Rotten Mango - #311: Top K-Pop Stars Opened a Night Club to Drug & Sell Women to Overseas Investors

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

An IT specialist working at a data forensics company came across something odd. He was employed by the police to recover any missing files from a phone. He was good at his job - so he recovered it all. But when he took a look at the recovered data - he saw 200k text messages, photos, and videos of women being drugged and sold to the highest bidder in sinister group chats. He had just uncovered a complicated human trafficking ring. The buyers? Overseas wealthy businessmen, politicians, and corrupt police officials. The product? Female victims who had no idea they were going to be drugged, sold, and SA’d. The sellers? Famous K-Pop idols who had images of being the wholesome guy every girl in the nation wanted to date. 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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Badabeein Badabeein. In 2016, in South Korea, a woman walks into the police station to report that her ex-boyfriend had taken explicit photos of her without her consent. She wants to file a formal police report. The ex-boyfriend then gets called into the police station where he says he's more than willing to do anything that he possibly can to show that he is innocent of what he is being accused of. But the problem is, it's broken. The police are like, what do you mean it's broken?

His phone was conveniently broken. But the police, they're thinking, we can't just tuck away the case and call it a good day. We're gonna have the man send his phone in to a data forensics company, the same one that recovered all the data from this hewar fairy victims phones, and have an IT specialist look at it to see if they can recover any data. So an IT specialist takes it in, and for his privacy we will refer to him as Park. Park gets assigned this man's phone, and he's trying to work on recovering any and all the data from the device. And he's really good at his job. He recovers almost everything.

Over 200,000 text messages, group chat. 200,000 text messages. Yeah, 200,000 individual text messages. Wow, okay. Videos, photos. I mean, anything that could be recovered, he's recovered it. But suddenly, the police call the IT guy and tells him, we don't need your services anymore.

I mean, you can just stop what you're doing and give the phone back to the man who brought it to you. They explain very briefly, the girlfriend has since dropped the criminal case. She's retracted her statements and said that she lashed out at her ex out of anger and that there were no photos. So the investigation is over.

Wait, so did the police look at a text message? No, they didn't look at anything. They're like, just turn it in. We don't even want to look at it. We don't even want to bother ourselves with this. But for the tech employee, Park, it felt like the investigation was just getting started. While he had been retrieving all the lost data from the man's phone, he couldn't help but peak.

I mean, could you really call it a peeking? He has to verify that the data is being recovered and how can you do that without even glancing at said data. And what he saw were images of women unconscious, naked videos of unconscious women being essayed, women being drugged and abused. In group chats, there were prices under these women. The cost of how much it would be to essay them yourself.

Menus, literal catalogs of women for sale. Messages that depicted people discussing the quote, sale of these women, they would read like. Number one doesn't talk that much and kind of loves money. She also has aspects where she doesn't have much charisma and drinking scenes, but her visuals are great. Number three, good visuals, she's bright, she's fun while drinking, but the negative aspect is, she gets a little messy when she's drunk.

But still, a lot of charisma. The receiving end, text back. Then let's go with number still, a lot of charisma. The receiving end, text back. Then let's go with number five, along with number three. Girls were just being sold to the highest bidder. Messages showed people sharing videos of unconscious women, drugged, dragged, and assayed. The receiving parties of these messages, they reacted to the videos

as if they were watching a funny TikTok, something entertaining, not a literal crime. They would text things like, I fed her sleeping pills and assaulted her in the back, then in the front, then in the back again, and then I finished. People were responding, ha ha ha ha. Redacted, insert person's name, ate him. Some other people commented, the mouth on her is great. Another chat log should a picture of a sleeping woman and the friends responded, who is it?

Her body is so freaking good. Another chat included a video of an unconscious woman being essayed with the text, who wants to watch explicit videos tonight. The friends responded, what's this? Is she unconscious? The sender responds, and is she is? Send a video with an alive girl. It's because she's unconscious, I can take these high quality videos with flash.

Someone else in the group chat responds, You raped her, he he. In another text they write, She doesn't even remember who she did it with, implying that the drugs they fed the victim altered her memory. But someone else responds into the chat. No, she's just an R word. As Park is reading some of these messages and glimpsing at some of these pictures, he is realizing that there are literal crimes being committed in these group chats.

Women are being drugged NSA, he needs to alert the authorities about it. This feels like a shady crime syndicate out there, women are being drugged NSA, he needs to alert the authorities about it. This feels like a shady crime syndicate out there running some sort of brothel out of their basement. He opens the group chat in full to see what other crimes they had committed, and he was shocked to see that he recognized every single contact name in there. The phone belonged to a famous Korean idol by the name of Chung Chun-young or J.J.Y. He was the lead of a band called J.J.Y. Band. Another idol from FT Island named Choi Jong-hoon,

Lee Jong-hyun, lead vocalist and guitarist of CN Blue, and the biggest name of all was Lee Seung-li, from the global group Big Bang. And these messages, they revealed a complex sex trafficking ring operated by some of the biggest names in the Korean entertainment industry. The chat logs were between some of the most well-known beloved celebrities in the industry,

the wholesome kind of idols, like the ones that girls would look at and show their boyfriends and say, he would never do this. In another group chat, the idols joke about how five of them gang-sayed a drugged woman the night before a fan sign event. There was another shocking video of a woman being dragged out of a club owned by Easingly by her hair by a man who is about to do god knows what her, and she's trying to desperately get the club employees' attention by smacking down their laptop screens as she's getting dragged out by her hair, employees don't even look.

They act like nothing is happening. The video is spread through the group chat, and so was another one. Well, it's a text message, and this is the reason why the employee of the data forensic company could never go to the police with these messages. A text read, I saw the messages between the young and the police chief. They found out who snitched. Even high up police commissioners were exposed

to be VIP clients of this sex trafficking ring. Park had just uncovered a sex trafficking ring run by celebrities, police officials, and there was nobody that could help him. There was nobody that could save the victims because everyone at the top was dirty. But Park would secretly make a copy of every single text message. And three years later, it would be released onto the internet, exposing one of the most shocking Korean cases to date, the burning sun case. We would like to thank today's sponsors, who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the Joyful Heart Foundation, whose mission is to transform society's response to sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, and they really

aim to support survivors through their healing and reclaiming of their lives through things like education, advocacy, and policy change. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mingo's growing team of dedicated researchers and translators. I mean, they really put their all into these cases. They focus on shedding light on stories from all over the world. And we would also like to thank you guys

for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates for these causes. And as always, flow show notes are available at rottenminglepodcast.com. Now, Burning Sun is the case that we're revisiting from long, long ago because it's resurfacing in the news. There was a recent scandal that we'll get into and additionally, because I feel like

our quality of research has drastically improved. So truly, this is going to be a deep, deep dive onto the horrors of this case because it's a lot. We had multiple translators, researchers help us this with this one. There was one RM meeting where we had like seven people in three different time zones, just on a call for hours, trying to get through everything again.

We're like going through it three times, four times, just to make sure everything is good. But as always, if there's anything we've missed or anything that was lost in translation or wasn't properly clarified, please let us know in the comments. And with that being said, let's get started. This case took place in Korea around 2018. But it's back in the news cycle for a lot of K-Netizens because of a new picture that

was posted to Instagram. Well, two pictures. We'll call them picture A and picture B. If you're listening to the audio version of this podcast, I'm going gonna describe both pictures to you. Picture A shows a beautiful private swimming pool from a resort in Bali. It seems like one of those villas that you can rent and someone took a picture of the private pool in the back. The water in the pool is turquoise blue. There's beautiful palm trees, banana leaf trees, surrounding the pool, there's this beige cushioned lounge chair next to the pool that you can lay down in and sit in the sun.

It's beautiful. It looks expensive, which makes it a very typical picture to post on Instagram. Picture B is almost an exact copy of Picture A, but it's not a repost. It's not like someone stole Picture A and pretended, I'm in repost. It's not like someone stole Picture A and pretended I'm in Bali too. It's a completely new photo. It shows more of the villa than the pool from Picture A, but you can tell it's the same exact place. Two pictures in the same villa in Bali. So what's the big problem here? It's a resort in Bali. Of course there's gonna be lots of people from all over the

world staying there and taking pictures. Picture A was posted by Girl A since they want to remain anonymous in the news. Picture B was posted by Girl B. The problem here was they ran in the same circles where it was discovered that they were both dating the same man. Former K-pop star, former inmate and owner of the nightclub Burning Sun, East Hung Lee. And I'm gonna be brief with this candle that unfolds because there's not too much to it, but East Hung Lee was cheating on multiple women

and taking them on back-to-back trips with the same exact itinerary. So he would ask girl A, who thinks she's in a monogamous relationship with him, to fly out to Bali to see him. He would rent a villa, take her to very specific restaurants and dates, and after five days she would fly back to Korea and that same date that she leaves Bali, girl B who also believes that she's in a monogamous relationship with him would fly into Bali to see him. She would stay in the exact same villa girl A had just left from.

I mean it's likely that girl A's perfume scent is still in the villa at this point and he would take girl B on the same exact dates that he had just taken girl A. Everything is identical. He had planned the exact same trip for both girls took them to the same restaurant, the same beaches, the same hotels, the same cafes. He didn't even wait 48 hours before both trips. It was back-to-back. Girl A flies into Bali. Girl A flies out of Bali. Girl B flies into Bali.

Girl B flies out of Bali. And all of this was, quote unquote, exposed. When both girls discovered that they had posted the exact same picture of the villa, and they started texting each other about their Bali trips. The story was sold to dispatch and some netizens commented on the scandal. I hope the girls don't think that it's just girl A-thirbee. Sincerely probably has women A-thruzy.

I thought he was in jail. That's what a lot of people were also saying. Like what's going on? Why are we writing these random cheating articles about a literal criminal? What's happening? He's free. He's free. What's he in? He was in jail. He's already out. He was only in there for one and a half years And now he's back to dating Yes, people already

Back to yeah being involved with women a lot of the comments of the same reaction as you I mean they were just shocked they were shocked that he was in the news they were shocked that he was out of prison they were shocked that girls would even go out with him that they would travel all the way to Bali to be with him in the first place when his club burning sun was exposed for basically having a sex trafficking ring operating during club hours. Yeah, how is he only a year and a half? That's insane for the level of crime he committed. A lot of people actually speculate that this is only trying to get back into the industry. It sounds counterproductive because why would a cheating scandal be good for him,

but to have these mini scandals that sound like celebrity scandals are probably better than having burning sun as the last scandal. And God forbid he's trying to make a comeback. Like, I'm not even sure how that's possible. But just in case that's his end goal, let us all refresh our memories of the case of the burning sun.

What was later dubbed, the VIP rape company. A young woman named Min Jung woke up in a bed and her eyes still felt really out of focus. That's how she describes this whole feeling is her eyes feel out of focus. She tries turning her head to see where she is and she doesn't recognize the room that she's in. She doesn't even remember how she got into this room to begin with. In fact, she doesn't remember much or really anything at all for the past few hours. She keeps blinking and trying to reach for any memory of even the last hour. There's literally nothing in there. And then a man walks into the room.

She remembers him. But before she can act, he's on the bed holding her down, strangling her. She's kicking, biting him, trying to push him off of her, but he's way too strong. He simultaneously strangling her with one hand and using the other hand to cover her mouth. He's using his body weight to push down on her body. She felt like she was going to die. Every time she tried to get up up he pushed her harder down into the bed. Her neck is bent against the headboard at a dangerous painful angle and she would later say, I felt like I was gonna die. I felt like he was gonna kill me.

She could not get this man off of her. He would proceed to rip off her clothes and essay her. Each time he pushed her, she could feel her neck bending more and more against the headboard. She said she felt like her neck was gonna snap. After this brutal assault, she grabs the mini trash can by the bed and she throws up everything that she has in her system. The throw-up was this dark brown color. It was blood. She said at this point, she really, really, really felt like she was going to die. Because earlier, the focus had been trying to get him off of her. But now that he's off of her, she doesn't really know what his plans are.

She had seen his face. He had brutally assaulted her. Is he gonna let her go? Was he just gonna keep her captive and keep repeating what he just did? Was he gonna kill her to make sure that she didn't report him? Minjung likely ran through all of the options in her mind. She clearly could not fight him off physically. Maybe she could wait for him to look away so she could make a run for it, but the chances

of that successfully working felt slim. So she said she got on her knees on the carpeted floor and begged for her life. She was trying to appeal to any sort of humanity or even empathy if he had any really. She cried that she just wanted to go home. She would never go to the police about this. Oh my God, she just wanted to see her mom. That's all she just wanted to see her mom. She finally looks up at the man, this kidnapper, this rapist, and he just starts laughing. He's giggling at her begging for her life.

And he responds, if you take a selfie with me, I'll let you go home. What? What? He evidence. He takes out his phone, turns on the front camera, grabs Min Jung, and basically forces her to sit on him. Okay, now smile. Min Jung doesn't really know her to sit on him. Okay, now Smile.

Minjung doesn't really know what to make of this. Is he playing a game right now? Like, why would he want to take a picture with her? Was he really gonna let her go? She said that she squeezed out a small smile and the man kept his promise. He threw her clothes at her face and pushed her out of the room. She booked it. She didn't even wait to put on her clothes. She just ran down the hallway of this hotel building out the main door into the middle of winter in South Korea, middle of the night.

Page black. It's snowing. She's half naked, barefoot, but she doesn't feel any of that. She's running towards the main road with her shoes and her pants in her hand, and this other hand is stretched out trying to flag down the closest taxi. She wants to get out of here and as far away from that man as possible because who knows what if he comes back, what if he changes his mind? Thankfully a taxi stops and she gets in.

Frantically she gives her address and when she sees the hotel disappear from sight, the fight or flight that had kicked in, it probably finally calmed down because she looks down and realizes she's still naked from the waist down. And there was a taxi driver looking at her in the rear view mirror. I mean, of course, we don't know why this man was looking at her. It could be that she's naked from the waist down and he's like, why is she naked? We don't know if he had any sinister intentions. I don't think so. But she put her clothes over her lap,

trying to draw the least amount of attention on herself from the taxi driver. She tries to take inventory of everything she has. She notices she doesn't have her phone, credit card, or her winter jacket. I mean, it's bad, but what's worse is that she's missing hours in her memory. She has no idea how she got to that hotel

with the man that she was there with. After getting home, Min-jong gathers herself as best as she can and goes to the police station. She reports the physical and sexual abuse and shows them all of the cuts and bruises on her body. She said she wanted a drug test. She knew that she had been drugged. I mean, this had never happened before. Her memory had always been fine, but now she conveniently has a gap in her memory and

ends up at a hotel with a man that viciously assayed her. No, she was drugged. This isn't right. She demands a drug test and she knows that this is not only going to prove that he assayed her, but he drugged her in order to do it. This was going to convict him. It was going to get her justice. Put that sick man behind bars so that he could never do it again.

Drugging, assaulting women, making them beg for their lives before throwing them out, naked onto the street. I mean, it was despicable. She's going to make sure that he gets put away for a long time. The drug test comes back. There are no drugs in her system. What? That doesn't make any sense.

And I'm sure she could tell that the police were looking at her like she had lost her mind. She said, the police started treating her like she was a liar, like she was a criminal, as if she's just making up lies to get back at a man that she slept with. And she's wondering why would I do that? I mean, women don't get anything good out of being a victim of a sexual crime, especially in a place like South Korea where female victims are constantly shamed. Why would she make up this kind of lie?

Because the man is Chavanose Ratakul. Let's call him Chav. He is a wealthy nebo baby of influential Thai politicians and he is considered a young business man. But he's honestly just a nebo baby. The police were asking Min Jung with these very patronizing looks on their faces, as if they had just caught a kid in a lie.

We feel the police knew it was him. Yeah, what? She was like, I know this man. Let me give you the name of this man. I remember this man. Oh. They're like, are you sure it was really rape? I mean, we heard from witnesses

that saw you guys at a club together and said that you guys were very close and he is from a wealthy family. Are you sure that you weren't just interested in him? And maybe you went back to the hotel with him, did something that you're not very proud of? Mean Jung felt like the police aren't even doing a thorough investigation. They just saw a negative drug test, rich man being accused of rape, must be some sort of gold digging scheme

to get money out of the guy. Min-jung is like, yeah, no, that doesn't make any sense. Do you have CCTV footage of the hotel reception? Because I, in the hotel lobby, I can assure you I did not walk in there willingly. She's thinking, yeah, okay, fine. Who knows if she's been drugged since the test came back negative, but there's just no way, no way that she would have willingly gone to a hotel

room with this man. He maybe had bonked her on the head for all she could remember. Technically, even if she did willingly walk into the hotel with this man, I don't think that means she wasn't assaulted. I just want to put that disclaimer out there. But she's trying to prove something, anything to the police, so that they take her seriously, which, you know, they really should have done in the first place.

But regardless, they pull the CCTV footage, and Min Jung is flored. It doesn't make any sense. She sees herself walking into the hotel with the man willingly. He's not dragging her. She doesn't even appear to be drugged. She's walking normally, stable. She's walking at a leisurely pace.

If anything, she's almost leading the man. She's walking in front of the guy. She's having an animated conversation with him. She's seen on CCTV camera of the hotel lobby smiling at the man. How is this possible? Chav is Thai, but since he's the son of influential politicians, he's a celebrity back at home. The allegations followed him all the way from South Korea to Thailand. He did some news interviews where he completely denied it all, I mean, as expected.

But he even reported feeling sad. Yeah, he said, I feel very unlucky to have been swept into a case like this. I'm innocent and I feel that this is all very unfair. And as a way of proving his innocence, the news channels played the CCTV footage of the two of them walking into the hotel. He said, when I was going into the hotel, she followed me. She was a hundred percent conscious. The CCTV shows it all. I didn't use any force or put her over my shoulder or carry her in. Min Jung felt like she was going crazy.

She was being framed as this liar, accuser, manipulator, gold digger. I mean, they used a lot of eloquent words in the media news outlets, but they basically said she found out that he was rich. Siddhu's Tim took picture with him because she was having fun, and now she's turned around and cried right because she wants his money. So the photo was released? Yeah. Chev is like, look, we had a good time, she's smiling, does that look like someone who's fearing for her life?

Min Jong-no, that she would never in a million years lie about something like this. And you know what, there was something odd about the CCTV footage. Sure, at first it seems like she's happy to be there, but she has zero memory of it. And second of all, it's negative 8 degrees outside in South Korea. Where is her jacket? She remembers wearing a puffer jacket that night, but she's not wearing it in the hotel footage. So what is she wearing? Like thin light sweater. Okay, like you're wearing a sweater. It's just very strange. She's an adult. No one just leaves their jacket out of that. Even if you feel hot, you carry your jacket. Where is her jacket? It just isn't something that she would do.

So she keeps trying to piece together the events of that night and it feels like there are just holes in her memory as if someone had taken a scalpel and carved out a section of her memory, clean precision. She didn't even have little bits, little flashbacks, nothing. She does remember though, hours long before the hotel. She was getting dressed up to go with her friends to the burning sun club. None of them were really clubgoers like that, but they just wanted to see what the hype was about. And it really did live up to its reputation. They walk in and the club is packed, everybody's letting loose,

enjoying themselves. It wasn't one of those like stuffy, stuck up environments where everybody is eyeing each other up and down. The music is good. I mean it's loud, but it's very good. Everybody's dancing. It's a nice break from the work and the school. She remembered it was, it was fun. She remembered her friends had all purchased a table. They sat down and she offers, Hey, I'm gonna go to the bar and get us all some drinks. At the bar, she felt this gentle tap on her shoulder. Turns around, and it's a man. Now, to give you further context, the burning sun is kind of known to be a Wattpad club. Yeah, kind of, right? In the sense that there were some anecdotal reports that women would go to the burning

sun, run into wealthy, young, attractive, foreign businessmen, and start dating them. Which is just like an innocent innocent cute Wattpad dream. It kind of implied that most men at the burning sun are well connected, high-powered, high-net-worth individuals that are also kind of attractive. So it's likely, Min-jong was like, oh my god, this is kind of funny. It's like my own little Wattpad moment, right? The man is tall, handsome, but more importantly, he was a gentleman. He kept a respectful distance, kept his eyes on her face, not her body. Didn't even try

to touch her waist, touch her arm while he laughs, none of that, no physical contact. He's kind, talkative, respectful. In this loud, busy club with people sexually dancing on each other, this tall handsome guy is asking her about her pets and hobbies. He's very nice. She even joined him in his VIP room later to talk about all these mundane things, and it was kind of cute and wholesome. Mean Jun's having fun, but at the end of the day, she is still a girl at a club, and

that is something that you never really forget. So when he offers her champagne and whiskey, she's like, oh, I don't really drink champagne, but I'll take some whiskey. She takes three shots of whiskey that night. I'm not a big drinker, so to me, I have no idea how much that is, but apparently it's not much at all,

especially if you know your limits, which means I'm dead. She knew that three shots of whiskey would not even make her tipsy. Maybe on an empty stomach, but she ate dinner before she came. I mean, it was just, it was nothing. And she didn't even take the shots back to back.

She's not slamming it down. She's careful. She spaces the mount, drinking water in between. She even told the guy straight up, hey, I'm not really fond of being drunk, so I'm just gonna take it easy tonight. He was so nice about it. He kept pouring her glasses of water

and sliding in in in front of her. Here, drink the water since you don't want to get drunk at helps. She thanked him and they continued on with their conversation, until she felt this out of body, almost a floating sensation. Made conversation, her eyes go fuzzy. She was trying to be polite and focused on what this man is saying, but it's like her eyes were out of focus camera lenses. She tries wiping her eyes discreetly, blinking, but even her brain starts to feel fuzzy. It feels like she had been drinking heavily all night long, but that doesn't make any sense because she had been so careful not to get drunk.

She had even been taking just glasses of water in between her shots of whiskey. She tries to rubberize again but she said that her hands were not coming up to her face now. She tries to move even just one finger, nothing's moving. It was kind of like sleep paralysis where you can't even move though you try really really hard and even with something like sleep paralysis there's this strong level of panic associated with that feeling of not having control over your body But imagine that experience at a club with a bunch of strangers I'm sure it's a different level of confusion, stress, anxiety, panic

Her body was no longer responding to her brain The man that she had been talking to Still going on and on about how he had a flight scheduled tomorrow to go back to Thailand. And he's just fading into this big blur and she heard his voice through it all and it felt like she was listening from a completely different dimension. It sounded very distorted. She heard him say, so you have to make me happy today. And that's it. She doesn't remember anything else after that. Just waking up in that bed to be assaulted. She knew she wasn't going crazy even though everyone including the police are trying to convince her that she's going crazy.

She's thinking I must have been dropped and she had a sneaking suspicion that something was in the water at Burning Sun. And water is a big business at Burning Sun. And water is a big business at Burning Sun. The employees of Burning Sun are incentivized to bring VIPs water, to procure good water, and protect the VIPs water and deliver good water to the VIP tables and rooms. If the employees were capable of doing that, some of them would make close to $8,000

in a single night from tips from VIPs. Whoa. All from the big shot for in VIP clients that are really, really happy about water. The employees of the club would work together as a team to make sure VIP customers got their water. They would even have group chats in real time while they're working about how things were going,

how the VIPs were looking for water, how they are enjoying their water, who needs more water. They would text things like, the VIP in the room is looking for good water tonight. Okay, I'm looking for good water. Hurry, he's pestering me for water, he's very thirsty. He said it doesn't even need to be good water anymore. Just someone get him some water. His fellow coworker responds, I'll get him a side dish then, little confusing.

In another chat, an employee texts the other employees. Someone is approaching the water I secured for a VIP. Bouncer, hurry up and go protect my water. He gets a response from the bouncer on it. The bouncer pushes through the crowd towards the bar scanning the area he spots the water that the employee is talking about. A man is with the water. So he approaches this man,

tells him to get lost, and he's standing there awkwardly with the water. But it's not what you imagine. It's not a cup of water, it's not a bottle of water, it's a woman. She's very pretty. She would make the VIPs very happy. Employees at the Burning Sun have their own vocabulary when they were working. When they say water, they were never talking about real water. They were talking about women. Female clubgoers. That's what they call them. Not humans, not people, not women.

Water. Korean, like moor. Moor. Yeah. It's like a phrase that you would use. If you go outside and you see a ton of pretty people that day you might say something along the lines of wow, why is the water so fresh today? That's a way of saying, wow, everyone is so attractive today

because the slang is the water's fresh means the fish and the water is fresh and tasty water can refer to all genders when it's used in this phrase like when people say the water is fresh it's not just referring to women it could mean, oh the guys are attractive like everybody's attractive. Okay. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. As much as I love the holiday season, the end of the year usually marks an emotionally intense period for me. Because the minute that all the

holiday festivities are over and I know that the New Year is approaching I Start panicking. I'm thinking about oh my gosh Am I gonna grow next year? What are my obligations? Can I fulfill them to the best of my ability? And then it all spirals down to the biggest most dreaded question I have How do I do all of this without saying no to a single person and not hurting anybody's feelings and not letting a single human down for any reason. Even reasons outside my control. And you're like, um, girl therapy, you need therapy and you know what, valid. Therapy is probably the only reason that I stay sane with some of these random pressures

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That makes sense. And it's nice to recognize my feelings and not shove them away for later, but just address them head on in a way that makes me feel a lot safer, a lot more confident. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give Better Help A Try. It's entirely online designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. You just fill out this brief questionnaire to get matched with the licensed therapist. You can switch therapists any time for no additional charge. And find your bright spot this season with BetterHelp.

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Quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust progressive. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates, comparison rates not available in all states or situations, price is very based on how you buy. based on how you buy. At the Burning Sun, water refers to women. Good water refers to very pretty women. And averagely okay women are just side dishes. They are not the main course. The goal for the employees at the Burning Sun is to survey the women coming into the club,

pick the prettiest ones that would please the VIPs, get them drunk and drug these customers of their own. Drug them before the VIPs get there so they can deliver them to the VIP. The goal would be, she is beautiful, she is beyond the point of consent, the VIP is happy. Because now the VIP doesn't have to waste his time getting her drunk so that he can essay her. He can just go ahead and do whatever he wants to her illegally. The VIP is happy, the employees get a big tip. That is the ultimate goal of the employees at Burning Sun, and nothing makes them happier

than watching the little essay of a young woman. They would text videos into their group chat of VIPs are wording unconscious women. They would text things like, look at the VIP room right now they're doing it. They would text back, wow it's true. From burning sun to Hong Kong to go to Hong Kong means reaching the height during intimate activities. So if a weird Korean guy asks if you want to go to Hong Kong tonight, he's not asking you to catch a flight with him for a spontaneous trip.

He's asking you for something sexual. And employees of the Burning Sun, new VIPs were more likely to tip them and come back if they were going to Hong Kong. But very few girls ever got drunk at a club to the point of not being aware of their surroundings or passing out. Or at least you don't do that without having friends that you can trust to not let you out of their sight. I feel like most girls know how dangerous that is. So it's up to the employees to get girls into that state quickly and discreetly. Their solution was date rate drugs.

They employees, sometimes even bartenders would date rate drug their own female customers, which a few things about this are so terrifying. How easy it is to spike someone's drink, terrifying, but also I imagine. If I went to a club, I might be cautious of strange men around me, but I don't think I would ever be really cautious that the bartender would spike my drink or that the employees would. Especially burning sun, the one of the most like famous club. High end.

Most high end clubs. Yeah. What? The employees would date, rape, drug their own female customers to serve them on a silver platter for higher paying male VIP customers who came to essay the female customers. The drugged woman, essayed them, took pictures and videos of the assaults, created

a product catalog of the victims to see if other VIPs wanted to pay to essay these victims as well. That was the real business model of Burning's son. They were in theory running a complicated sex trafficking ring and they got away with it for a very long time. Not because they're flying under the radar and never getting called out on it, it's because they were being so blatant about it. There's a saying, I believe in German

and it's translated into English as, the devil was covering it with its own tail. And it's in reference to something being so out in the open, it's basically right under your nose, but you miss it because the devil has just barely hit it out of plain view. Like hiding in plain sight. The burning sun's reputation was the tale, and if anyone heard any strange questionable stories coming out of the burning sun, first they would question if the story tellers were even sober enough to remember the events correctly. And if the answer was yes,

they would all just kind of shrug and say something along the lines of This is just what happens at the burning sun The club was owned by a well-known Korean celebrity and a bunch of investors and the sentiment for a lot of Koreans at the time was What else do you expect to happen at a place like the burning sun? It doesn't have a wholesome reputation The club was co-founded by Easing Lee who is known as the Great Gatsby of South Korea. And not because he's a fan of literature and that's his favorite book, but because he throws insane lavish parties. I'm talking a whole line of bottle girls coming out in line holding $1,000 bottles of champagne in each hand with insane sparkler shooting out of them and it's not just one or two bottle girls,

it's like a whole parade of them. Stack champagne glasses ready to be filled, pretty woman everywhere, uniformed girls in white and gold sparkly dresses, popping $10,000 bottles, $50,000 bottles. It was crazy, this is the same guy. Seung Lee, Rifford's own birthday, he had booked out a full luxury resort in the Philippines so

that nobody else could stay there. Flue 150 of his closest celebrity, Nepo baby, politician children, friends from all over East Asia, not just South Korea, but China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, everywhere. To the resort, Flue them out. In the the Philippines to party for four days and three nights straight. These are not people that sit in economy. He's booking first-class tickets for all of them. He's spent $20,000, $20,000 on just fireworks

for his birthday countdown. It's like really a crazy thing to do and the whole weekend ended up being around $444,000. That's crazy because his image is like really a crazy thing to do. And the whole weekend ended up being around $444,000. That's crazy because his image is like the opposite of this in the band, Big Bang. This is a guy willing to drop hundreds of thousands, if not like half a million dollars, on his birthday party. And he started as this humble, insecure boy. We're going to get into all of it. You know, this became the appeal of Burning Sun

The general population of Korea had started to hear about Tsung Lee's parties Started to hear about the new great Gatsby of South Korea And they wanted to go to one of Gatsby's insane parties But back before Tsung Lee opened Burning Sun, there's no way. How do you get on a celebrity's guest list? But now with Burning Sun, the club, they can experience it firsthand. So yeah, chaos is expected. People would say, did you hear about that Andrei's girl?

The Andrei's girl that stole her mom's credit card and spent it all at Burning Sun. Apparently the mom found out rushed to Burning Sun, the bouncer's called the cops, on the mom, mom gets handcuffed, dragged away. But the crazy thing is, there's speculations that it wasn't just a girl with a fake ID who wanted to party, that maybe Burning Sun was trying to target

underage girls to come to the club. Wow. Yeah, I don't know how true that is. That's just what happens at the Burning Sun. These are the reactions people would give. There was another report of a couple that went to the burning sun and the girlfriend had, you know, she felt comfortable.

She was going to this wild crazy club but she was going with her boyfriend. So if anybody approached her, she would just say, oh, I have a boyfriend, and he's right there. Or if she was scared, she could just ask the boyfriend, hey, can you just take me home? I don't really feel safe. That night at the burning sun,

her own boyfriend drugged her with date rape drugs at the club that assaulted her at a hotel and filmed it without her consent. That's true or? True. She filed a police report against him. Wow. The boyfriend claimed,

my girlfriend consented to it all. We're dating. Of course she consented. She wanted it. She said when you're on GHB, the date rape drug, it feels like you're in a trance. You just do whatever you're told to do and you kind of hear things, but then you have no recollection of anything once you truly wake up and snap out of it. You feel like a zombie that you can take orders, but you don't remember any of that.

But it's just what happens at the burning sun, right? How can they control what kind of boyfriends come in with what kind of intentions? Then another story came out, a witness, Miss Kay, stated that she was with this guy that she had met at Burning Sun, and he's like, hey, do you want to come up to my hotel room upstairs?

Because the burning sun is attached to a hotel. She accepted, she said that she was just going to go up there to have a drink with him. But as soon as he opens the door to the hotel room, she sees something very, very alarming. A woman is laying unconscious on the couch and a man is shoving his face in her chest and climbing on top of her. He gets off immediately, like he had just been caught doing something. He's friends with the guy that she walked in with. So I guess they're sharing this room or something. And he just starts laughing and he's like, oh yeah, this is my girlfriend and she's super drunk right now.

But that's not what it felt like. The girl didn't just look super drunk and something about the whole vibe, it didn't seem like his girlfriend either. She called the police, but they responded super nonchalantly about it, saying, well technically no crime really happened, did it? So once again, some people including the police were just saying,

ugh, that's just what happens at the burning sun. Another story was of a girl named Sarah. Well, let's call her Sarah. Sarah said that she didn't really know too much about the burning sun, other than the fact that her friends would go to the club and come back with these crazy stories of how they felt so extroverted and crazy and it was a blast and how fun it was. And she's thinking, wow, this is kind of insane. My friends are normally insane introverts that hate leaving the house and this club is

bringing them out of their shells. Naturally she's curious. She gets connected to a friend of a friend named Anna who said that she had been a big party goer and they formed this friendship. Anna offers to take Sarah to the burning sun since she had been there before. And Sarah has no clue that Anna didn't just go to the burning sun a few times. Anna worked at the burning sun as a drug runner. Once they get to the club Anna gives Sarah a pill and encourages her to take it.

It was Ketamine, which is known to sedate, incapacitate, and cause short-term memory loss in people. It can also be used as a date rate drug, which an employee of a business befriending a young woman lying about her affiliation with said business and supplying the younger witch drugs outside business, that sounds like it's been ripped out of some sort of trafficking handbook. But again, people were like, we don't really know the relationship between Sarah and Anna. And let's say an employee did that,

she could have just been a weird employee that does drugs. It's not representative of the club. And it's just what happens at the burning sun. There were other rumors that burning sun employees had undercover doctors to be around just in case of VIP or someone in the club overdosed on drugs so that these doctors would be available to try and resuscitate so that no one would get busted for drugs. This is a very speculative rumor, so take it with the grain of salt.

But later with everything that comes out, it's not completely unbelievable. All in all, all these people that were coming out with their stories of the burning sun, they're getting brushed off. So of course, if the police, if they're closest friends and family, don't really take them seriously, why would they go to a bigger audience and tell the world, hey, something weird is happening at the burning sun? It almost became normalized for alarming stories to come out and people would just laugh it off and say, ah, burning sun is crazy. So let's talk about the business model of the club. The burning sun club was attached to an upscale hotel.

It's called a hotel let meridia. I'm trying to pronounce it in the French way. And both club and hotel are going to be linked in a really dark way later. Burning Sun's business model was that once those club doors open and patrons start flowing in, two separate business operations are going to be running at the same time.

The legal operation and the underground VIP operation. The legal operation runs like most popular high-end nightclubs Weekends there are lines wrapped around the building every young adult wants to party at this exclusive nightclub It became a lifestyle brand even if you weren't necessarily having fun at the burning sun Just by taking a picture and tagging it on your Instagram story meant that you were someone not everyone could could get in, and that's why everyone wanted to get in. Of course, like other clubs, guys had to pay a cover fee to get in, but if you were a tall, attractive, young woman, you would get in for free. Side note, I'm not a clubgoer, so this doesn't really impact me either away, and I'm not saying that women shouldn't get into clubs for free. I think women should

be allowed into a lot of places for free, like the boardrooms. But we are a capitalistic society, and at the risk of sounding dramatic, if you are not the one paying, you are the product. A bunch of guys wanted to go to the club, because they knew Burning Sun had high standards for women. So only the prettiest girls got in for free. A bunch of girls wanted to go to the club because they knew that I had an order for guys to enter. Not only did they have to pay a cover fee, but Burning Sun also attracted a certain kind of man. And usually, if you saw a guy with at a VIP table at the Burning Sun, that meant that he did very well for himself.

And then, of course, there were just the people that were curious about what the hell was going on inside. So they're like, let me just go once. So within the first few weeks of opening, burning sun made around $1.4 million. After six months of being in business, they're earnings doubled. And that's just the legal side of their business. I would imagine they're bringing in a lot more money with their underground business. When did they open? 2017, I think. Okay. Yeah.

Cover fees are a small source of the legal income. The main money maker for the club's legal business was alcohol packages, VIP tables. Burning Sun made the money spending experience fun and lavish. If you purchased an alcohol set for your table. Beautiful woman in short dresses would come with sparklers and bottles parading around you to let the whole club know that you just made a horrible financial decision. They had five main sets, the heaven set, which included five bottles of champagne for $10,000.

Continental set A, $50,000 for 80 bottles of Dom. 80, I don't even know. So the heaven set is the cheapest one? The heaven set is the cheapest one. For $10,000. Yeah. Continental set B included 30 bottles of J.Z. champagne and it's $50,000.

Continental set C, 40 bottles of a different high-end champagne, $50,000. And lastly, the most expensive set was called the Montsour set. Apparently it was named after the vice president of the UAE, who is known in Korea as a world-class rich person. That's what they call him, literally, a world-class rich person. His net worth is $30 billion. So yeah, I would say so. He is a world-class rich person. He's part of the royal family

Oh, I see. I see. Yeah, the set comprised of 22 bottles and it was priced at a hundred thousand dollars It's a ledge that's hungly made up the Montserrat set for fun thinking nobody's gonna spend a hundred thousand dollars But people did There was one Taiwanese business woman that would come in and blow $200,000 in one night. A business woman? Well, some sources report she's a business woman. I would say most sources report her to be the housewife of a businessman. Yes, she would later become an investor in the club and soon leaves bottomless purse.

Side note about her, I don't know if she saw the future of the business, that's why she invested and spent so much time at the club, or if she just had a love for Big Bang, I kind of get the feeling that she's just obsessed with Big Bang. She would bring her luxury designer bags to be signed by Big Bang members. It just seemed like she was a super rich fan. So we went over the legal alcohol menu for clubgoers, but in order to experience the full menu of the burning sun, you have to be a consistent VIP. This is going to open you up to a whole new world.

When a VIP walks in through the door, first of all, they get a separate entrance. And if you spend around $10,000 a night, you get two guards to accompany you, and they are also kind of like your butlers. The employees in the club know when a VIP walks in and they all cater to that person all night long, making sure that everything that they could possibly want under the sun, they've got it. VIPs want to do drugs, even though it's highly, highly illegal in South Korea. No problem.

There's a VIP bathroom at the burning sun where allegedly, drugs could be taken orally, but also through the vein if that's what the VIP clients wanted. Full service. Say note, a lot of these employees would spend their time working as merchandisers. This is a very important position at the burning sun. So most merchandisers, like most establishments, they need to keep inventory of the alcohol. Make sure the bartenders are giving top shelf alcohol for someone that orders it and keeping the house vodka to the house vodka orders, making sure that they always have champagne

bottles in the back for the alcohol sets. Do they have enough straws, cups, glasses? They're in charge of all the merchandise, right? Inventory. But there's another side of merchandisers working at the burning sun. And we're mainly going to be talking about the moving forward when I talk about merchandisers. They are there to provide all other products, quote, products, for the VIPs. The regular merchandisers take care of the alcohol, the food,

the napkins, the crystal glasses for the whiskey. The VIP merchandisers are almost like personal shoppers, personal concierges, butlers for the night. And they usually try to plan ahead for the VIP's needs over the weekend. On Thursday, every merchandiser from the Burning Sun sends out text messages. The regular merchandisers will send out the weekend

specials to the regular clients. About imported champagne that they just received, that's on special, or a new cloth-footed bathtub filled with ice-n champagne, or a new party theme, with cover fee being slushed in half or a new DJ that's going to be featuring this weekend. The VIP merchandisers will send out similar text. This week's specials are, almost like a restaurant's weekly specials catch of the day at supermarkets, but instead of promoting cover fees being discounted or alcohol sets being on special, they were naked and had just been essayed by other employees or VIPs. The merchandisers believed that these women, these victims, could be victimized again.

So it's just a matter of which one the VIPs wanted. Under each picture or video of a girl was a price. To drug an essay, the girl, they're selling essay. They're not even selling sex, they're selling rape. So they're gonna what? Laura, the girl's back in. Wow. So they get their numbers usually the weekend before

when they're drugged and Laura them back in. And just like how the alcohol specials changed every week, the girls changed every week. The merchandisers would text the VIP, you can have sex with this one, or how about this one. Or you can rape like this, a kind of playing rape like this. So they're referencing videos like you can also do it like this. Or text that read, I can make you a reservation guest. If you come, I can get you this girl. If there was more than one VIP client that wanted the same girl that weekend, they would open a bid. The clients would bid, auction. On the woman who had no idea that any of

this was even happening. Many of the club investors in VIP clients were wealthy businessmen from other countries, so there were a lot of rich Chinese Japanese and Thai businessmen who would travel for work, to Seoul, and they would stop by the burning sun to let off steam. The merchandisers were really good at knowing exactly what kind of girls each of them wanted. They always stated that the Chinese VIPs really liked Kangnam on these. So Kangnam is like the Beverly Hills of his horror.

And on me means older sister. It's a really nice way of saying they like faces with a lot of work done. So when they knew that a group of Chinese VIPs were coming in, they would send them the weekly specials filled with Kangnam on knees. It's like none of the VIPs wanted sex workers. That's the part a lot of netizens were infuriated by because regardless of how anybody feels about sex work, if it is between two consenting adults, there is a level of understanding there. There is a transaction that's being made. And in the best-based case scenario, it's a win-win.

Both parties get exactly what they want. And I say that in defense of the sex workers, right? Because usually they get the shorter end of the stick. Now, anyway, it would be a bit more acceptable if this club was illegally running some sort of brothel. But that's not what's happening. They're straight up sex trafficking. I mean, this is like human trafficking. None of the VIPs wanted sex workers. They wanted a girl next door. Truly did not know that she was getting drugged and

being filmed while being sexually assaulted. They wanted victims. That's what they wanted. But let's say they didn't choose a girl through text ahead of time. They showed up without advanced notice. The merchandisers would go out and pick out the girls that they felt best suited the VIPs types and bring them into the VIP room. So they just walk around the floor? Yeah. And just any girl that had come to spend money at their establishment, a potential victim. Or the VIP would already have their eyes on a girl or two in the club and they would just be brought in. They would request, I want that one and that one. The employees would go drug those girls and bring them in. And just to reiterate this point home, sorry if it feels redundant, but it is a huge

part of this case. These women that they're picking to bring to the VIP rooms are not employees of the club and they are not sex workers. And I don't say that to say employees or sex workers are not as important, but I'm saying if it wasn't employee or a sex worker, they would be there for work. Like these women literally came as customers have no idea that they're being chosen to be victimized. They're like Min Jong, just hanging out with friends. The assaults would either happen right in the VIP rooms or upstairs in one of the hotel rooms of the La Meridia.

And the hotel also happens to be an investor in the club. So there is a question of how big and how well thought out this operation was from start to finish. The hotel owns close to 50% of the club. Okay. The speculation being perhaps that was the whole point that Burning Sun was created. For For this reason it's not a club that happened to fall into sex trafficking Yeah, but rather a front for sex trafficking. I think the unsettling thing about this case is both Operations were done pretty out in the open. This is a club

It's not like one of those money laundering schemes where a front is a churro shop and behind the scenes is God knows what will never know because the public will never see it, hear about it, know anything about it. But with Burning Sun, they're running these operations in front of all the club goers. I would liken this to the feeling of going to a supermarket, shopping for beef, not knowing that there are security cameras

watching you and another group of people behind those cameras, shopping for human meat. Like that there are security cameras watching you and another group of people behind those cameras shopping for human meat. Like that's the feeling I'm sure. And because nobody really knew what was going on inside the burning club, aside from victims who were staying quiet out of fear, people were lining up, fighting, paying to get into the burning sun, a place that would turn out to be a literal hell for the victims. And it all gets exposed by a 29 year old man by the name of Kim's Hwang-gyu. We're gonna call him Kim for the rest of the story.

November 24th, 2018. Kim went to Burning Sun with a bunch of his friends. It was his friend's birthday. They're all there to have a good time. It also happened to be the first snow, Chon-noon, which is a very special day in Korea. We're supposed to make a wish and spend it with your loved ones. It's a very cute romantic day. So Kim decides to go outside. He's in the burning sun, and the snow starts falling. So he's like, oh my god, I'm going to go outside just quickly to see the snow. He kind of parts with his friends and on his way out. He sees a woman half passed out,

barely conscious being dragged out by a man. She looks like she's trying to grab on to pass her buys. She doesn't want to leave. It's clear this is not consensual. She clearly wants help. So Kim decides, I'm gonna help. He decides to block the man from taking this woman and this man happened to be a VIP client

and the employees of the burning sun did not take well to Kim standing in the VIP's way. Wow. So they're like blatantly. Oh, in front of people. Wow. Yeah.

The employees also did not appreciate that Kim was now standing in their way of making a fat tip. So they drag Kim outside in front of burning sun CCTV cameras into the snowy road and they start beating him. They start pummeling Kim. The club executive was one of the main perpetrators. He trips Kim with his foot. Grabbed Kim by the hair to hold his head in place.

Use his other hand to punch him in the face repeatedly. It was getting to the point where even one of the bouncers was like, hey, let's chill out a little bit on this customer. But this executive is not listening. Another bouncer jumps in to help hold Kim in place. So it's easier for the club executive to hit him. At one point, the club executive even walks away from Kim, who's on the road just sitting there

because now he has three broken ribs. It's painful to even try and get up. And this is not a light beating. The club executive walks over to his little bouncers, takes off his jacket, only to walk back over, and continue beating Kim. Then when he's finally done, he just walks back into the club with the bouncers, leaving Kim on the ground. Kim is confused, scared, but also, rightfully, really, really, pissed. He calls the police who gets their 12 minutes later and he's explained to the police what happened and he's pointing at the CCTV camera is like hey it's all on there Everything that happened you're gonna see it on there. So go look at it. The police don't really do anything

And Kim is like what are you doing? I said the person that did this to me is in there He went that way. So go into the club and find him The person that did this to me is in there. He went that way, so go into the club and find him. They're still not really doing anything. Frustrated, Kim kicks the trash can in front of the VIP entrance, and they still don't do anything. Finally, officers decide to go into the club, leaving Kim outside.

They talk with the security. They talk with the club executive that beat up Kim. And once they get back outside of the club, they arrest Kim. They tackle Kim to the ground, and arrest Kim. They handcuff him from the back, which I imagine is quite painful

as he has three broken ribs. Employees are oddly seen helping the police arrest Kim, which is just really suspicious if you think about it, because... Yeah, yeah, exactly. Even if a client did something wrong and they're getting arrested on the premises, why would you help? Like, there's enough cops already.

Yeah. Kim would state that as he's being dragged into the police station, the officers intentionally tripped him and since his hands were handcuffed behind his back, he had nothing to break his fall except with his face. A officer tripped him? Yeah. He had busted his face, had a severe nose bleed. He claimed the police also kicked him and hit him several times

where he had already broken his ribs. He had several broken ribs, and they still refused medical care. He was seen at the police station yelling, Seung Lee's club, you guys got money. They do hard drugs, and they do marijuana in there. January 28th, 2019, Kim starts going on interviews and making posts about what happened to him inside the burning sun. His main accusations were, the women are being drugs at the club.

Police are getting paid by the club to look the other way. He said, screams could sometimes be heard coming from the VIP rooms of girls begging for help. These are masked by club security and then the paid off police department nearby protects the club from legal liability. The police aren't here to protect the public. They're corrupt. Kim started a blue house petition and it received more than 200,000 signatures in just one day.

The petition detailed specific drugging and assault cases that allegedly happened within the burning sun club as well as their sketchy and corrupt relationship with the local city police. It gained so much attention, the president at the time promised to have his team look into it. But when the blue house looked into it, the police just turned in random reports that Kim was committing sexual assault in the club.

They argued, look, Kim is the one that was assaying people in the club. He was caught, dragged outside by employees, and beaten. Should he have been beaten like that? No, but the employees just really hate scum of the earth essayers, you know? So we came out and we arrested the guy. With this, all the news outlets started reporting Kim as some sort of sexual criminal,

which it's a whole long story we're gonna get into later. But the burning sun even came out with an official statement stating Kim was an offender And they had no choice but to kick him out to support their statement They submitted two complaints from woman who allegedly were sexually assaulted by Kim at the club Wow, they are really just fabricating a whole reality Yeah, out of nothing wow in its working. Yeah Come on. How do you compete with that?

Suddenly the story very quickly becomes a he he said she said situation, rather than a very serious allegation of sex trafficking inside of a club. But netizens did notice something strange. The person who filed a complaint against Kim saying that she was sexually harassed by him at the club was an employee of the club, not saying that they can't be sexually harassed by clients, but like, she was a merchandiser at the club. It was Anna, the drug runner. People didn't know that yet, but still it was just weird.

Right after he alleges that there's an underground ring happening at the club, an employee of the club, says that he is the essayor. Kim said that he was charged unrighteously and inaccurately on seven charges including defamation in decent acts criminal battery and more. And our team tries really hard to not make something about something that it's not right, but there was a feeling by the K-netizens and by a lot of people that had gone to the burning sun. Okay, a man has spoken out about the club.

And sure, it's kind of a, he said, she said situation, but a lot of netizens were still on this man's side and supporting him, and it kind of felt safe enough for women to come forward now. Because if it had been a woman whistleblower to this, there had been other small cases of women trying to anonymously come forward that something weird was happening at the burning sun.

They were slut-shaped to hell and back. But now that there was a male at the center of this whistle-blowing situation, they felt like, okay, maybe we can also help bolster his story because we have our own stories about the burning sun. That seems a lot. Yeah, a lot. I mean, just like the crime itself says a lot about the violence against a certain gender, and then this just reiterates that.

So, you know, like I said before that, it was people like Min Dong, people who are getting slut-shamed, victim-blamed, and now a man comes out and they're like, OK, maybe this is our chance to expose what's really been happening. So because of Kim, a lot of anonymous women start coming forward with their stories of the burning sun. Many of these stories would confirm Kim's allegations of police corruption because many of these

women reported their essays to the police and they did nothing. It was revealed that the drug most commonly used to essay women at the club was GHB. It's called Wrypong in Korea. Well, at least that's what Whirpong in Korea. Well, ESA is what most common news slang for it. It's also called liquid ecstasy or the fantasy drug. It is the most commonly used date rape drug even here in the US. It comes in a clear liquid form or white powder that becomes completely dissolved and invisible in liquid. It is odorless, tasteless, and colorless. There was a journalist who experimented by taking GHB herself under the care of a doctor.

She was so loopy, she alternates from being passed out, to being awake and writing things on her hand and talking about her mom, she doesn't remember a single thing. None of it. But that's not the only damage. Long use of GHB can result in poor memory and even brain damage. If you take a lot while consuming alcohol, it could even result in death. The victim usually starts becoming semi-conscious just from one sip. It's like the lights are turned off suddenly.

But it can't really be detected that well. It's often compared to a state of dementia. You can walk around by yourself, but you don't remember walking around. And everything feels separated from your own free will. At the burning sun, some employees were requests to be brought zombies for VIP room 3, for example. They'd be like, okay, we need zombies in room 3. Because GHB makes the victims able to walk and talk, but they're not there. They're not making any decisions themselves, so they know that these victims are either

entirely unconscious or their cognitive abilities are all heavily affected by the drug. So they know damn well that there is no consent that is given. And the worst part of GHB is that the drug is basically untraceable. I mean, yeah, it's not untraceable, but it's not for long. So that's how the girl tested negative. Yes. So depending on the person, the drug can be completely metabolized anywhere between five to 24 hours of use. Meaning, if you go home feeling like something very sinister happened, you feel like, okay,

I need to get my thoughts straight before I go to the police station because I can't walk in there and say, I don't know, something happened, I don't know. But by that point, the drug could be completely out of your system. Mm-hmm. Wow. And you would be labeled as a flower snake in Korea. A flower snake is a term for something

that doesn't really happen that often, so I don't know why there's a whole term for it. But it's referencing a woman who seduces men, sleeps with them, and then wakes up the next morning deciding to sue them for money. In Korea, the drug is often described with this phrase, I did this action, but I don't remember doing this action, which I think is a really good indicator

of how hard it is in a place like Korea to prove that you've been drugged and assaulted and have the police take you seriously. At this point, everything starts snowballing. It went from a man was being assaulted and maybe a single VIP was assaulting a woman or at least trying to, then it snowballs into no. They are running a sex trafficking ring

and there are many, many women getting drugged and assaulted by many different VIPs and the employees are all in on it. And the big question on everyone's mind, which yeah, I don't know if it was the most appropriate question at the time. But it was, how much of this did K-POP idol Lee Seung-Li know about it? As one of the co-owners of the club, people wanted a public statement from him ASAP. Did he or did he not know that his employees were running a rape business at his club? Sung Lee's dad didn't interview with media first, where he claimed Sung Lee was blindsided

by all of this. He stated that his son had businesses everywhere, and he's still an idol after all at the end of the day. These businesses are not his main business. As much as he wants to be super involved at the burning sun, he just didn't have the time. And now, now he's super shocked and disappointed just like all of you, the public, the dad said, and I quote, there's too many speculative articles

about this burning sun case. They're only taking the other side story, and it's unfortunate that they're only focusing on that. Just because it's called the Seung Lee Club does not mean that my son was directly involved with the things that had happened. He would later go on to insinuate that the media just wanted to attach Seung-li

so heavily to the crime because it makes for a better story, makes for a better headline. The dad even went on to say that Seung-li didn't even own the club anymore and that he wasn't in a position to give instructions or give orders at the club. He had a CEO in place for that. So Seung-li is not the CEO of Burning Sun. Just a co-founder. His dad goes on to say, I talked to Seung-li today. He said his fans and everyone will want to hear an explanation.

He sounded like he was having a hard time. He can't help but feel misunderstood. My son is not in a position to directly work at Burning Sun. He's rarely in Korea and he's busy with his ramen franchise. Yeah, he has a ramen franchise. And so low concerts abroad. This time, I'm sure he really felt the burn. It's unfortunate. But last month, he received the 2019 Korea Consumer

Evaluation Best Brand Award. But none of that was covered by the media. Instead, it comes out as if he's a criminal. His true intentions will be revealed through the investigation, but it's upsetting that even before the results come out, he's accused of doing hard drugs. He did a drug urine test because of this issue, and the result showed nothing was wrong. My son feels wronged. Fake news is being spread by the media.

He's not a child that could hurt others. My son is having a hard time, especially because the media is making things up. My heart hurts too. Then, Seung Lee did an interview of his own where he stated he never bribed any police officers or police station. He stated even if he wanted to, he didn't have that much power. He was basically just a boy that sang on stage. He said that all he did was lend his name and fame to help the club gain more foreign fans and have more club goers come. And sometimes he would DJ at the club,

but that was really his involvement in the club. He said, I don't even know the financials of the club. Yeah. He goes on to throw his business partner of Yuri Holdings, the company that owns 20% of the club that is co-founded by Seung Lee. So his dad is saying, Seung Lee, my son, doesn't even own shares of the company of Burning

Sun. And like technically, Seung Lee doesn't own shares of the Burning Sun, but he owns a company called Yuri Holdings that owns 20% of the club. And Seung Lee is like, you know, I heard that my business partner was talking about women and asking for women and trying to buy sex, and I tried to stop him, but he wouldn't listen to me. And I don't really hold that kind of power over business partners. So there's nothing I can do if that's an adult, you know, throws him under the bus. Seung Lee promises to the media and to the public that he's going to do anything to help with the investigation.

And he wants the truth out there as much as anybody else. Of course, their responses make the case blow up more, but on top of that, the business partner that he threw under the bus is actually married to a then very famous actress by the name of Park Hanbiar. So he's like, hey, you know that actress? Well, her husband is like looking for sex workers.

So of course, the case blows up even more, right? But at least Seung Lee's fans are super relieved. They felt like, we dodged a bullet. Seung Lee is still good. He's still the guy that we know and love. Other people doubted that. They thought Seung Lee knew exactly what was going on. He's the great Gatsby of Korea.

And just like the great Gatsby, Seung Lee has a raging and fury already complex. To give you context on Seung-Li, he was part of a 5 person K-pop group called Big Bang. And I feel like for anyone who knows even a little bit about Korean entertainment or even really Korean culture at this point, Big Bang is just one of those groups that needs no introduction. So I'm gonna try and keep it brief for those that are just not in the K-pop world. Big Bang is like the one direction of K-pop, meaning they will always be remembered at one point as being one of the most iconic boy bands in K-pop history. I'm not saying right now I'm just saying at one point they were. And I'm not saying that they're better than your

faves or even like they paved the way or anything, but they were really, really popular. Yeah, like between what 2008 to 2012, like they dominated the world. Dominated. Yeah, it is unclear how much revenue the group generated, or at least we couldn't find out an exact figure, but we did find out that they brought in $800 million in ticket sales for their concerts during their career. That's probably a very small cut of the overall revenue that they generated. That's not including album sales, streaming revenue,

appearance fees, ambassadorships, royalties from music. That's just concert sales is $800 million. So they're an influential group, and Seung-Li always felt like the black sheep of the group. It's pretty evident in hindsight that he had an intense inferiority complex while he was part of Big Bang, and it does seem like there were a few pain points for him. Seung-Li applied to be a trainee for the K-pop group, that would be later at Big Bang. There was a series of cut-thirt competitions till a group of boys was narrowed down.

They just wanted five members. Everything was ruthlessly judged and criticized by YG, who was picking the trainees. They had four members already picked and it was down to the last spot. Soonly and another boy were competing neck and neck for it. Soonly barely made it. It was so neck and neck, it was like,

nah, I guess we'll go with Soonly. It wasn't like, oh man, he won by a landslide. That was so good. He really stood out. It was such a close call. And that type of complex, he felt like I'm not as good as the other members. Why G was so certain on the other members. But for me, it was kind of, it was kind of iffy.

Now that kind of complex doesn't necessarily make someone a bad person. Fans actually fell in love with Seung- Lee for the sides of him that were shown. They remember during the early days of Big Bang, there were reality shows that they would do that showcased what their lives were like as trainees, and they would all be crammed together inside these very not-so-great apartments that the company was paying for. They would have to clean up after themselves, after training and dancing for like 18 hours a day, and Seung-li being the youngest of the group. In Korean culture, that means he has to do a lot more chores than the others.

He has to do things like wake everyone up, which is harder than you think. The oldest of the group top He refuses to wake up so it's standard to see Seung-li go into the kitchen, grab pots and pans to bang together to wake up his young. Another member would start vacuuming the wall on top of top's face to try and wake him up because he's just I guess a heavy sleeper. And it's kind of like a heartwarming moment. It's relatable. It's funny and considering how young the boys were at this point, it was endearing. But Seung-Li was always being compared to his other bandmates. I would say I remember, and this is just from Memory and Not Research.

G-Dragon, Top, Tae-Yong, like they had so many stands from the people that I knew personally. Seung-Li just didn't really have a lot of stands from what I remember. He did seem to get a good chunk of hate comments. People joked that it didn't like the size of his head that it was really big. They also said that his legs were too short, and that other members were very good looking but Shingli was um had a relatable looking face. They said. He said he especially didn't like the comments about his head because and I quote, it's not like I can get a head reduction. But even that moment is a good example of why a lot of people started to stand Shingli. He seemed like the underdog and he was not shy to show that he was vulnerable and he wasn't like

trying to be like, I'm actually really good guys. He was embracing it. He's like, yeah, I am the ugly of the group, but what am I going to do about it, right? He said he was always anxious about never having enough money and he said G-Dragon earns extra money from songwriting and writes to the copyrights of their songs because he writes a lot of their music. Top does acting in movies and dramas. Taehyung does solo albums and concerts.

Sincerely, he said that he was anxious because all of them were so diverse in their earnings and their income and he said, I am making quote, one percent of what G-Dragon is making. Wow. And like a lot of people with a potential inferiority complex, he starts overcompensating. It felt like he's desperately trying to make something work.

And I just want to make it clear, I'm sure his idol life, like a lot of idols, if not every idol in South Korea, is cutthroat, is hard, potentially miserable and rough. But from what we can tell, the man is not starving. He's not paycheck to paycheck. So when he's saying I'm making 1% of what you're dragging is making, he's not out here working a restaurant job after his training. Like he's talking about like at that point, if top is doing acting and solo, like they are already popping at that point. Like he's a millionaire. He's killing it. Like as a part of Big Bang. But then he kind of made it his personality and a lot of fans felt bad for him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see. But I just wanna preface, we don't need to feel bad for him. But his image at that point is just like this soft, good boy, very, like little, I know, very soft energy. Yeah. People love it. People love them, yes.

Nice guy image. Yes, he said he just wanted to keep up with other members. So he learned English, Chinese, and Japanese. He opened up one of his first businesses, a training camp for idols. A lot of big names came out of there. A lot of big names. So he did a training camp.

Mm-hmm. Huh. I was gonna list some names, but I don't even want them to be like associative with Seung Lee, but like a lot of big names came and they don't even know like Seung Lee and they're not connected with anything that he did, but I don't even want them to be like associative with Shingli, but like a lot of big names came and they don't even know like Shingli and they're not connected with anything that he did, but just in case. But yeah, lots of big names closed down after a few years because one

of the teachers had gotten romantically involved with the student. Not a good look. He moves on with other business ventures and by 2018, he finally made a name for himself outside of Shingli of Big Bang. He was hosting multiple talk shows going on TV shows, acting in dramas, doing promotional activities for YG Entertainment. That's the agency that created Big Bang. He calls the founder of YG, Mr. YG Entertainment himself. He calls him Appa, which is Dad, because of how close they are. He started a Belgian waffle cafe for his mom to run.

He co-opened a restaurant called Monkey Museum in China. He had a ramen franchise called Aiori Ramen and it had multiple locations in Korea and even a branch in Kuala Lumpur. He owned 10% shares of a cosmetic medical company called Dr. Golderm. He was serving as a brand ambassador for a new music label launched by Sony Music. He was heavily involved in YGX a new music label launched by Sony Music. He was heavily involved in YGX, which is a sublabel under YG Entertainment. He would also go on to build this image of himself as the great Gatsby of Korea, which

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Orus, go your own way. So now we have a potential inferiority complex, love for lavish parties, lots of businesses in the nightlife party scene, but still, that doesn't make someone complicit in something as serious as a sex trafficking scheme. Did he really know what was going on? His fans argued, absolutely not. They felt like he was innocent. This is HUNGLY that we're talking about.

Do people not remember? A lot of people dug up an old clip of Seung Lee and it had been on a TV show called I Live Alone. He was talking to another actress. It's a reality show. They're sitting there talking and the actress recently had a baby and out of nowhere She asks Seung Lee. I can give you some if you want and he's like give me what? The soap I use, Bresmilk soap. And Seung-ly looks very shocked. Oh! Uh, uh, uh, what is it made from? It's soap.

Made from a mother's breast milk. Seung-ly puts his cup down to take a few seconds to gather his thoughts. Uh, Bresmilk is very healthy, yeah? Because he doesn't want to offend her, but he still doesn't know what to say in that moment. And it's a really innocent, comical moment. The actress keeps explaining the whole process of how the soap is made and Seung- Lee is coughing because he's shocked by all of this information and he's just trying to be polite, so he says,

oh, okay, yeah, thank you. Yes, of course, I would love some. How many do you want? I have a lot. You can just text me. He's like basically about to throw up some water if he has any in his mouth and he's text you to ask for the breast milk. It seemed like the actress was genuinely having a fun time-shocking Seung- Lee messing around with him. And Seung-ly comes off super naive, super innocent, super polite. So fans are like, you're telling me that this guy, that's shy when someone offers him breast milk soap, is a brilliant mastermind behind a sex trafficking ring?

Breast milk boy? Do you know what it means to bomb a chat? Usually friends will start group chats on KakaoTalk, which is like the WhatsApp or WeChat of Korea. And when they're done with the group chat, or if they said enough inappropriate comments or told enough secrets on that group chat, someone will text, blow up the chat. One by one, the notifications come in. Blank left the chat, blink left the chat, and once every single person leaves the chat, everything in that chat gets automatically deleted

by Kakao. So it's not like you can leave the chat but still see what's in the chat, it's gone. The chat history deleted along with any videos and pictures sent into the chat. When the Burning Sun group would feel like the chat had gotten a little too incriminating, when they had texted too many pictures and videos of unconscious women. When they had talked about too many VIPs saying unconscious women, they would periodically text out, bomb the chat, blow it up, which helps with making sure that if someone's phone is ever taken and by the police, if someone's phone is ever lost, they might see the current group chats that are probably very incriminating.

They won't see years and years of incriminating activity. It's almost like an insurance policy to everybody in that chat that they were gonna at least cover their asses. And it was in everyone's best interest to bomb the chat, to delete it. So they thought, JJY was part of these group chats.

And some quick context to JJY. He's what they call. J.J.Y. was part of these group chats. And some quick context to J.J.Y. He's what they call a multiplayer in Korea. He's a singer, songwriter, TV personality. He's known for having this wild, fun personality, so a lot of talk shows love him. He's also very, very good at singing. He never left the chats. He was part of all the burning sun chats.

He was part of every single, a singly chat about unconscious woman selling woman, bidding woman, he never left it because he felt so sad to part with all the amazing pictures and videos of women being victimized. So he always pretended to leave the chat last, but the truth is he never left any of them. He kept each and every single one. And when his ex-girlfriend reported him

for taking videos of her without her consent, and he would turn his phone in to the tech company, he would be the one to bring the whole operation down. Wow. So even when he did that, he thought he could just break his phone and he's good. Yeah, but these are the tech company that recovered the data from Sewar Fairy victims phones.

So like they knew what they were doing and they take their jobs very seriously. But he was like, oh, well, I basically smashed my phone. So it's fine. It was not fine. Even years before this, there was an incident that felt like foreshadowing to everything that was about to happen. JJ Y was on a show with Chico, another celebrity, and Chico's

joke about J.J.Y.'s golden phone. And immediately, because they're on set filming a show, J.J.Y.'s face changes for a split second. He drops his face mask. Not his literal face mask, but he drops his smile, and he has this very sour look on his face. It's very much the stop talking about this look. What's a golden phone? People thought golden phone is in these sex videos now? But Tiko would later be involved in the burning sun controversy because Netizen accused him of knowing what J.J. Why was doing on his phone?

He's like, you probably saw the videos then. Yeah, why would he, if he does, why would he put that information in TV, right? Like, that's what Siko is saying. He's saying, guys, I meant Colton phone. Like sometimes people use it to refer to someone who has a lot of good connections. So if you were to have Beyonce and Taylor Swift on Speed Dial, you have a golden phone because you have their numbers.

And so he was briefly involved in the Burning Sun scandal. But ultimately, JJ-wise, golden phone would bring down some of the biggest names in K-pop. February 26, 2019, the first round of messages are released to the public, and multiple celebrities would go down after the release. Along with investors, the management team, and employees of Burning Sun, there were a few key people in the group chats. Choi Jung-hoon, wholesome singer from F.T. Island, boy group. Ye-jung Hyun, idol from Boy Band C and Blue.

Kwon Hyuk-tun, brother of Girls Generation Yuri. J.J.Y. singer TV host celebrity TV personality. And of course, Seung-li of of Big Bang owner of the burning son. And it clearly shows that Seung-Li is involved. He is texting employees about investors that are coming and he writes, give them everything they want, call the girls over. There's also a guest coming from Taiwan. Employee responds,

which girls can we call right now? Oh man, it's the Chinese already? Oh my god. Take care of them so they don't get involved with others. Yes, I will stick by the VIPs. Seung Lee texts, you better do it right and make no mistakes. Another business partner tells the employee, put a boy in there too, someone who can serve, redacted,

a boy who can't speak English, someone like, redacted. Employee responds, okay, we'll do, I'll do the job well. Seung Lee even text. And which girl are you gonna bring? Get the kids who give it easily. Get the kids who gives easily? Yeah, like as in, is easy to essay. Is the presumption here.

JJY is randomly in that group chat and he's like, I bet the Chinese like plastic surgery girls. And Seung-lee is just like, all right, just do well. Another partner of the business text into the group chat. I'm preparing the horse right now. So when the two horse come, I will guide them

and make sure they end up smoothly with the VIPs in the hotel room. Seung-lee text. Chairman's guests are also coming. I think we need to set up a separate party for them. Let's give them back 100 times what we received from them. Guys, please look for any pretty looking girls who can possibly speak some Japanese. Let's pack the place. For Christmas, rather than us having fun, let's experience Christmas of finding satisfaction and making others happy. This time, let's give the chairman a great time and make him happy for all the summers he sent us yachts with staff and chefs from Japan to Pusan for us to enjoy.

Pro like he is the fucking worst because he's literally Manipi master mining this whole sex ring. He is the culprit. He is the mastermind behind this whole operation. Like he's the worst. He's like the ones connecting everyone. None of this would have even been possible without him. Yeah, he's doing this for the money and profit, and he's literally selling women for money. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I feel like a lot of media outlets, I don't know if it's legality, or they're just trying to keep it professional. But honestly, he's just straight up in my personal opinion, like a pimp. Like a disgusting, yeah, vile trafficking pimp, like honestly. In another conversation,

Singly talks about a girl that he likes and he writes, redacted is actually art, I admit it. J-J-Y text, I touched the hell out of her boobs. Her boobs big. They're fake. Slingley text, redacted, is coming. Like a girl is coming. And J.J.Y. says, stop these foreigners from coming.

Slingley text, you fucking bitch. There are investors. Then another conversation, Slingley writes, fuck, the party last night was a hit. Another idol says it was successful. Seung Lee writes, that girl I admitted, I'm fucking hooked, her older sister is fucking good too. Sun Lee say that? Yeah. J.J.Y. text. Yeah, her sister was a surprise. There were a lot of hidden gems yesterday.

Friend text. But there seems to be hella guys around too. Seung Lee says we have to steal. Let's all eat domestic girls together in Korea and then get married to foreign girls. Friend text why is blank so pretty? J.J. Why says she's the bitch both Mr. B and I ate. LOL. Seung Lee text and I plan on eating her too.

Anyone here got her number? An employee of Burning Sun text. If you do it with that bitch, it's guaranteed a secret. She's very, I don't know anything. Seung Lee text LOLOL. She has amnesia. She doesn't even remember who she does it with. J.J.Y. text, nope, not amnesia, just our word.

LOL. LOL. Slingley text? Could be she just doesn't remember. J.J.Y. is angry, he says, when she first met me, she was all BS saying about, I don't want TV, so I don't know you, but after she got drunk, she was whining and asking me to sing for her. Slingley says, want me to tell you something more funny or rather absurd?

I opened my eyes and I was like, why am I sleeping with Sinoona when I was like, I thought I was sleeping with these other two girls. Where do they go? Hello, hello, hello. In another chat, Shingley is asking a VIP client about what kind of woman they like and the client responds, I'm not sure. South Asian men like white skin, so someone with fair skin and innocent and pretty features, or the opposite, just sexy.

Girls like blank, blank, and blank who are innocent yet sexy, or just a super fancy glamour scroll, those types of girls. Wouldn't that type of style work? We want over 160 centimeters tall. Thinner. It's not too picky though. Girls from Korea will do. There are other chat logs where it seems like Seung-li is sending girls on trips with VIP

clients. He asks a VIP about an Indonesia trip that he is coming up and the VIP says that they want ones that are under 10K per person. Seung-li writes, I understand. It's 10K per person, right, Mr. CEO? He proceeds to send pictures of five different girls and he writes. Number one doesn't talk that much in kinds of loves money. She also has aspects where she doesn't have much charisma and drinking scenes, but her visuals are great. Cry emoji. In another conversation, J.J.Y. texts the group that

he's boarding the plane soon and he says, I will fuck Korean bitches as soon as I arrive. I'm going to invite them to my house before going out. German bitches have huge asses. His idol friends write, get back safely, fly safe. An employee of the burning sun writes, I bet German pussy smell like sausages. J.J.Y. says, not bad. LOL. We had fun.

A lot of netizens noted that it's kind of crazy that they are so polite to each other, even saying things like, get back safely, have a safe flight. we had fun. A lot of netizens noted that it's kind of crazy that they're so polite to each other. Even saying things like, get back safely, have a safe flight, we miss you. Meanwhile, they talk about women, I mean, in the most degrading ways possible. Another super controversial conversation involved the idols talking about who's hung Lee had sex with yesterday and they asked what she delicious, and they said things like, I want her number. And one person wrote, yes, she has comfort woman level. Let me tell you, comfort woman is a very, very sensitive topic for most Koreans.

It is aside from the crimes, the most horrifying comment that was found in the group chats. Chinese too, it's a huge problem. So to give context, comfort woman was one of the worst atrocities that the Japanese government committed towards Korean and Chinese women and a lot of the victims. So when Japan colonized Korea along with various other countries in Asia, so I don't believe that it was just Korean and Chinese, they promised a bunch of women from all these different countries, but we're just talking about Korean women here, that they could work in factories to make just enough to barely survive.

They're like, you can barely get by and you can maybe feed your kid. But because these women had no other choice, nothing else. They were basically forced to agree, not knowing that the Japanese government never intended them to work in factories. They were actually forced into sex trafficking. They were locked up and made to be assaulted by Japanese soldiers every single day. Comfort women have come forward to say

that they were assayed at least 30 times a day while they were held captive. I could go into further detail, but it's very, very depressing. They were impregnated. They contracted diseases. They were experimented on tortured. So the topic of comfort woman is highly sensitive additionally because it's not really something that happened long, long ago to multiple generations before us. Many of the comfort women, the victims, were elderly women in Korea. I believe the last few are still alive.

Many of them have since passed, but they have yet to receive an apology from the Japanese government. And a lot of the tensions in current time between the Korean government and the Japanese government, not to get too political, is this is one of those things. Many Korean citizens want apologies for the comfort women before they pass on. And the Japanese government has refused to acknowledge their crimes. And here we have the Korean faces of the entertainment world

making fun of comfort women. And recreating the tragedy, so to speak. I mean, even if we take out the literal crimes committed in the group chats, even just the way they talk about women, while they have a predominantly female audience as idols is despicable, it's filled with crude, emotionally violent, disgusting comments and jokes. And side note about the messages being released, some people hate the tech employee for not turning in the tech sooner.

They state that if it were them, they would have turned it in sooner. And that could be a thousand percent true, especially as a woman. I'm like, yeah, maybe I would have turned it in sooner. Few things to note, police corruption is really bad anywhere and it creates the same. There were already strong indications in the data that the tech employees saw that high, high, high police officials were involved in the traffic ingering, if you will. So what would you do? Go to a different officer. What if they all answer to the same person? How do you

know that person's immediate bosses and involved as well? And in Korea, when you mess with the police as a normal person, you might be ending your life right then and there. They could easily get you fired from your job. They could get you outcasted. You could lose everything your family, your livelihood. You would be on the street and guess what? Burning sun would probably still be up and running and victimizing people. And in Korea, defamation laws are honestly dumb.

Like they're not even defamation laws. So in the US, defamation is when someone knowingly states a lie about another person claiming it to be a fact. So the basis is you are lying about someone else and you're not allowed to do that, which makes sense. In Korea, it's even if you tell the truth about someone, and that someone doesn't like what you said because it hurt their feelings or hurt their reputation, they can sue you for defamation. Which a lot of people in Korea even think it's very goofy because that's not really even the definition of defamation. But here we are.

This employee could have been sued to the point of having nothing, but the clothes on his back, because they're not even dealing with one celebrity or one rich business owner, they're dealing with a whole roster of them. All cozy with politicians and police. What chance does this tech employee stand?

And even if they went through all of that, the burning sun could still be up and running. So I don't know if I would sit here and say, oh my gosh, well, that person is messed up. I do think it is frustrating that they sat on the information for three years, while people continue to be victimized. But I think that there's so much cultural societal nuance

that goes into a decision like that. And I think that we could technically all sit here and be like, I can never do that. But I don't know, I guess. It's like, how powerful are these people? All of these people can buy it. And who can he go to? Like really, you don't know.

It seems like all the people in charge are in on this. And technically, he committed a very big crime by keeping the data. So he broke the law as well. Now, I will say that when he finally did turn in the evidence after the whistleblower came, so he saw that and he was like, I think, you know, along with all the other anonymous women that were coming out, he was like, I think this is the time that people would actually listen and not think that these are fake. He was very smart,

he hired an attorney who was also very smart and they decided instead of handing it over to the police who were foaming at the mouth for this. They handed it over to the Civil Rights Commission office and that is how a lot of it became public because the police would have never made this public. Which again, I don't know, maybe he could have done that three years ago, maybe it wouldn't have worked. All we know is, yeah, it's out now. Many of the involved parties continue to state that these text messages are fake, but a lot of these texts are the foundation of the investigation into Burning Sun by the prosecutor's office, which netizens

feel like that wouldn't have been the case if there was a question of the validity of them, and the CEO of the Burning Sun even said, if Sunilie's cacao messages from three years ago are a crime, aren't all Korean men criminals? Incinuating that all these jokes about sex work and women and all of that is just how men talk. Wow. Which is the most absurd thing to say ever, but it also does kind of confirm the validity

of the chat logs. But to cover our basis, it is alleged for now that these are the real messages between the involved parties. But naturally, netizens had visceral reactions to the released alleged messages. A lot of fans were devastated that they supported someone like this. There were even chat logs that described how J.J.Y. and four of his friends took turns on a victim who was drugged. They joked about how she woke up saying she doesn't even remember anything other than having a drink with them. They also talked about how they thought it was so funny. They had gang assayed her while taking pictures.

And then the next morning, JJ, why went to a fan sign? So I mean, it's crazy he had the nerve to look his predominantly female fans in the eyes while smiling at them when he had just done one of the worst things that you could do to a woman the night before. The SMPA, the sole metropolitan police academy officially take over the case early 2019. Media is all over this case, netizens want to know who's involved, how much they knew, and they wanted all of them to go down. The shares of the burning sun were split like this. 42% owned by the hotel. 8% owned by the hotel's chairman.

20% owned by Taiwanese business women, Lynn Samo. 20% owned by Yuri Holdings, which was allegedly set up by Seung Lee, implying that he has potentially 20% interest in the club. But Yuri Holdings was also technically run by his friend, Yuyin Salk. Yuyin Salk is also married to a famous actress by the name of Park Hanbiar,

remember I was telling you about her. And 10% is owned by a businessman, Yimun Ho. He was close friends with Seung Lee, and he is said to have been running the day-to-day operations. He is the CEO of the Burning Sun. So all the foreign investors, they left the country and were safe from backlash, including the Taiwanese businesswoman who won 20% of the Burning Sun. The rest of the Korean celebrities and business owners were left to be investigated. Burning Sun and Seung Lee were also under investigation for tax evasion, which, you know,

really doesn't feel that significant compared to the other allegations. But I think that it does shine light on a lot of the things that he was doing. It was suspected that with all of the business from his VIP clients with the selling of SA, essentially, allegedly, and a lot of the alcohol packages he would encourage payment and cash. It's alleged that he was evading taxes, money laundering. You remember the restaurant that he had at Monkey Museum? They called it a restaurant, but it was like a nightclub. He tried to file it under a restaurant so that he could pay less taxes. His ramen business was making a suspicious amount of money. Turns out he was laundering money from

burning sun through the ramen franchise. It was a whole lot. It was a mess. Like, I think it also shows he was heavily involved, you know, he knew what he was doing. So while everybody is being investigated, Shingley announces his retirement from the entertainment industry. And it's a very off-putting statement. He's basically like, I think it's a good idea to retire at this point. I decided to retire because the issue has caused

so much social controversy, and I've been criticized and hated by the public for the past month and a half. And now, with all the investigative agencies in the country investigating me, I am being labeled as a national trader. I cannot allow myself to cause harm to everyone around me just to survive.

And that isn't hated as apology. It felt very, you guys blew this whole thing into something that it's not. So now I'm just gonna retire then. I don't wanna face your criticism. Also, it had this aura of, I don't know what's going on. I'm just as confused as you are, you, I don't know what's going on. I'm just as confused as you are.

It's like, what's going on? There were even articles titled, The Burning Sun's Gandal Case, that everyone accepts who Lee knows about. He also stated that this would be a good time for him to enlist in the army and serve his duty as a good Korean citizen, and everyone got riled up for that,

because in Korea, men have to serve two years, mandatory enlistlistment. They're like the army is not a place for you to escape your reality. So even with all of this the consequences just weren't that great. I mean okay maybe that's a strange word to use. It wasn't even comparable. I guess would be a better way to phrase it right. Some of the more notable sentences included J.J.Y. Idol sentence to five years in prison. Choi Jong-un Idol sentence to 그는 또 다른 섹시가 Wow. He had nine charges ranging from sex work, violent sexual crimes, and then breaking food, sanitation laws, occupational and bezel-ment, things like that. He was found guilty of all nine charges since to three years in prison. He would have to file to be a sex offender and he was fined almost $855,000.

He appealed. He was given one and a half years in prison instead of three. Here's a convenient loophole that's gonna piss you off. In Korea, if you go to prison for less than one and a half years you can serve quietly, meaning it's not gonna be on your record when you get out. Singly was sentenced to exactly one and a half years. So technically he missed the cutoff and it would be on his record. Somehow he manages to get out two days early, meaning that it would be expunged from his record. Somehow he manages to get out two days early, meaning that it would be expunged from his record. Oh, and he's spotted clubbing and cheating on women in Bali since then. It's on the record now. Yeah. We're not gonna forget about that. And

So he has fans. Yeah. There are some people that comment things like he's still young. I hope that he can overcome the mistakes of the past and lives an amazing life. Isn't the rest of his life too long for him to just crumble like this? He paid the price of his sins through the law already. Let's all give him a chance. I will say most of the comments are pretty logical and they read, every country needs harsher punishments for rape and sexual assault. He suffers two years in prison, his victim suffer a lifetime.

Two years isn't enough if you asked me. Anyways, if the system doesn't give them what they deserve, society should. Regardless, I think we can all agree that many of the perpetrators got off with much less time than expected. Even corrupt police officers who were exposed of being and on the whole thing, they were just either dismissed from their positions, and those were just the lower ranking ones. The high ranking officials that were involved They weren't even dismissed nothing happened to them There wasn't even some sort of PR statement of like we're gonna reorganize the police force and make countermeasures set in place against bribery and corruption nothing nothing

Yeah, and all of the VIP clients they essentially got away with it for essay. And somehow even Kim, remember the whistleblower who broke three ribs and got punched in the face? He started the blue house petition where he gets arrested too for allegedly sexually abusing three men and harassing people inside the burning sun, which half the people argue Kim is a wolf in sheep's clothing. He did good on whistle blowing the burning sun, but he was probably involved in some weird stuff too. And a lot of others believe, no, it's just fishy.

Like the allegations against him are just fishy at this point. He was sentenced to a year in prison, but he says that he will be appealing the decisions. So it seems like minus Kim, everyone else got off with a slap on the wrist with all things considered. Unbelievable. The fact that the guys roaming around, living his best life. A lot of Keynesians think that it has to do with Korean society of victim blaming and shaming victims who come out for crimes like this.

Remember the Ite one case that we covered? We talked about how some horrible people didn't feel that bad for hundreds of victims who died, because they said, well, why would they go out for a party for Halloween anyway? It's not a good place for young respectable people. A lot of families of victims were Ite one one at their names, not to be made public, because they were scared that their loved ones

would be victim blamed. And it was the similar case with Burning Sun. The victims were scared to come forward because they would have been blamed of then why did you go to a club then? Well, that's just the risk you take as a woman at a club. And because there weren't really that many victims that spoke forward at the court speaking directly

on the case, they got off way too easy. I think the only way to come back that is to, for societies to speak up more about, to support, in support of victims, right? Like that's the only way for other people to realize you're so dumb by saying that. Yeah. Like we need to make it your dumb and gross. You're talking about it to lift up the victims. Yeah. Yeah. And another thing was it's just really annoying in the justice system that you would think drugging victims to essay that makes the crime that much worse, right?

Because now you're doing more things to their body, but it actually helps the perpetrators get away with it in the eyes of the justice system. Because you know what's justice, right? It's a way for perpetrators to say, she's not credible because I drugged her, but that's not the point. And it's just insulting and infuriating at this point. In other case related aftermath news, the hotel on top of Burning Sun was shut down in 2021. The building was sold to Hyundai construction and they are now going to change it to be an apartment building. The co-founder of YG, Mr. YG himself stepped down as CEO of YG Entertainment,

one of the big three entertainment agencies in South Korea because of this scandal. It is stated that YG lost close to $100 million worth of investment money because of the burning sun case. And recently, Choi, one of the idols, was released from prison as well, and Paparazzi found out which church he was attending with his mom, and they stopped him in the church parking lot to ask him for an interview, and

in the footage, he literally, you can hear this man whining for his mom. He's like, mom! Like a kid. When your seven and a stranger comes to the door to ask if you have time to talk about the Lord and Savior, and you're like, mom, that's what he sounds like. His mom walks up and starts clucking away, like some crazy mother hench, she states, he wants to live in faith now. What do you want, paparazzi?

Why are you making a big deal out of nothing? Do you want to get punished by God? And again, this is to show you the family's character, not the character of people who attend church or are religious. A lot of Christian netizens were commenting like these types of people use religion as a way to shield themselves from their own evil acts. Other netizens were just shocked by both family members behavior. They wrote, calling your mom like that at that age is legendary, but the mom who pops up and coddles over her rapist son is even more legendary.

And I will end you with this note. One chilling fact is, you know how a lot of big K-pop groups have names for their fans. So Blackpink has Blinks, BTS fans, or Army. Big Bang's fans were called VIPs. They made it to say that their fans are very important people to them. But Shingles VIPs were not his fans. They were his rate best. And I just hope with him being back in the news

with these scandals, Burning Sun has never forgotten because how do you get away with something like that? He shouldn't be able to have anyone foaming over him or, Yeah. Yeah, he's never being able. Yeah, I'm never be able to make a comeback.

He's just a vile criminal. Yeah. So what are your thoughts on the burning sun? And let me know in the comments. And please be safe. I'll see you guys on Sunday for the mini-suit. Bye.