heard, but what does the business even do? Like, with all the drinking and torture, do they even have time to run a full-scale company? Like, how is it possible that this guy is in charge of a company that rakes in tens of millions
Starting point is 00:30:34 of dollars in profits a year? How has nobody stood up to him or reported him? Like, what kind of business is this? To understand that, let's talk about a girl named Ashley and this is a fake name. Ashley was a woman in South Korea and Ashley had never worked for WeDisk. She actually doesn't know anyone that works for WeDisk. She has no affiliation with WeDisk. By all accounts, Ashley is a normal citizen. She had just gotten married. It is technically supposed to be a very happy time in her life, but it was all being ruined. Okay, so Ashley would go to the store. She would go to the market or the mall, and she would notice a few people just staring at her, not in like a glancing at her, but we kind of stare at her as if they recognized her from somewhere, but they didn't know exactly where,
Starting point is 00:31:22 they couldn't put their finger on it. A lot of men in particular would do this. And she tried to shake it off. It's creepy, but the world is generally still a nice place, right? Then she started getting text messages from old acquaintances that asked her, hey, are you OK? Do you know? She's like, no, about what?
Starting point is 00:31:43 And the others went Ashley found herself calling WeDisc's customer service support. An illegal file, an illegal video file of hers was being shared on a internet platform called WeDisk and attracting tens of thousands of views. This video was ruining Ashley's life. Before Ashley had gotten married, she had worked in Japan as a sex worker. She had no idea that at one of these motels that she was engaging in sex work at had a hidden spy camera in the hotel room. There was footage of her engaging in explicit activities. Her
Starting point is 00:32:17 face was right there uncovered nothing was censored and that video that she didn't even know existed from years and years ago, it felt like a lifetime away from today. Was being shared on WeDisc and it was haunting her. It was ruining her life. Imagine how utterly violated, disgusted, and grossy felt, not only knowing that this was illegally taken, but now it's being spread like wildfire on this CD website. WeDisc is like a dull site or?
Starting point is 00:32:46 No, okay, we're gonna get into We disk. So she calls We disk and the customer service guy is very, very understanding of her situation. He reassures her, I'm gonna do everything that I possibly can to try and suppress this video. There's only so much that I can do though, however, if people keep uploading it, it might not be something that I can control You know, I don't know how many people out there have already downloaded this and have this file in their possession I mean that makes sense, right?
Starting point is 00:33:14 Okay, well, thank you. I appreciate your trying She had no idea that right after this man hung up the phone He turned around in the weedisk office and said Get this video up. I'm gonna send you the link this man hung up the phone. He turned around in the weed disc office and said, get this video up. I'm going to send you the link. We're going to reupload it over and over. Make new accounts upload this video. The same video that he just promised this woman to try and delete. He's telling every single employee in that office to upload it more. What is the reasoning? Because if she had gotten word of this video, that means this
Starting point is 00:33:47 video is going viral. People like this video and viral videos equals more money for weed disc. He doesn't care that her life was impacted by it. He doesn't care. It's a hot video that other people want to see and that means money. So everyone is instructed to upload that video over and over again, and if they got more calls asking for it to be taken down, they all lied and sympathetically said, yes, of course, we're trying our best. I don't know who all these random accounts are. They probably downloaded the video and they're re-uploading it. Because that weed disc, the only thing that mattered was while keeping CEO Yang happy
Starting point is 00:34:26 but the bottom line. The company was willing to screw over anyone for money and they mainly stuck to screwing over women. So let's talk about the business of WeDisc. In terms of structure, in terms of just structure, minus all the actual video content, think of we-disc, kind of like YouTube, like not really but kind of. So, some general principles apply. People, anyone in the world, can create an account post a video. And why will they post a video? Because they're incentivized in some way to post.
Starting point is 00:34:58 Yes, there's love for creating, for getting publicity, but to make it simple, users get paid when they post videos that are viewed or in WeDisk situation are downloaded. So people not only post videos, but they post videos that other people will want to download so that they can make money. Other people will join WeDisk and pay membership fees or fees to download videos or bring in ad revenue
Starting point is 00:35:21 because there are videos that they want to watch. So literally like YouTube. Some of them might even think, wait a minute, look at these people making so much money off of uploading videos. I should be coming up loader too. Now, we disk may have the right to push certain videos further and they might even have their own industry plans. We disk employees whose whole jobs were just posting videos pretending to be regular creators. Very interesting, right?
Starting point is 00:35:47 But they're on WeDisk's payroll. The main point was to keep viewers entertained so they kept coming. So in essence, WeDisk is a video company slash platform. Now this is where it gets a bit complicated and it's very crucial because of South Korea's the legal laws are different. When you sit down on your laptop or computer or open up your Gmail app, all those emails And it's very crucial because of South Korea's the legal laws are different. When you sit down on your laptop or computer or open up your Gmail app,
Starting point is 00:36:09 all those emails that you open up on Gmail like your red emails, unread, sent, drafted, all of them are going to be ready for you because you're connected to the internet. But not all of these emails are stored on your device because I would take up so much space. So these big companies, Gmail, Google, YouTube, Microsoft, TikTok, they have these big servers all over the world.
Starting point is 00:36:29 They're like these massive, physical, hard drives, and they store all the data. And the server's main job is, okay, Stephanie just logged into Gmail, so let's show her all her emails, and they'll send the data to my computer. Right? So when you have something in the cloud, or not on your device, it's actually not stored in the cloud, it's like stored in a database server, like a big computer somewhere else so you can retrieve it later.
Starting point is 00:36:53 Now, why does this matter in this game of WeDesk? Let's say I wanna send you a video file. Thinking about the easiest way, I would probably send you a link to my YouTube video or I would upload a video file to a shared Dropbox space. Then you receive the video and then you can download it to your computer if you want. But there is a middleman. I am uploading my video to the YouTube server and it's going to be stored in the YouTube database or the Dropbox database.
Starting point is 00:37:19 There's a middleman. And these middlemen go off regulations and rules that are set by different countries and different government entities. There is something called P2P. This was big back in like the early stages of the internet. Yes, you can download a video straight out of my computer to yours without a middleman. People might want to do this for a few reasons. And the reasons that matter today are it is the most cost efficient for the tech company because they don't need to buy massive servers that cost cheese so much money. You don't have to have a middleman telling you, oh I don't know if you should share this
Starting point is 00:37:54 file. The file doesn't go with my rules and regulations so I'm not going to let you share it. Like if I were to post a video of YouTube of my cat, it'll flag before it ever gets to you to download So P2P is a way to not have that censorship. Now what we disc does is say hey user 1 2 3 Thank you for joining we disk. You can now upload a video and make money But in order to do that you must also give other we disk users ability to download directly off your network We disk users ability to download directly off your network.
Starting point is 00:38:26 So peer to peer. We disk saves a ton of money and there's less censorship. Now why is this important? In the early 2000s of the internet world, it was a time of lawlessness. Chaos, I'm talking, do you remember lime wire? Oh, this is like torrenting at its peak torrent. Oh, no. Copyrighted downloading of movies and music.
Starting point is 00:38:50 Oh. Oh. Oh, yes, yes, yes. OK, so there were no internet laws. And if there were laws, it was very weak laws. There were no platforms like Netflix or Hulu, really. If you wanted to watch a movie, you would still have to go to Blockbuster to rent the movie.
Starting point is 00:39:05 Half of you guys are gonna be like, Blockbuster, it's like a DVD store. And if you wanna listen to a song, you would have to wait for the buffering on a platform or you would have to download it for like 99 cents a song. So people started using P2P to download illegally off of each other's computers, without getting flagged by a government entity
Starting point is 00:39:25 or using an illegal platform to do it. So many people start using weedisk to download TV shows, music, a lot of copyrighted content, and later on, the primary business of weedisk was pornographic material. Now let me tell you why this is important. South Korea is one of the very few countries that outlaws porn.
Starting point is 00:39:46 Still to this day, it is illegal to produce and distribute porn. Now in 2023, it's very easy to access those videos because all you need is a VPN. But back then, half these people had never seen these types of films. You can't get it at the DVD store. You can maybe see an artistic movie that has nudity involved. But they can download from WeDisk? Yes. That's illegal. Super illegal. Oh, so it's that illegal business? Yes. Okay, so WeDisk would allow people to download things off of each other's computer. Now remember how I told you We just cut a bunch of employees pretending to be creators? Uh-huh. Because those employees were uploading porn. But if they came out and said we disk is uploading porn, it would be illegal.
Starting point is 00:40:33 So they would create these accounts pretending to be random South Korean civilians and upload these videos. So that we disk could step back and say, oh, oh my god, we've been trying our best to take down these videos. I see. Yeah, that's not even the problem. Okay, that's literally not even the problem. It's crazy.
Starting point is 00:40:51 The biggest problem was people on weedisk did not just want to watch any sort of x-rated video. They had two specific kinds that they liked, both of which were super illegal. Spycam World Cup videos, which is hidden camera videos. These criminals will go into motel rooms, love motels, hide cameras in the wall, the outlet, the shower head, the clock on the wall. They will record all the activities
Starting point is 00:41:18 by these unconcenting parties and then upload it. Or the second, the biggest category for weedisk was revenge videos. Partners, typically boyfriends, who would take videos of their partner either knowingly or not knowingly while they were dating, doing sexual things. Once they broke up, they would put it online.
Starting point is 00:41:39 So that was weedisk's business. And in the beginning, employees would be sent around to restaurants and internet cafes, outside of schools, just standing there passing out these small little paper coupons. And you're about to trash it. But then you read, for one week you can download movies, music, TV shows, X-rated movies, for free! Of course, people are gonna get curious, a free seven-day membership. You're telling me if I missed the episode
Starting point is 00:42:05 of the succession last night at 8 p.m. instead of waiting for a random rerun and basing my whole schedule off of that, I can just go home and rewatch it now. That's good. People would rush home and get on WeDisc's website, but instead of watching succession, they would fall down the rabbit hole
Starting point is 00:42:22 of explicit material. Whether you're doing a dance to your favorite artist in the office parking lot, or being guided into Warrior I in the break room before your shift, whether you're running on your Peloton tread at your mom's house while she watches the baby, or counting your breaths on the subway. Peloton is for all of us, wherever we are whenever we need it, or counting your breaths on the subway. We are inhaling and long exhale out.
Starting point is 00:42:46 Peloton is for all of us, wherever we are, whenever we need it. Download the free Peloton app today. Peloton app available through free tier, or pay subscription starting at 12.99 per month. Why would you break into these apartments? For money, for drugs, whatever was in there. Why aren't you afraid of getting caught at doing this? No. Who's gonna catch us? What a police.
Starting point is 00:43:11 It was the height of the crack era, and instead of locking up drug dealers, some New York City cops had become them. I would suit up in my uniform and we're gonna want some drug dealers and I know how to do it really well. This is the inside story of the biggest police corruption scandal in NYPD history and the investigation that uncovered it all.
Starting point is 00:43:35 Did you consider yourself a rat? 100%. I saved my soul just like everybody else does. Listen to and follow the set, an Odyssey originals documentary podcast series available now in the Odyssey app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your shows. I'm not a big guy man, but I love being that dirty mother s***.
Starting point is 00:43:58 And we disc employees knew exactly who they were targeting. They were not targeting girls that were coming out of dorms. They were targeting men of different ages, young men, impressionable men, so many men. And the employees were very, very, very smart. Even their coupon is smart. Within seven days, these men would be fully addicted to the x-rated material on weed disk. There does seem to be other added layers of why these people became so addicted. Again, like I said, they had probably never even seen porn before up until this point. And this part is sick, but a lot of men were interviewed and were asked, you know, why
Starting point is 00:44:36 do you watch videos like this? You clearly know it's illegal. You clearly know that these videos all have a victim, like these hidden camera videos, these revenge videos. They all have a victim that's very real. You're hurting people. Why do you watch it?" And they said, well, the regular x-rated stuff feels a little bit too production-y. All in all, WeDisk was a flourishing company and it made the CEO Yang a very rich man. It is said that he was making about 40 million
Starting point is 00:45:06 USD a year calculated for inflation and his net worth was said to be around $200 million. He would also never let you forget it. Like if you ever told him that he was a horrible human being, he would get in your face and say, you can sue me if you want but I have $200 million. And you don't. He actually had the number one P2P website in South Korea at one point. WeDisk was number one, but he also owned another company called FileNority, which was number three of all P2P websites in Korea, so he's basically like a P2P monopoly. And both these sites, they focused on revenge videos and spycam videos. That was the money maker.
Starting point is 00:45:46 To give you perspective in 20 times a loan around 200 illegal explicit videos were uploaded per hour to these P2P websites. Per hour. Many of it wasn't even uploaded by third parties, which is just as bad, but we disk was uploading them. The company itself was uploading them. The company itself was uploading them.
Starting point is 00:46:07 They would actually go scour the internet for uploaded revenge videos from other parts of the world. Japan was a big market for them. Inside note, before you get on your high horse of like, oh, Asians, America had a version of we disc that was taking place. It was called isanyoneup.com. Website dedicated to just posting revenge pictures and videos of women.
Starting point is 00:46:29 The website has now since been taken down so. But this is not a career problem, it's a global problem. So WeDisk would have their employees, not all, but a big selection of their employees, go online and download these illegal revenge videos, highly illegal in Korea. They go, they download it, and they start posting it on WeDisc
Starting point is 00:46:49 for South Korean consumption. What's crazy is WeDisc is technically a software company, it's a tech company. So what they would do is a lot of these websites in Japan, you cannot download these videos off of, or you have to pay a lot of money. In that case, WeDisc had company cards that you could use to pay for that and download it. And if you can't even pay to download it, they created software
Starting point is 00:47:08 to record the whole screen and the audio. This is like before it was easily done, so that you could re-upload it back to WeDisk. They also had software that was specifically created by WeDisk for WeDisk for making the upload of these videos faster. One employee would upload more than 1000 videos a day. They said 60% of that was revenge videos. That is 600 victims a day per employee. The employee said we used around 500 IDs per employee to make it look like a ton of regular people were uploading these videos. And you know, a lot of the questions were, how do you make 500 IDs though?
Starting point is 00:47:53 If you've ever been to Korea, you need a very specific ID number that only you can have. One person only gets one ID in its government issued to make an account on any social media platform on any of these pages, even just food delivery. You need that ID number. How did you make 500 accounts? Oh, we were granted permission by the administrators of the WeDisk's team. I mean, we just approve it from the inside.
Starting point is 00:48:19 Technically, the people are checking our WeDisk. So it's like fake account per se. So we just create a bunch of fake accounts and then modify the IP addresses. So it looked like it was real IP addresses from Oliver Korea and not just from our office. We also had special software to make sure that the video is uploaded quickly and to keep track of all of the different accounts. Now, according to many employees, each employee that was involved in this shady uploading process was able to bring in close to $150,000 a month to WeDisc. One employee.
Starting point is 00:48:54 So a handful of employees could make a million dollars a month. They're not making it. WeDisc is making it. They would get paid commission on that as well. It definitely was nowhere near a million dollars, but it was definitely incentive for these people to stay to avoid police detection because this is super illegal They used fake accounts fake IDs special USBs for computers So they would have all these computers in the office and if you were to sit down and log into one it would look like your generic Library computer your generic guest computers at the apartment's amenity center
Starting point is 00:49:24 There was nothing on there. It looks like a guest page Library computer, your generic guest computers at the apartment's amenity center. There was nothing on there, it looks like a guest page. You can't really do anything. But the minute that you input the correct USB into the correct USB drive little insert, the whole desktop changes. It is suddenly the screen of a master X-rated material uploader. They would make sure to guard those USBs with their life. All the accounts that they uploaded on were deleted within two weeks, but
Starting point is 00:49:50 they were also scrubbed of money. So, gets complicated, but it's crazy. Let's say an employee at WeDisc uploads a video using a fake username pretending to be a civilian. That video, probably a legal video with a victim, gets downloaded a hundred thousand times. Let's just for the purpose of making it easy. Let's say we disc makes a hundred dollars from it. So the company takes a hundred dollars, like how YouTube takes ad revenue. Probably more, but again, just for ease of explanation, they make a hundred dollars.
Starting point is 00:50:18 Now the uploader, the creator, will make twenty-five dollars from the video. So we disc gets a hundred, you get a 25. Now the problem is, if you close the account with money still in there, that looks shady. The government would be like, what kind of idiot would close their YouTube account or their WeDisk account without taking out the money they earned? That is bizarre. So what do they do? Now if they take out the money and put it into a random bank, that's a paper trail and you can't open up 500 different banks every day. So the weedisk employees would create these really stupid purchasing abilities on weedisk, the platform. They said, for the low price of $10, you can make your font yellow and sparkly.
Starting point is 00:51:05 For the low purchase price of $5, you can make your video title, bubble up and down. No one's really spending money on that because why would anyone spend money on that unless you're a weed disc employee that has $25 that you need to funnel back into weed disc somehow. So you would, okay, bubble font, bright yellow font, um, heart emoji, let's do the Hello Kitty, and you would spend all the money in this creator's account and then close it down. So take money, laundry. Yeah, basically money laundering at its finest.
Starting point is 00:51:36 Now, for all of this, April 2011, Yang Jin-Hul was arrested the first time. For uploading copyrighted movies to his platform, not even the revenge videos, not even the Spicam videos. He was rather quickly released from prison and he went back to being, quote, the Emperor of the Spicam Empire. So from 2011 until 2018, when shit hit the fan again, he was doing atrocious things.
Starting point is 00:52:04 That's a lot of years, that's seven years. and shit hit the fan again, he was doing atrocious things. That's a lot of years, that's seven years. In 2018, the video of him slapping his employee surfaces on the internet, the one that we talked about earlier this episode, and let's go over that whole story. So on WeDisc, there are different places where you can leave posts. You don't have to post videos or pictures.
Starting point is 00:52:21 You can just write a forum, like a little word post. Anyone can do this, you can make an ID and do it, you don't need an ID to do it, but there were three IDs that were made that really bothered We Desk. The IDs were Yang Jin-ho, the CEO's name, and Yang Jin-ho Da, which means it's Yang Jin-ho, and lastly, Jin-ho Byeong-xin, which means Bechase Jin-ho. Calling the CEO Bechase? Yeah, and the IDs would create their own post just mocking the CEO. There wasn't anything dangerous in the post.
Starting point is 00:52:50 It's not like the poster was doxing the CEO worth threatening his life. They were just mocking the CEO, saying things like, it's me peasants, I'm young, Jino. I know you're working hard, but you'll never get paid like this anywhere else. Just making fun of how horrendous WeDisk is.
Starting point is 00:53:05 He also took jabs at the former manager, one of the other executives at WeDisk. Again, is it a good thing to do? No, is it a professional thing to do? No, but is it the end of the world for these people? Absolutely not. Within a few hours though, The WeDisk team tracks down the IP addresses
Starting point is 00:53:20 of these new accounts and gives them to Mr. Yang. He finds out it was an ex-employee of his that used to work as an engineer at Weedisk and Yang was pissed. He messaged him. It's me, Yang Jin-o. I had fun reading your posts. Listen, I respect that you have different opinions about me and your colleagues and my company. But you gotta at least take responsibility for your actions, right? So buckle up, kid. Because it's my turn. You're a little fucker that can't even apologize correctly.
Starting point is 00:53:53 He texts the former employee, you little fucker that can't even apologize. The former employee probably just posted this to let off steam, like they had no intention of being found out by Mr. Yang. They just wanted to let out their trauma and frustrations. It's honestly kind of, okay, it's not harmless, but you get it, it's not that big of a deal. Yeah, but compared to what the CEO probably did to him
Starting point is 00:54:13 or everyone else, like, what are you talking about? Exactly. You're allowed to freaking abuse people, you can't even allow other people to complain, are you kidding me? And it's not even, it's not even a threat, it's literally just like a mocking joke, like an elementary-style joke.
Starting point is 00:54:26 The employee was freaked out, terrified. He's anonymous to this day, but just think of the power imbalance. So the ex-employee texts him back. I'm sorry, Mr. Yang, I didn't do this with malicious intent. I just visited WeDisc after a long time of staying away from the platform, and I randomly had the urge to write what I thought was silly,
Starting point is 00:54:46 and you know, and it's not appropriate, so I deleted it soon after, and I'm just very sorry, Mr. Yang. I already saw everything. You don't even know how to say sorry, so I'm gonna make you take responsibility for this. I'll take care of you in the way that I always methodically do things. You really forgot my personality, huh? I mean, it's just threat after threat.
Starting point is 00:55:08 Like, what does he mean? He's gonna force him to take responsibility. What methodical process of taking care of it as he's talking about? And also, you really don't know my personality, or you forgot my personality. It's to imply that he's gonna do something horrible to the ex-employee.
Starting point is 00:55:24 So this employee tries to apologize once more over the messages, I'm so sorry Mr. Yang. You better come over here and get on your knees to beg for forgiveness. I will never do anything like this again. It was so stupid. I will apologize to your colleagues as well or whoever you need me to.
Starting point is 00:55:40 Do you think that I'm asking you to apologize? Like you have a choice? Never mind. I think that you think you have'm asking you to apologize? Like, you have a choice? Never mind. I think that you think you have choices in all of this, and I guess you're just not listening. So, let me be very, very frank with you. You are a person who doesn't want to take responsibility, and I will feel more comfortable
Starting point is 00:55:59 having no sympathy when I talk to you. Don't say sorry. From now on, I'm going gonna work on a plan for you. So he's threatening? Yeah. Yeah. I'm so sorry Mr. Chairman Yang, please I'm so sorry. Are you challenging me? I said I don't accept your apology and pick up my calls because now I have to get my feelings out. Fucking coward. I'll call you right back sir. I'm so sorry I'm at work right now. So after work and after all these messages, the ex-employees slash poster visited Yang
Starting point is 00:56:29 company and was assaulted. The video in question, I mean, you have course to impersonate and mock someone online is not the right thing to do, but Mr. Yang's reaction even as messages out of this world. Like South Korea is no stranger to workplace harassment. In fact, there's a whole lingo for it. There's a word called kapcheur. And it means someone in power that abuses their power and is abusive.
Starting point is 00:56:52 We've seen this with like the Korean air, kapcheur, ares. Korean said that during quarantine, when they worked from home, things were getting better. And they thought maybe society was progressing to get better. But recently, they all went back to work and they said it's so bad. Workplace harassment is making a comeback. Whether it's physical or verbal abuse or sexual harassment, it is just non-stop.
Starting point is 00:57:16 So the old companies like Samsung, like these older establishments, you kind of expect it. You expect to be overworked, to the ground devastated but at least you probably get paid more than most people. Now the newer companies it said they run off of this Western environment. They you know like Kakautalk, Naver, they all tell themselves as like meta, Google, YouTube, we're the tech world. But recently they too have had scandals. A lot of people anonymously post about working at Kakao Talk, which is just miserable.
Starting point is 00:57:50 They said it's like a dictatorship. There were multiple employees who died of a heart attack from neighbor, and it said that they died of overwork. So I mean, I'm sure some companies are fine. But even in comparison to that, this video was shocking. It was watched by practically every single Korean citizen. The news organization, Newstapa, that we've talked about with this hair fairy case,
Starting point is 00:58:15 Newstapa was able to find the ex-employee and get him to sit down for an anonymous interview. A lot of netizens just had a hard time comprehending, why did you even go? Why did you go? Like, you know he's violent? Why did you go? And he said well, I have no choice He is so scary. He said he was gonna work on something for me and knowing him. He loves revenge He also said he had no idea that this video existed because the assault happened in 2015
Starting point is 00:58:43 He was interviewed after the video was released in 2018 He said recently he found out this video existed because the assault happened in 2015. He was interviewed after the video was released in 2018. He said recently he found out this video existed. He didn't know. So he didn't know that he had any power against Mr. Yang. He had to move to the countryside in South Korea and develop a completely new lifestyle. He had to leave the tech industry because you know how in America we have so many big, big metropolitan areas so you can have tech startups in New York and SF and LA and Atlanta and Dallas, and create the big companies are all in total, and they all work with each other or they all meet in the same
Starting point is 00:59:14 meeting areas. They have a lot of not shared spaces, but places that everyone will frequent because they work in this industry. He was so terrified. He could not even be a tech engineer anymore, like a software engineer anymore. He gave up his whole career. It was just terrifying.
Starting point is 00:59:32 I mean, he said he tried. He got a couple new jobs at a different IT places. And every time he would be drawn into meetings near the WeDisk company office, sometimes in the same building. Sometimes there would be conferences where the WeDisk team would also show up. He just couldn't do it. He also said he found out that the person who uploaded the video was an ex-employee who
Starting point is 00:59:55 was told to film the video. And everyone's like, what do you mean he was told? Apparently, Mr. Yang, the CEO, ordered an employee to take the video of the assault. This is so bizarre. This guy is so cocky and so brazen that he wanted someone to record him being the scum of the earth. He said it is a souvenir. If other employees want to act up or post about him or mock him online, he's going to send them this video to show them that's what's going to happen to you then. Wow. This guy was so cocky, he felt he was so this video to show them that's what's gonna happen to you then. Wow.
Starting point is 01:00:25 This guy was so cocky, he felt he was so untouchable that he ordered someone to take this video of him. Most people would be like, don't take a video of me doing this horrendous thing. I'm trying to hide this from the world, he's like, no. I'm trying to show the world. Wow, he really thinks he's like the King of Korea. Yeah, the ex-employee also said, you know, I personally understand the situation.
Starting point is 01:00:48 I think a lot of people online were confused about how there could be so many employees that just sit and watch, but I get it. When you work there, you're not allowed to go up against Yang. You were only allowed to obey him. So because of the company culture, I don't think that anyone could have even stopped him from what he did, so I'm not mad at them. There's even a Korean website called Job Planet. It's a bit like Glassdoor, it's a Yelp for businesses, for verified employees to anonymously write about their experience working at these companies.
Starting point is 01:01:17 WeDisk is rated 1.8 out of 5, with only 4% of employees recommending WeDisk to other applicants. with only 4% of employees recommending we-disc to other applicants. Many employees wrote, if you're willing to do anything for your boss, come here. Yeah. This is basically a porn website management company. A company that's very similar to the army.
Starting point is 01:01:37 If you've never been to the army, this is the closest you will get. Other employees talked about how it's nearly impossible to survive in the company if you're a woman or if you don't like smoking, bullying, and drinking every night. Oh, and they stated, WeDisc will track your IP addresses when you're off work, to micromanage your life to make sure you never betray the company. Many people accuse the company of stooping down to any level, willing to do anything.
Starting point is 01:02:00 Many former employees accused WeDiscisc of corroding Korea society. They brought up the illegal revenge videos, the spy cam videos that are posted on there, but nothing was being done. Side note, many employees did state that they felt really bad for their hand in the spreading of all these illegal videos. One of them stated, at the time I didn't have guilt, but now I realize what I did was very bad. Maybe I even ruined someone's life. What we did was wrong. Okay, do I think that it absolves them of wrongdoing? No.
Starting point is 01:02:32 Okay, it's confusing because in their own right, they are victims of workplace violence and harassment and I can see how hard that is. But also, many of them stayed with the promise of money even after they realized what kind of videos that they were working on. Now, I don't know what it was. Maybe once you enter a weedisk, you're told, if you quit for whatever reason, even if you give a really good excuse, I will make your life miserable. I will find you hunt you down and kill your family members. I don't know what they were told. I don't know why they didn't leave.
Starting point is 01:02:59 But it is, um, yeah, there are a lot of victims to this case, so I can't say that I feel the utmost sympathy for these victims versus the ones that were the subjects of the videos. I feel like if the business model was different or if they weren't doing anything illegal or heinous, I would have nothing but sympathy for these employees who are just trying to feed their families, you know, but this feels a bit different, you know. Where do you stand on this topic? I'd love to know your thoughts, but also the professor in the beginning of this story that was assaulted by the CEO in the room, right? Well, he didn't just move on after being beaten. He was
Starting point is 01:03:36 still harassed by Yang non-stop. He was being left threatening calls saying things like, I'm gonna give you one month, so go on alive yourself. Yeah, he was egging him on. He would say things like, I'm gonna give you one month so go on a live yourself. Yeah, he was egging him on, he would say things like, he would leave voicemails. Are you driving to the school right now? You should drive into the Han River instead. Eventually Yang got bored and moved on, but when those terrifying calls stopped, the professor still had to deal with a cervical spine
Starting point is 01:03:59 sprain, multiple fractures, TMJ disorder, headaches, migraines, vertigo, and severe PTSD because of his beating. He had to go to a psychiatrist, he lost his job as a professor, he couldn't even finish the book that he was in the middle of writing. So finally, November 7th of 2018, the Emperor of the Spicams was arrested, and here's the first writing part. Apparently, he knew that the cops
Starting point is 01:04:26 were gonna raid weed disk three days before they did. How? X employees alleged that Yang had bribed a ton of the high officials, including prosecutors in Seoul. They stated that one time a prosecutor straight up came into the meeting with them and coached them on what to say.
Starting point is 01:04:40 Imagine, a prosecutor comes in and is like, hey, I'm about to arrest the shit out of you guys. So here's what I think you should say so that we can go easy on you that is insane they had three full days can you imagine how much footage evidence was destroyed in three days see this is the thing and this happens everywhere in the US as well the police won't do anything until they are forced by the public. Until the public is, hey, either it's that guy's head on a stick or we're gonna put your head on a stick.
Starting point is 01:05:13 You pick, then the police are like, well, don't take my head, let's go after him, you're right. And you're like, are you serious right now? Wow. So that video went viral and it was all the backlash that caused the prosecutors to have to investigate WeDisc because it was leading into who even is the CEO and then to wait, what even is WeDisc? And then people being like, oh, you don't know WeDisc, all they do is post revenge videos. Yeah. So he was arrested for charges related to assault, harassment, abuse, drugs. He hired
Starting point is 01:05:48 the best attorney money he could buy. He admitted to the things that he was caught on video doing. So the chickens and the slapping of the employee. But he gave very thought-out excuses to all of that. He's like, well, I was just very passionate, man, you know. I'm just protecting my other co-workers from my ex-employee. Meanwhile, he denied anything that didn't have concrete evidence attached to it. And he also apologized, but it was very verbatim, he said, I know I did wrong, so I'm sorry.
Starting point is 01:06:20 I don't know who he's apologizing to. It doesn't seem like he ever addressed or apologized to the victims of the revenge videos or the spy cam videos. The biggest victims in this case. He was sentenced to seven years in prison, which he immediately appealed, and in his second trial in 2020, the judge lowered his sentence from seven years to five years. He was forced to pay a $20,000 fine.
Starting point is 01:06:43 He did have multiple trials though. One of them was for the harassment. One of them was for the illegal uploading of videos. That one he was sentenced to five years. All in all, with his appeals, he was sentenced to a whopping total of 12 years in prison. And all I have to say is, and this is a sentiment that is shared with a lot of people in South Korea against spy cam and and Revenge videos. I don't think that this is gonna teach him a lesson.
Starting point is 01:07:09 No. And society teaches women to feel ashamed when a man does something wrong against them, but they never teach that man to respect women. I don't think 12 years and a $20 fine basically is gonna teach Yang to respect women. The penalty of these crimes should match the trauma that the victims will have to carry for the rest of their lives.
Starting point is 01:07:28 In lots of countries, speaking of, women cannot even use the restroom and peace. I saw people commenting to talk about this because we were recently in Korea, but the spycam videos that we talked about in today in connection with WeDisk, a lot of those videos were indeed motel footage that was illegally taken, but even in public bathrooms and subway stations, nothing is safe anymore. For anyone, for women, for children,
Starting point is 01:07:51 for men, if you go into a woman's bathroom in Korea, it is very common to see, you know, like if you go to like the older areas, you see some holes in the wall or cracks in the stone. Women will stuff those areas, those holes with wet tissue or draw over with marker. There will be some signs outside of sub-way station bathrooms that say that this bathroom is being monitored by a team of the police that are dedicated to detecting hidden cameras. Women can quite literally not even shit in peace. Male colleagues have been caught in South Korea hiding secret cameras in the female colleagues' bathrooms. A famous news anchor in South Korea was caught taking upskirt pictures in the subway of
Starting point is 01:08:34 girls. A famous news anchor. He was going up the stairs and his whole phone was filled with upskirt shots. There are literal companies now in South Korea that you can hire that will come out to check that given area for hidden cameras. Obviously that's a luxury for most people that most people cannot afford and would not even be feasible on a day-to-day basis because, okay fine, you go to a hotel and then what? You just have to hire people to pay a bunch of money to look for cameras. It's crazy. It's primarily right now being used
Starting point is 01:09:04 for government activities, but it's insane that It's primarily right now being used for government activities, but it's insane that there's a market for it. They found waterproof cameras and shower heads, outlets that have hidden cameras, cameras in clothing hangers, in changing rooms. And a lot of these are Wi-Fi. So this person installs it, they never have to go back for it. They get the live feed.
Starting point is 01:09:25 And these live feeds are being channeled into these platforms, illegal platforms, that creepy, disgusting people will pay anywhere in the ballpark of $50 a month to watch all these live streams. Caramers will be heading in teddy bears, lotion bottles at hotels. It looks like a bottle of lotion and you put lotion in there, but at the bottom it's a camera. And it's part of the design you would never see it. Screws on the wall, picture frames. You can buy sunglasses, cameras, hat cameras like the baseball caps that have a camera,
Starting point is 01:09:58 car keys, cameras, water bottles, and these camera feeds get live streamstreamed and the main target is unfortunately women and what do the police do? Not much. In 2019 almost half of sexual digital crime cases were dropped by the police in South Korea. To many police officers, not all police, but to many, this is just something that happens because men can't control themselves. These police officers basically just accept the fact that some men out there are gross and they expect the rest of the world, aka women, to just kind of live with the consequences of that.
Starting point is 01:10:35 So, women are told to wear masks into public restrooms because it helps keep your identity hidden in case there is a hidden camera that is posted online of you, of you ping. Yeah, but I do think that times are changing. In Korea, there have been organized marches of not just women showing up, but a lot of men showing up to march with signs that read, my life is not your porn. Enough backlash has gotten the government to create entities that are tasked with reading public places, like hotels, motels, bathrooms of these cameras. And a lot more
Starting point is 01:11:10 men are standing up to other men online to let them know, hey, this video is not acceptable, which is really great, but it doesn't change what's still going on. Okay, so this is from an interview and not me finding revenge videos and watching them But an interview of a guy watching revenge videos He said the comments would read things like sorry to the girl, but thanks for uploading this love it They said in revenge videos a lot of the comments would joke actively about how this girl is fucked now like her life is over now And they will still continue to show this video. So these people are so sad because guys are never the victim in this scenario, right? The other guy, even if they see the face, they don't think that guy is fucked. No. They only think the girl is fucked.
Starting point is 01:11:55 Yeah, it doesn't even make sense. I think we should start shaming victims of all crime then. Just so maybe people will start being like, okay, yeah, why do we shame victims of sexual crime? Because that's crazy. Like, if you got mugged on the street, should I start shaming you? That's insane. Should I be like, well, your life is fucked now, so. LOL. Thanks for uploading the video. There is a recent case, and this is not just happening in South Korea. There is a recent scandal between reality stars, where the boyfriend secretly recorded doing the deed with his other reality star famous girlfriend in their house while they were dating.
Starting point is 01:12:27 So these are two stars. They break up. He post this video to promote his new O.F. account. He was sent to prison because she found out she didn't know this video was created. She didn't know he was going to upload it. It's a revenge video. There's a whole daily mail article about how the daily male never a great source But the fact that they dedicated paragraphs how sad this man was how he was so shaken up
Starting point is 01:12:54 That he was being sent to prison and how it's very rough time for him and it's literally what like I have no idea who these people are I have no idea if they're good people in other aspects of their life or if they've done other bad things, but none of that matters. He secretly recorded a video and then posted it and posted it and then tried to make money out of it and now he's like he was so sad. He's like I'm heartbroken. My family is like oh my god and the daily mail is posting it like he's heartbroken. Look at him. Let's give him a couple paragraphs to talk about his feelings. So again, I don't know if these are horrible people, but none of it matters because in this particular
Starting point is 01:13:29 case, it's a revenge video, it's illegal. He belongs in prison, he was wrong, she is a victim of this. But some of the comments read, the video is pretty decent, to be honest. Another one read, he made a mistake and it's gonna cost him dear time. People move on, stop demonizing him, let the first person without sin cast the first stone. Will people finally be happy if he ends his life in jail? So much sympathy for what? For what? Some people just commented, she's milking it now.
Starting point is 01:14:01 He's a vile creature and deserved everything he got, but like, come on. Sorry, but like, come on. Sorry, but enough already. If this poor girl is as traumatized as she says, why keep bringing it up? Get therapy, move on and stop trying to get in the papers. Uh, I can see she's making the most out of this publicity. I was genuinely shocked. I didn't, I really, I mean, it's the daily mail, but I did not expect the comments to be like that. And to me, that just reaffirms why your avenge video still exists, and why they aren't going away,
Starting point is 01:14:32 and why they're gonna become an even bigger problem. I feel like we just do not value a woman's trauma. And that is where I will leave you with today's case and story. What are your thoughts? What are the most shocking aspects of this case? The company's culture, the actual company's crimes. And do you think Mr. Yang is just going to quietly come out and be a tech guru again? Like is he just going to wreak more havoc and menace to women and employees everywhere? Yeah, with $200 million. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:15:00 I don't think he will stop. Yeah. Please stay safe. And I will see you guys on Wednesday for the main episode. Bye. I don't think he will stop, yeah. Please stay safe, and I will see you guys on Wednesday for the main episode. Bye!

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