Rotten Mango - #368: Wife Found a Missing Girl’s Torture Film On Her Husband’s VHS Camera
Episode Date: June 21, 2024Somi doesn’t normally go through her husband’s things, but their house has been so cluttered, she’s going to lose her mind. From the back of their closet, she comes across old VHS tapes and a VH...S player that she doesn’t recognize. Home movies, old memories? She pushes the tape in and presses play. The screen lights up. It’s a bed and two naked bodies. Her husband… and another girl laying next to him. There are words written all over both of their bodies in thick marker, words like ‘Prince’ and ‘King.’ Then Somi sees the blood. The girl has a long slice down her private area; she’s bleeding, trembling, completely terrified. The male—her husband’s voice—snaps at the girl, “Endure it even if it hurts.” Then he proceeds to SA her. Somi is frozen—but her mind is in overdrive—she can’t shake the feeling that she knows the girl—she can’t place a name but she recognizes the girl’s face. It was the same one on the missing posters in town. The girl in the video was the little, 8-year-old girl that had gone missing a year ago. 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
Transcript
Discussion (0)
ramble
badabing badabing
somi doesn't normally go through her husband's things
but this time, she's gonna make an exception
the house has been exceptionally cluttered recently
and she can't even think straight
she's gonna lose her mind in here
she wants to finish cleaning up the whole house before he gets home
maybe they can eat dinner afterwards
she's gonna feel like a brand new person
that's the plan this is a spring cleaning type of day. She's not
just gonna wipe the counters, she's gonna get on all fours and dust underneath
every single piece of furniture. She's gonna grab the junk drawers, dump them
out on the table, and start reorganizing every little piece of junk in there. It
is one of those cleaning type of days. Somi's in the thick of putting things away.
She's tried on five pairs of jeans
from the back of her closet,
just to see if they still fit.
She's sweating, she's drenched in sweat,
labeling everything, running around,
and then she comes across a stack of those old VHS tapes.
Because before streaming services, there were CDs,
and then before that, there were these VHS tapes or like big black blocks which is kind of cute maybe her
husband is keeping them because I don't know they don't really watch VHS tapes
anymore but maybe it's one of his favorite childhood memories and he's
just keeping it for nostalgia or maybe it's a video of him when he was younger
because you can basically vlog and put it on a VHS tape.
She keeps rummaging around and ends up finding a VHS player. Oh this is cute. She pops the VHS tape
in, goes back to cleaning because you have to wait for it to wind all the way back to the beginning.
It's literally a tape and then hits play. The video starts and she freezes. She drops whatever's in her
hand and she's staring at the screen kind of confused about how to feel about
any of this. On the screen is her husband aggressively, almost visually
painfully ganking himself, self-pleasuring himself. It's very
aggressive and it feels illegal to watch her husband in such a it's weird
She's never seen this before and he's moaning a name a woman's name
She's never heard before it's definitely not her name. It's not told me it's somebody else
Is his face in there? Yes
It's very disturbing. It's definitely gonna be a big fight when he gets home.
But she's trying to figure out when this tape is even from.
Maybe it was from before they even got married.
But even then, it's kind of a weird tape to have.
Who records themselves doing something like this? It's a little odd.
Do we know when this was taking place?
2003.
And by then, VHS tape is not really around, right?
No. Most people have moved on to DVDs.
Now she checks the time. It's a 20 minute long clip.
The whole time. That's what he's doing.
Self-pleasuring until he reaches his destination.
She rips the VHS tape out and inserts the next one.
By this point, her heart is racing a little bit because is this gonna be another video of him doing strange things? is it gonna be an
introduction into the woman that he's calling out to? she pushes the tape and
presses play. laying on the bed are two bodies, her husband and another body
laying next to him. there's these words written all over both of their naked
bodies like they're doodling on each other or they were doodling on each other
the words read prince and king
prince and king?
yeah all over the husband's body
the girl looks terrified
she's laying next to the husband with a giant long cut down her private area
and she's actively bleeding. She's trembling
and so is So Mi. She's shaking by the time her husband in the video gets up,
walks closer to the camera and smiles, quote, oh she tried to run away so I had
to teach her a lesson. He turns back to the girl and says quote,
endure it even if it hurts. Then her husband walks over to the girl in the
video and starts essaying her. Somi does not recognize the other person in the
video, at least not personally. This is not a family friend or anything like that
but she does know the girl's face. She's seen it before
all over missing posters in town
She's the little eight-year-old girl that had gone missing recently. It was a year old girl eight years old We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to
support the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
They are a private non-profit that focuses on finding missing children, reducing child
sexual exploitation, and the prevention of child victimization.
This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing
team and of course we would like to thank you guys for your continued support as we
work on our mission to be worthy advocates.
As always, full show notes are available at rottenminglepodcast.com
now, some heavy disclaimers for today's case
there are mentions of snuff films, kidnapping, essay against some of our most vulnerable populations
including that of young children and people with intellectual disabilities
so please take care of yourself if you need a click out, go take a bath, read a book
and I will see you in the next one.
Another big note, the person in question in today's episode has not been proven in the court of law of being guilty of the crimes he's suspected of.
He's been proven to be guilty of a lot of other things, but not these specific crimes.
There is a lack of concrete evidence that authorities could get their hands on, but also the statute of limitations in South Korea.
Even if they were now to find a mountain of evidence of, hey, we had a child serial killer on our hands,
it would be too late. The statute of limitations for most of the cases would be up.
So he or whoever did this would probably be a free man.
But I do think it's a very solid theory that the authorities have.
But for legal purposes, I will be using the word allegedly,
and anything stated about someone's guilt or lack thereof
is either a personal opinion or a restatement of opinions of netizens
that have been compiled for viewer convenience.
They should not be taken as fact,
and as always, everyone should come to their own opinions.
So with that being said, let's get into it.
The producers of a famous Korean true crime show
get a letter from a man who is in jail for essay and kidnapping.
Which is kind of odd to say the least.
They usually cover crime stories and more often than not
the producers are the ones reaching out to the prisoners, begging them
like let me come see you and do an interview.
What's the show?
It's called Curious Why.
Why would he reach out to want to share his story
and have it broadcasted to the whole nation?
It's a little weird.
The man, Mr. Na,
N.A., rants in his long-winded letter
that this is all one big conspiracy misunderstanding
that if somebody just takes two seconds to
read his letter they would see just how corrupt the police are. It's not that
difficult. Mr. Nass states the police tricked him. The main detective working
his case just wants a pat on the back for stopping another quote-unquote
violent criminal and they're steamrolling him making him out to be
this bad guy. So he's reached out to all these news networks,
he's reaching out to human rights organizations,
because this is more than just about him.
Whatever's going on in this police station is really dark.
All of this happened because of his mother-in-law.
His mother-in-law does not want him to be with her daughter.
All because of love.
So she accused him of kidnapping and essaying her precious daughter.
He says in
the letter, I love her. I really love her. If you look at our text messages between us,
it's so clear that we love each other. The police are rather excessively separating us
and putting all these strange charges on me. My wife is losing the man she loves. And from
a woman's point of view, her opinion has not been respected at all and it's proceeding
according to the detective's needs, the parents needs. Where are a person's human
rights? He states he didn't even know that she had an intellectual disability
till later on and because she looked like she could still live a very
independent life even though she was still living at home at the time, he
thought it's not really impacting her life. Why would I even notice?
Why would she need to tell me?
He argued she didn't feel comfortable
talking about it in depth, so he didn't push her.
Is that a sin?
They were seriously dating for a while,
but she confessed to him that her mom was terrifying.
She was scared of her mom.
Her mom was quite abusive,
and she couldn't even be herself in her own home,
and it was miserable
which is why the two of them decide, let's get married ASAP.
Is that such a sin?
He said, not acknowledging our relationship just because of the disability that my wife has
is a clear abuse of investigative power.
The performance of the investigator in charge and his greed for cracking down on crime and
greed for promotion are questionable.
The letter continues,
My wife voluntarily went to the district's office with me and registered our marriage.
The police are now trying to make me, the husband, a criminal and deny a woman love
and marriage.
Is that really justice?
But what is he sentenced for?
For essaying and kidnapping his wife.
Oh, but they are legally married?
Yes.
Na said the accusations against him right now are absolutely absurd.
He lastly asks the producers of the show, is love a sin?
Think about that.
What?
All because the woman he loved has the mental capacity of a six-year-old
according to her mother and technically in her specific case does not have the capacity for
informed consent? how is that him taking advantage of her? even though technically she said the word
yes, she signed the marriage certificate, is that really a sin? just because her mental capacity is
at six years old? why should that ever stop him from being intimate with her? The producers are instantly intrigued and it's time to go investigate
First stop would be Gangjin, South Korea
Every town has something that they're known for especially in the producer world each town that they investigate in South Korea
There's always a case that they remember it by
This small town in South Korea was known for,
every June, children disappear.
That was what all the kids were told.
And even though parents would say,
no, no, no, it hasn't happened in such a long time,
if you watch closely, if you go there, maybe May,
you're not gonna see a lot of kids
walking home alone, month of June.
Even during May, you see parents
starting to slowly rein in the leashes.
You honestly won't see many kids out and about in general the entire month.
It's a very tense 30 days.
The minute May starts rolling around, parents are already preparing.
They're canceling all of their plans.
They're just going to stay home after work every single night.
If you ask one of the townspeople,
Hey, I'm new here. What's going on?
Why is everybody acting so strange all of a sudden?
Everybody seems on edge. They're just sigh and respond. Neither the heavens nor the earth knows
what really happened. What does that mean? There had always been these superstitious rumors that
the town would have to give up a child every single summer, usually a little girl. That something
or someone is taking little girls away
every June as some sort of annual sacrifice.
It's hard to say if it's true.
Some kids say it's kind of like the boogeyman.
The boogeyman comes and snatches you every June.
Others say it's just sensationalism.
The truth is a few girls went missing in June
for a few years and now it's a whole thing.
There's a few years ago, two girls had gone missing.
Both in June, both one year apart.
They were both walking home from elementary school and they just kind of evaporated into
thin air.
It's like a hole opened up in the ground and just swallowed them up.
There was no textbook left behind, no backpack, nothing.
They just vanished, no evidence.
The body's not found? Never. Now, that's not what the producers are in town for.
They're in town to investigate a human rights concern involving a woman with
intellectual disabilities. They didn't know that both these cases would actually
be connected. The first stop the producers make in the town is a police
station. They want to talk to the detectives on Mr. Na's case.
Are they violating human rights or not?
The detective breaks the case down for them.
It's not a hard concept.
He claims it's love.
He claims she's mentally capable of getting married.
She's of legal age.
There's nothing wrong with it.
Love is not a sin.
She claims she has no idea what marriage is or what the certificate is. She claims that she signed it without understanding it.
Her mom and social worker state she has the mental capacity of a six-year-old
and cannot give informed consent.
She does not want to be with him.
She has stated that he was holding her captive.
So therefore, he's charged with essay and canap.
I'm not sure why we're even talking about human rights violations right now.
The producers nod. Maybe they followed a bad lead.
The story is sad, but it's not really complicated.
It is in the sense, but it's not what they're looking for in a documentary.
They need something to pitch to their network.
This is not that.
But as they're on their way out, the officer continues.
Besides, that guy should just stay single.
His first attempt at marriage? Even bigger disaster.
What do you mean?
Oh yeah, he was married once before. That's why he was in jail the very first time.
This is his second time in jail. Second time getting married. We know his ex-wife
pretty well. She was down here a lot talking to us. She's the one that
accused him of running a child snuff film ring. A while back, a group of American
documentary filmmakers decided that they were going to
venture into the Amazon rainforest to film a documentary about a cannibal community.
There was going to be a director, scriptwriter, and two cameramen.
They tell all of their friends about it.
They'd been preparing for this trip for months now and it's finally time.
And then they just vanish in the Amazon rainforest, disappear into thin air.
When?
This was in the 80s.
Professor Harold Munro, an anthropologist from NYU,
decides he's going to run a little rescue mission
to find the missing documentary makers.
The plan is honestly horrendous.
They're going to infiltrate the cannibal community
and try to figure out what happened and try
to get the tapes back try to find the documentary makers he and his team end
up finding out they're dead there is a shrine that the community made where
their skeletal remains are laid out as well as their reels of film the
professor somehow is able to make a deal to leave with the reels of film and he
has no idea what's in them he can't even play them until he gets back to New York.
He goes back home, reviews this recovered footage, and it's like watching a real-life horror movie.
The four filmmakers have a very rough start to their trip. A few days in, their guide Felipe is
bitten by a venomous snake. There's nothing they can do about it. There's nobody around. It's too late.
They're too deep into the forest to leave now and get him medical attention
meaning either the venom is gonna spread to the rest of his body, or they have to cut his leg off
so they cut his leg off with the machete in the middle of the amazon rainforest in an effort to save his life, but he ends up dying anyway
they just leave him behind
the group make it to the location of the cannibal community and they see
one of the younger community members walking by themselves. So what do they do?
Do they ask him to introduce them to their community because they're making
a documentary? No. They shoot him in the leg so that they can easily follow him
back to his community-centered area. When they do, they just wage war from the
get-go which I'm so confused by. The four filmmakers, yes, they want a documentary, but they mainly want good footage.
So they intimidate a whole tribe, kill a pet pig, herd the community members into a tent,
burn the tent down. The professor keeps watching and it just gets worse.
The three male filmmakers film themselves taking turns r-wording a young girl.
The only one trying to convince them to stop is the female screenwriter,
but she tells them to stop because she argues you guys are wasting precious film footage
We don't have that much film. You can see in the background that they're being watched by the locals
They know what the filmmakers are doing
the filmmakers later find the girl impaled on a wooden pole meaning a
Pole went through her private area and then through her mouth and she's
Impaled on it. She's dead
They state in the documentary that it's because she's no longer pure
They claim the locals killed her for her loss of virginity
But it's pretty clear from the way the filmmakers are talking about it. The professor has an inkling
That they are worded her and they killed her and they set it up
like this to get better footage. In the end the community attacked the
filmmakers for what they did to the girl. One of them, Jack, they use a large
machete to cut off his private parts and even after he's dead they continue to
mutilate his body. Fei, the screenwriter, is captured, stripped, gang-essayed, beaten
to death and then ultimately beheaded.
One of the other camera guys keeps trying to convince the other survivor. We have to go and try and save her,
but he's not listening. He just keeps filming the assault on her from afar.
I thought there's only three people left.
Four.
Oh, there's still four left.
So two just died, there's two left.
Now eventually the last two filmmakers are located, killed, all the while their cameras
keep rolling and the footage is probably some of the most graphic intense violence you can
see on a screen.
There's horrific torture, essay, animal cruelty, murder, cannibalism, all caught on camera,
there's scenes of mutilation, severing of private parts.
Professor Monroe would say he was left pondering who the real cannibals really are.
The footage premiered in Milan, Italy.
What?
Where the man who had the footage and owned it
and premiered the footage was promptly arrested.
The man was arrested for animal cruelty and murder.
This man argued in the court,
"'Please, you have to believe me. None of that is real.
I'm a movie director.
All of this is fake.
None of it is real.
You have to trust me.
Look me up.
Wait, so it was not released by NYU professor?
No.
Is he involved?
He is a movie character.
He's... this man is now claiming I'm the director of this movie. These are all fake people. It's a movie character. This man is now claiming, I'm the director of this movie.
These are all fake people.
It's a fake documentary.
I see.
But the authorities don't believe him because none of it looks fake.
It doesn't look like a fake documentary.
Like it looks so real.
It looks like people actually died.
Yes.
So they're saying if it's a fake documentary, we still think that you killed people with this plot because none of this, there's no CGI.
It looks real. They don't believe him. It looks very real.
Especially the part where the girl is essayed and then gets impaled on a stake by the river.
She has the stake going through her private parts, through her body, out of her mouth.
They believe he created a real life snuff film to win awards, to make money, to dupe the public into watching it.
It wasn't until during the trial, they go to trial, they would confirm that the actress was very much alive.
And they still didn't believe it. They thought maybe it's a lookalike, maybe it's a twin sister.
They had to physically demonstrate how the killing scenes were done in court to prove that nobody died on set. Okay so get it straight there was a film that looks so
much like a snuff film was released. Yes and the plot of it is what I told you
the four film documentary makers but none of it is done in a way where it's
like hey this is actually a movie it looks like a documentary then the New
York City professor finds it yeah he's watching it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the police was like
this is a crime right here. This is a real snuff film. At first they believed, okay,
maybe this is a documentary but you can't just air people dying like that.
Then the movie director is like, actually it's not a documentary. It's a mockumentary.
One of the first of its kind. This is before they were around.
And nobody died.
I'm not airing footage of real people's deaths.
And they're like, we don't believe you.
We think that you actually killed these people
to make this movie.
So we're gonna arrest you for murder and animal cruelty.
He goes to trial, they bring photos of the girl
that is still very much alive,
and the authorities are like, we still don't believe you.
So they have to now reenact the killing scenes in the movie to show you
hey, no, really
the scene where the girl is impaled by the stake
they had a stake embedded into the ground and a bicycle seat that she would sit on
then she put a basil wood on her mouth to hold it
and she appeared like she had this stick going through her body
but the way that she's able to keep completely still is crazy
but only then were the murder charges dropped
and the film was banned for animal cruelty
there are actual animal torture scenes in the movie
those were not faked
there's a scene where a turtle is de-shelled and butchered
they killed a total of seven animals for the film for whatever sick reason.
Truly, apparently there was no reason for those plot points. Not that that would excuse anything,
but truly it wasn't even part of the plot, if you will. It was just extra sadism thrown in for
why the hell not. It's really sad if we get into it, but the animal cruelty scenes are brutal.
Apparently they wanted a scene for no good reason of them killing a monkey But they didn't like the first take so they took another monkey and decapitated it again just because
Additionally the girl that is essayed by filmmakers apparently she was 14 at the time of filming
She did not understand English and there was a general thought on the internet that she had no idea what kind of scene she was filming
This was her first time even seeing a camera
I believe she's Colombian
and I don't think that they should have used someone that young either way
but it said that she never had seen a camera in her life
she never knew what this scene was about
she understood no English
so it's believed online that she went to this thinking she's gonna smile for the camera
but no, they're like you're gonna just start running
and there's these men chasing her it seems incredibly unethical I wonder if even
illegal all in all I believe the director did deserve jail time for his
animal abuse as well as forcing the crew into deeply uncomfortable simulations
of violent crimes I mean he truly did not care for the actors the actors
straight-up said he was a sadist. but this was one of the world's first introductions at the time on a mass level to the world of snuff films, which
by definition is a movie or video produced for profit or financial gain
that shows scenes of actual homicide. now snuff films don't technically exist and
mainly because I think the definition of what a snuff film is is very very narrow
it has to be recorded murder for the definition of what a snuff film is is very very narrow.
It has to be recorded murder for the purpose of selling that tape as a commodity and entertainment.
It cannot be recorded murder that was produced for enjoyment that later gets circulated for
shock value or for profit.
So there are actually lots of videos that depict death where gangs, cartels, war times, there will be beheadings,
there will be shocking scenes of torture and violence that are filmed and then recorded, released for the mass media consumption
or at least that's their initial point.
But they're not trying to make money.
They're not trying to make money and additionally, there's no really plot
so snuff films kind of do have a plot
it does have to be a little bit like a movie
it has to be entertaining
it cannot just be shocking gore
it has to be murder with the sole intention of filming and making money off of that murder scene
so when you deal with videos of abuse against the younger generation typically,
it does appear that a lot of the injuries sustained
would result in death,
but it would not be considered a snuff film.
Because the purpose of someone viewing that video
would not be to see a murder of a kid,
but more so for the explicit content
involving that kid prior to the murder.
There's a lot of articles out there being like,
guys, don't worry, snuff films don't actually exist the FBI haven't found one
yet but they have found videos of brutal murders being circulated on the deep
web essays that lead to murder that have been circulated but they don't categorize
those as snuff films so it is safe to assume that many netizens think yeah I
mean technically by definition they don't exist but our idea of them and
what they are they exist even things our idea of them and what they are, they exist.
Even things like Hurtcore exist, which is a particularly extreme form of torture videos
that are incredibly illegal to produce, purchase, own, and even watch.
It's quote,
made for people who get off on the infliction of pain or even torture and death
on a person who is not a willing participant.
One netizen put it,
there's no limit to human depravity out
there. Plenty of people with enough money to do whatever they want. If what they want is a true
snuff film, then they're gonna get a true snuff film. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Please
tell me I'm not the only person who feels like 2024 is going by way too fast. I, this is a genuine problem because it happens every summer where I start getting anxiety about how fast time is passing
And I wonder if I'm even doing enough if I'm accomplishing my goals
But this year I decided to do something about it and I was like, okay, listen therapist. I need your advice
I've been going to therapy for years, but I feel like this year I made even more breakthroughs
My therapist is helping me learn how to make time to celebrate my wins, set realistic goals
so that I can stop feeling like life is always flying by me, and there's a stigma that
therapy isn't for everyone, but it really is for everyone.
Even something like not setting aside enough time for yourself can be addressed in therapy.
Whenever I'm done with a therapy session, I feel like I have a fresh perspective on
my problem, and often I realize it's never as bad as it seems.
I'm working on managing my time and expectations so I can finally stop feeling like life is out of control.
If you're thinking of trying therapy, I highly recommend using BetterHelp because it's so convenient.
You can do everything online from filling out a brief questionnaire to setting up a session with a licensed therapist.
You can also switch therapists at any point for no additional cost.
If you feel like your current therapist isn't the right fit for you, it can take some time to truly
find the right professional, but it is worth it in the long run. Take a moment, visit betterhelp.com
slash rotten today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com slash rotten.
Before we opened our grandpa mango business, I heard so many people talk about how hard it is to open up an online store
And don't get me wrong
It's very hard
But the parts that they weren't focusing on were you have to make a website make it look pretty and then do all of that
And you need to know how to code and you got to learn all these technical things
Except you don't setting up a store was so easy all because I used Shopify
Shopify is the global commerce platform
that helps you sell at every stage of your business from the launch your
online shop stage to the first real-life store stage all the way to did we just
hit a million order stage Shopify is there to help you grow. With Shopify they
will give you all the tools you need to help your business get to the next
level whether you're selling scented soap or making your own custom clothing
Shopify helps you sell everywhere from their all all-in-one ecommerce platform to
their in-person POS system, wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got
you covered. They even help secure more sales by turning your browsers into
buyers because Shopify has the internet's best converting checkout, 36%
better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms. Shopify just has so many helpful features to help you sell with less effort,
and one of them is Shopify Magic, your own AI-powered assistant.
Shopify Magic can help with generating product descriptions, refining your blog posts,
it can help curate your FAQ answers, and even draft an email and pick the perfect time to send it.
Shopify has the built-in tools to help with building, marketing, and growing your business
We use Shopify when running Grandpa Mango's store and it could not have been simpler
There were a few different e-commerce platforms that we tested but all of them had the same issue
They were just so hard to use but with Shopify it just was so intuitive
They have the most user-friendly e-commerce platform
that I've ever seen,
and we were able to set up our store in just a day,
less than a day.
It allowed us to focus on Grandpa Mingo's art,
what we were actually passionate about,
because Shopify pretty much handled the rest for us.
There is a reason why Shopify powers 10%
of all e-commerce in the US.
On top of that, Shopify is the global force
behind brands like Albert's, Rothie's,, Brooklyn and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries.
Plus, Shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way.
Because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify.
Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash Rotten, all lowercase.
Go to Shopify.com slash Rotten now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in
shopify.com slash rotten
And now this man Mr. Na the police said a man who was at the time in his mid-20s
Looked like he just graduated from college,
is being accused of running a child snuff film ring by his own wife?
They tell the producers it was never proven though.
And that was over 15 years ago when she accused him.
Now he's older and he's in jail for essaying and kidnapping his new wife, and he wants
his human rights to be protected?
When Mr. Na finds out the producers are looking into his case, not about the human rights
violations, but about the missing girls, he writes another letter to them.
The criminal charges are only suspicious and most of them are not true.
As it may have a negative impact on the case that I'm currently on trial for, please postpone
the broadcast of your story.
If the only suspicious content from the police flows out without my truth, the truth of the
current trial will also be buried.
Wait, what is he threatening?
He's saying unless you want to obstruct justice, I would say don't broadcast whatever you think
you have because that's not the real truth.
Okay, so the beginning of the story, the little discovery was the first wife, correct?
Yes.
I see.
And that was 15 years ago, and now 15 years later, he's writing a letter to producers
being like, hey, I'm in jail because I'm being accused of these crimes, of trying to marry
my second wife, and they're saying I'm kidnapping her.
They go to investigate that second wife thing and the police are like, oh
There's so much more to the story. This guy has this guy's crazy. He was in prison for a while
So the first crime was 2003 that means the second was 2018. Yes, he it's recent Whoa, so this is like he's been around for a while a while
Whoa now, mr. Noss starts referring to himself in third person in the letters.
He says,
The informant was suspected of a crime not because he committed the crime, but because
the police wanted to accuse him.
The police fabricate and distort a lot of things, especially against those who are weak
and have nothing.
Mr. Na falls into that category.
If Mr. Na had truly committed a crime, would he have reported it to a broadcasting station
under his real name?
It's a very strange response, that if the producers didn't feel like there was more
to the story before, they definitely think there is now.
The response makes them want to dig deeper.
One year, this is the ex-wife, so back to 2003.
One year before finding the tapes in her husband's closet, Somi starts
noticing her husband's not acting normal. I mean to be fair, everyone in town is
kind of on edge. Another little girl had gone missing, but they didn't have a
daughter. They're not exactly as high-risk as all the other people in
town who are freaking out about their own children, but this vacation is
supposed to be about them and reconnecting and focusing on their relationship
and it just seems like the last thing on her husband's mind is relaxing.
In fact, he's in the corner of the hotel room writing a will.
He's insisting that they need a will if they're ever gonna die, which logically, yeah, sure,
but time and place for everything, no?
I mean, who does that in the middle of a vacation?
He even randomly starts writing a letter to his uncle that he hasn't spoken to in years.
Somi is so confused she leans over his shoulder to get a glimpse of the letter
and it reads, it seems to be the first time I'm writing a letter to my own
uncle. The trip has already been planned and has nothing to do with any incident.
Also the recent incident has nothing to do with me. And I confess that I lied.
What?
What incident?
What is he talking about?
What does it even mean?
But the weirdest part of the trip comes at night.
The two of them would be laying in bed, the lights are off, the motel's blackout curtains
are drawn, it's pitch black in the room, and Tomi is just about to drift off into sleep
and she thinks her husband's already knocked out, it's quiet. Then she hears something. She hears him talking? What did
he just say? She holds her breath and he says it again. Okay, what was that? He's
muttering something under his breath. And then she hears it again and this time
it's a bit clearer. There's someone in the walls. For the first time ever, Somi
is actually pretty happy to be back home from her little trip with her husband
She hoped going back to their routine is gonna help him get someone back to normal
I mean, but that's not what happens not even close
When they get back one of the first things her husband wants to do is go to the movies which fine
But he wants to go by himself, which I mean again, I guess it's fine
She kisses him goodbye, but there's something about the way she just, she grabs her coat.
She waits a little bit while before running out of the house and following him down the street.
It's not like she's following him.
Technically, she could be going to the market, it's also in the same direction.
Who's to say, really?
She stays very far away from Naa, and he cannot see her,
but she follows him all
the way towards the movie theater. He does end up going to the movies but at
one point when he's walking through an alleyway out of nowhere he just starts
sprinting, booking it, sprinting down the alleyway, looking behind him, hiding
behind giant dumpsters, poking his head out, eyes wide, hiding again. He looks
like someone is chasing him,
but nobody is chasing him. You don't think he saw her?
No.
Oh, like he's running away from someone else.
Yes, because if he sees his wife,
you don't hide like that, you don't run like that.
He's running like someone's chasing him with a knife.
Somi turns around and quickly goes back home.
Later that night after dinner, Somi starts cleaning again and she sees sitting near the
top of the trash can a ripped up movie ticket from earlier today.
She bends down, grabs as many of the pieces as she can and starts puzzling it back together.
And on it is a handwritten scribble.
It reads, quote, I have to use her and then get rid of her.
Who is he talking about? What is he referring to?
Does it have anything to do with the little girl that just went missing?
She was the second girl in town to disappear into thin air and the whole town had been looking for her.
Does it have to do with her?
So by this point, the wife is suspecting of the husband or?
Just she is.
She has a lot of questions?
A lot of questions.
I don't think that...
I think...
You know when you have those intrusive thoughts
and you're like, okay, I am creating a movie in my head.
This is not real.
I think it was one of those moments
because she does not report it at all.
Every single karaoke bar.
That's the search initiative.
That's it.
Comb through every single one of them.
Flip tables, look under the boots, look in the vents. 300 police officers are out
searching for the little missing girl. They're combing through the back of
these karaoke rooms, inside the private rooms, tossing everybody out, asking all
the employees for IDs, and it's all because this one post goes viral. An
online forum post starts going viral 25 days
after a little girl in town named Haeun disappears.
She's eight, she vanishes.
The title of the online post reads,
I saw a girl who looks just like Haeun,
the one that disappeared.
I saw her somewhere and I'm pretty sure it's her.
The rest of the message reveals
the OP is a woman in her 20s.
She did not just see someone like Haeun. She sold Haeun. That's what she details in a post.
She sold?
Yes. That's what she details in a post that's basically a confessional of how she lured a small
child, a small girl, to hang out with her, then handed her over to two men who promised to pay
her for little girls. a thousand dollars per little girl
she states in the post, nothing against Han in particular
she just lured the next girl she could find
which happened to be Han
she said she didn't really know what these men had in store for her
only that they were gonna take her away in this black sedan
perhaps they wanted to illegally put her up for adoption
that was like
the weird sick hope she had. That she was gonna find a nice little family that
would love her and she would make a thousand dollars. But instead she states
one day she comes across a karaoke store where she sees what looks like that
little girl working in the karaoke store. Side note, she said that she's full of
remorse and guilt and that's why she's posting this, but she also mentioned she never got paid the $1,000
that she was owed. The 8-year-old girl is working at a karaoke bar? Karaoke bars
in South Korea are honestly typically a lot of fun if you are overage and you go
knowing some security measures, but it's not really the type of place that your parents would want you to hang out in.
It's like clubbing.
Clubs are fun in the US if you're of age
and everything is legal,
but is it the safest place in the world?
Is it a place where your parents are gonna be like,
yes, go every single night?
There's nothing inherently wrong or shady about them.
There's bad people everywhere,
but it is a place where bad things have known to happen
just because it's associated with nightlife
this was years and years ago right? decades ago
yes
so it's more unregulated
yes I'm assuming it's a lot more regulated now but there have been allegations even today that some shady stuff is happening
I think not so much in the more tourist areas but maybe smaller towns
yeah yeah yeah
now there had been instances where girls had been kidnapped and forced almost into a labor
trafficking sex trafficking ring inside of karaoke bars there have been instances where children in South Korea have been kidnapped and
They would be purchased by adults in these karaoke bars
Yeah, there have been unverified internet rumors that some of them were these underage
kids would be forced to perform on tables in private karaoke rooms by using fruits to
do things to their body.
I don't know.
That is completely unverified.
It's an internet rumor.
Now, this is still the very big first lead that the police have about Missing Haeun.
She might be working in a karaoke bar. The Missing Girl's dad, Haeun's dad, even tries to meet with some
of the former kids that had been kidnapped by karaoke bars just to see
what their day was like. How they could find someone that is being moved around
in these bars. The best way for them to escape. He starts sleeping outside of
karaoke bars in the area until the owners will let him into search until
they talk to him and that's when he finds out that his daughter is not in any of them
authorities have searched through Mokpo, Busan, checking every single karaoke bar
subway stations even going through the terminals one by one
if she was sold as a karaoke worker it's likely she's traveling through the
subway stations or perhaps even spending time and maybe even sleeping in one but she's not there she's not anywhere they
don't even have a clue or a better lead usually when they search this intensely
you get another lead you can follow while you're searching someone says oh
actually I remember seeing someone like that and she went that way but they turn
up nothing which means the only lead they still have is tracking down the
original anonymous poster
The one that claims she sold the girl the one that claims she's now in a karaoke bar
Police track the IP address and end up in a PC bang Internet cafe in a nearby town
Are you sure this is the one?
It's further away from their actual town. There's better internet cafes closer
Side note an internet cafe you can pay money to log on to one of their computers and use their wifi
they usually have food and snacks and really fast wifi
so a lot of people will specifically go to play games
but why would she go all the way here to write her post if she's from our town?
they walk inside
hi, we're with the police, we're gonna need to see the cctv camera from the past few weeks. Now they know why she came all the way here. No
CCTV cameras. They said she paid in cash they don't keep a log of customers. I'm
sure now in 2024 in most areas it's very different like South Korea is known as
CCTV land but back then you could likely pay cash and browse the internet with no
data trace you wouldn't even have to log on with your government ID number.
I think things are different now, but you wouldn't have to.
I feel like there's now limitations to that, but that means she was on a public computer,
no record of her paying for that computer time in a place where there's no CCTV cameras.
It's truly anonymous.
They don't know what she looks like, so they can't even describe the poster to the employees.
Besides, the employees aren't really trying to pay attention to every single
customer coming in. That's when the detectives start thinking, what if the
point of the post wasn't to tell the truth? What if the point of the post is
to lead us the wrong way? But what does that mean? An expert criminal profiler
said, in my opinion the credibility of the online post is very low. It's very abstract, and the actual content of how and why she gave the child over to
these men was completely omitted.
Why was that passing child in particular selected?
It's omitted.
The facts of the crime are only two lines out of the entire post.
The profiler continues,
Contrary to the post that says she's now reporting this out of guilt for the child,
it is strange that there is no content about the child's emotions on the report.
You would imagine one would write,
She looks so scared. She must have been so terrified.
The look on her face still haunts me in my sleep.
I can't stop thinking about the way her face looked up at me.
But nothing, nothing about the child or the child's reaction.
The post gave almost no specifics. How did the child follow her? How did she lure the child?
How did the child react when she realized she was being taken away?
There is nothing. It just reads,
My heart hurts for the child.
The expert profiler stated ultimately,
In general, it does not match the psychological state that appears when a person commits a crime like this and feels remorse.
It is difficult to see the post as a credible one.
But now the police have an even bigger question. when a person commits a crime like this and feels remorse. It is difficult to see the post as a credible one.
But now the police have an even bigger question.
If it is a false report, who wrote it and why?
What would be the reason for the post?
To confuse the investigators?
Somi slams down the VHS tapes on the table
when her husband, Na, comes home.
It's unclear exactly what was said during this
confrontation but it doesn't seem like Na cared too much that his wife found out or maybe he knew
it's too late to act like he's still the same husband because he just drops the act. He just
tells her straight up, I will let you leave, I will let you walk out of here on your own two feet
on one condition. I let you leave as long as you never speak another word of this to anybody.
two feet on one condition. I let you leave as long as you never speak another word of this to anybody.
Somi is terrified. On one hand she knows she should have gone to the police with this, but she hoped that her husband would tell her it was fake, it was all edited, she wanted to give
him the chance to explain, but no, he's confirming these are very real and now the only way out of
life probably is to take this deal, to walk out and never speak another word of it. Which she needs to walk out of here, does she not?
So she nods and she starts packing up her things.
After years of marriage, she just tells her,
you know, this is also a very normal thing in other countries.
These types of videos, everybody makes snuff films for a profit.
Someone told me it was lucrative, so I'm just selling it to foreign markets.
I'm just doing it for money. It's not sick and twisted.
So Mi practically runs out of his house and soon afterwards Mr. Na is
arrested for murder. But not the murder of the girls. He's arrested for a
completely separate murder. This is crazy. It just keeps going. Yes.
Na had plans to end this whole messy thing. I mean it's only a matter of time
honestly that his wife or ex-wife it's very unclear whatever Somi is to him now
it's gonna she's gonna officially leave him and she might tell someone
eventually maybe five years down the line maybe ten years down the line or
maybe there's gonna be rumors that she starts and it's not even Somi that he's
worried about. He feels like he has good grip on Somi. He has good control over her.
But it's actually her little brother.
Na always hated her little brother, his brother-in-law.
He's the younger brother to Somi and he acts like he's the man of the house, always trying
to protect his sister, giving her advice.
Eventually, Na knows that Somi, his wife, would tell her brother about what she saw
and he would of course give her unsolicited advice
and ask her to go to the police station and make sure she tells them everything
so he hides
that's what Na does, he hides
July 3rd, 2002, around 10.30am
he starts hiding outside the bushes of his house
hiding in the bushes
his house
Na had asked Somi to come find his credit card
which was partly true, he did lose it.
But more importantly, he had the whole apartment set up so that he could kidnap her.
Ex-wife?
Yeah.
Because if she's being held hostage, then she can't really say anything, can she?
Okay, so he's backtracking now. He's trying to lure her back.
But he's in the bushes peeking his head out and he sees Homi walking up to the door with
her brother.
And it becomes very clear to him in that moment that everything he perhaps thought is very
true is very true.
He's never going to be able to control his wife, her brother's around.
He will always be the dangerous variable.
So he makes up his mind in that moment he has to kill him.
He takes out the sharp knife that he was initially gonna use
to threaten his wife and kidnapper and allegedly hold her hostage.
He waits for the front door to open.
He rushes in, ambushes the little brother-in-law,
stabbing him first straight in the forehead,
then his shoulder, stomach, and back.
His brother-in-law died right there on the floor from excessive blood loss.
All in front of Somi. Yes, and he also assaults Somi.
Like stabbing her? Doesn't stab her but he beats her.
But Na tried to kill her. No. Now it's really hard to argue that it's not you that stabbed someone in the forehead with a knife. The knife belongs to Na. This is Na's house. Na has motive. Na
murders his brother-in-law in front of his wife.
He has witnesses and he has the victim's blood on his arms.
It's very hard to argue that. The arrest investigation and even trial goes by really quickly. There really is no big investigation.
He did it. What else is there to investigate?
They barely, the authorities barely, talk to So Mi and ask for her side of the story and she's not going out of her way to tell the police anything.
Na quickly gets sentenced to 15 years in prison and the book closes. But there's a few cases that detectives
always say keep them up at night. Most of the time they're unsolved but
sometimes they're solved and there's just something that isn't clicking in
their minds. It doesn't make sense. The lead detective on this case is laying in bed,
not killed his brother-in-law because his wife was gonna leave him.
That's what's stated in court.
Her brother was gonna help her leave,
but technically she had already moved out.
So the worst was over, and he didn't seem upset when she moved out.
It wasn't until later he kills his brother-in-law, so why?
This is the case that this detective thinks about before he goes to bed for the next four years.
Finally, he can't take it anymore and he reaches out to the ex-wife's homie.
This is years after he's already in prison for murdering her brother and this time she's willing to tell him everything.
I think the distance helped. I imagine she was very terrified. She tells the detective everything, the marriage the marriage the tapes she tells him about the VHS tapes and he
doesn't even know how to respond it just the whole thing sounds like it's
straight out of a Karen Slaughter thriller novel which by the way one of
Karen Slaughter's books has the exact premise of this local girl goes missing
wife checks successful husband's computer and sees videos of girls that
look just like the missing girls and they're creating snuff films the husband runs a snuff film empire I did a BAM on
it which I'll link but it's so eerie similar to a novel pretty girls yes and
the detective is like there's no way this is real they asked her to describe
the girl in the video her facial features so me tells him enough detail
what she saw in the video that truly it would be weird for her to describe the girl in the video, her facial features, so Homi tells him enough detail what she saw in the video that truly it would be weird for her to
make it up. It's- she has no vengeance against her ex-husband, he's already in
jail and of course she probably hates the guy, but there's no reason for her to
make this up. It's not even in line with how people usually lie or make false
reports and the girls Homi is describing, describing what five years after the fact looks exactly like the girl from the missing girls posters even years later
she still remembers all the details so vividly and she's describing it with so
much emotion that the detective just trusts her he said she talked in great
detail I didn't show her any of the photos of the missing children in
advance but she gave very accurate statements
She spoke again in such great detail
He runs back to his team. We have to look into it. We have to search Naa's house now. We need to find those tapes
Before the police search Naa's house an interesting letter is sent out from prison a letter from Naa to his family
It reads what did you do with my bag and computer? Not the ones in Kangjin, but the other ones.
You should dismantle the computer and break it and dispose of it.
What about my luggage and belongings? The ones in Gwangju.
When you come to visit me in prison, just talk about my well-being, not this and that. I'll ask if I'm curious.
Who did he send it to?
His mom.
So he wants the mom to destroy evidence.
Yes, but he writes it so nonchalant. What did you do with my computer? You should
probably dismantle it and break it and get rid of it.
I wonder what the mom does then. She does that. It seems like she does exactly that.
When the police storm into his old house, the first thing that sticks out to them is
it's almost like a super villain movie.
Na has two boards on his wall, a chalkboard and a whiteboard,
and on it are just a bunch of random symbols and characters,
multiple different languages squashed together.
There's Korean, there's Japanese, there's English,
periods randomly, exclamation points, numbers.
It looks like some sort of code.
Look, there's 360 characters used.
The purpose of the code is to make decoding
very, very difficult.
That's what the authorities believe.
To confuse the reader and it's working.
He created a code.
Confuse the reader of the code?
Yeah, whoever reads it.
If I walk into his house and stumble upon it,
me as the reader
I don't know what's going on. Okay
He created a code with his own rules and steadily he is writing in secret letters
The police have to create some sort of index to try and decipher it and the first message
That they're able to decipher on the board is written in large code across the top, reads, use women financially.
let's keep going, what about this one?
following the code index i created, if the code index is correct, this one says,
king of the brilliant nation,
i will use my psychopath techniques and i will film pornography.
the rest of the codes that have been deciphered have not been released for bethem,
but it has been described as content relating to desires for crimes against children and desires for child grooming.
How is this not a movie?
Because it's alleged.
What I'm saying is the code is alleged?
No, the idea that he's connected to those missing girls is alleged.
Oh, okay, okay. oh okay okay yeah yeah but-
and the tapes haven't been found.
right but those writing scribbles-
yes.
that is not normal.
exactly so um some people say that he was later diagnosed with schizophrenia.
i don't know because i think the part that i was like okay perhaps was him running down the
alleyway but I'm not sure maybe someone was chasing him or he could have just
been on edge because of the illegal stuff he's doing like he could have
thought police are chasing him I don't think I feel like schizophrenia is a very
just like a we don't understand enough about schizophrenia so let's throw it on
people when we don't understand I think that he's sick everything he does seems pretty
meticulous the code is very meticulous it doesn't seem like someone going
through psychosis and having hallucinations yeah because usually
people that are schizophrenic and from my knowledge please correct me if I'm
wrong if they truly believe that they are in danger they will write things but it's usually very frantic like
this one's like he's putting a lot of thoughts behind the code is there and he has been using
this code even today in prison he's still using the code right so and he's developing the code
and altering the code so it's a very long lengthy process that seems very well thought out, well planned.
Now one of the other codes reads, I am the most precious. Make others naive for my benefit. Never be deceived. And another one, a more chilling one if you consider the timing of it,
this was written right after the second girl vanished and it reads if they just didn't know me, I wouldn't have committed any sins
if I simply would have not been born, I would have no sins at all
if you ask me what my style is, I would have a hard time explaining it to you
I mean there's so many I can't really choose from one
I could name a whole list of styles that pique my interest. Dark academia, preppy, chic, I hope. The list goes on and on and
when I want to switch to a new style I do find it hard to pick the pieces for that exact outfit that
I have in mind. For some reason I see people do it on social media and it looks so easy but then when
it comes to me putting an outfit together it's so difficult. It got to the point where I would spend hours online constantly comparing if the clothes in my shopping cart match the outfit that I have in my head.
With Stitch Fix, I don't have to do that anymore.
It only takes me a few minutes.
Working with Stitch Fix is so easy.
They assign me my own personal stylist, and all I have to do is provide them with my style, size, and budget preferences.
Then my stylist sends me five pieces, hand-picked, just for me
and even provides outfit recommendations and other pro-styling tips
if I don't love all of them, no worries, I can just send it right back because returns are always free
but honestly, just the feeling of being able to try it on at home is really nice
and I almost always end up keeping all of them because my stylist is just that good and I feel like she really gets me
what used to take me forever to put together a brand new outfit now feels so easy because of Stitch Fix
my stylist is like my online stylish friend who just gets me
she's able to pick out the perfect colors and clothes that I would never think of wearing
they just work so well and it makes me feel more confident
if you're looking to try out a new style but just don't know where to start,
I recommend Stitch Fix. I can order when I want and how I want, no subscriptions required.
my stylist sends five Just For Me pieces and I can keep what I love and send the rest back.
it is just that easy.
style that makes you feel as good as you look.
now is the best time to get started at stitchfix.com slash rotten and get a hundred dollars off
That's $25 off your first four fixes for a limited time only that's StitchFix.com slash rotten for a hundred dollars off
StitchFix.com slash rotten must redeem within seven days of sign up offer does not include kids fixes
So again, some people liken this to, oh, maybe he's schizophrenic and he's saying like, what's wrong with me? I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't understand. However, other criminologists believe the way he's writing is almost,
it's almost, I have to commit crime. I was born to commit crime, so if I hadn't been born, I wouldn't have committed crime.
It's not my fault that I was born.
It seems more from a place of anger
rather than from a mental health disorder.
Why would he write it in code, though, to begin with?
What does the code mean to him?
And does it have a link to the missing girls?
That's all the evidence the police find.
They do not find a single VHS tape.
They're all gone. Even though the police find. They do not find a single VHS tape. They're all gone.
Even though the police don't have solid evidence to nail Na, they theorize that he might be the child serial killer in the area.
That he's responsible for at least two of the missing girls and he might have been using them to create snuff films to sell to foreign markets.
The timeline is making a lot of sense. The first little girl, Sungjoo Kim, disappeared June 15th, 2000.
She was last seen around 2pm sitting on a bench in front of a stationary store.
She was waiting for her older brother to get out of school so that they could walk home together, like they always do.
Then, almost exactly a year later, June 1st, 2001, the second child disappears on her way home from school, just like Sungjoo Kim.
Her name is Han Kim, no relation by the last name, but she vanished on her walk from school.
She was last seen standing at a crosswalk,
trying to cross in the direction of her house, and then vanished.
And here's the interesting thing. A lot of younger to mid 20 year old guys were ruled out since most of them would have likely
spent two years in the army.
Interestingly though, after the first little girl disappears, Na is enlisted in the army.
Technically he should have been in the army when the second little girl goes missing,
but he gets early discharge for medical reasons.
And right after his discharge, the second little girl goes missing.
And then a year after that, he gets arrested for murdering his brother-in-law.
And girls stop going missing.
Well there were recent
cases where girls did start going missing again but it didn't seem like
it was the same person. So girls stopped going missing in the same fashion and
then around the time that he's arrested a few years later his wife states that
she found snuff films that he made with what looks like the second girl that
went missing, Haeun. Now they theorize that Na is responsible for both girls going missing. That would mean that both
the girls' disappearances are linked. And there are a lot of similarities between the two. It just
doesn't seem like a coincidence, especially in a much smaller town, not even a big city.
Both kidnapped in broad daylight after school, both vanishing without a trace.
Authorities said it's like they just evaporated on their walk home. Not at night, on their walk home in
daylight. Their last seen locations were less than a mile apart from each other.
They had over 270 people out searching for both girls, police from neighboring
towns and jurisdictions all coming in to help, nothing. All there were were just
rumors at the time. In addition to the code, authorities found search results in NAWS devices.
They read,
Statute of limitations for child disappearance crime,
How to calculate the statute of limitations in elementary kidnapping case,
Statute of limitations table,
Statute of limitations table by crime,
Elementary school disappearance case.
And most interestingly, he was looking up the serial disappearance children case in Kangjin,
which is where they went missing.
But the biggest piece of evidence, in many netizens' opinion, is the room.
On the dark web, there is a rumor that you can visit a red room
where you watch live streams of people who are tortured and murdered on camera for views, allegedly.
Allegedly, this one is yellow.
Somi said the room in the VHS tapes,
the ex-wife, she said, I've never seen those rooms before. I don't recognize those rooms,
so it doesn't look like it was happening inside of our house. It had to have been somewhere else.
Maybe he rented a different place. Will you describe the room for us? Yellow floors,
windows are covered with newspaper. There were strings, saws, hairpins
and boxes laying around. The information, the description of the room was never
released to the public at the time because the police had never seen the
videos the wife saw in the first place. There was no way for them to confirm it
even existed, the tapes or even the room. That is until a man named Minsoo comes
forward. He's an adult now but he said he wasn't when he was in
Na's yellow room. He said Na would take him inside this two-story red brick
house in a room with yellow floors, newspapers covering the windows, and he
comes forward to tell the authorities that he and Haeun, the second girl that
went missing, were actually in the same class. All the kids at the time, even the
adults were saying it was a ghost, but that had lured the
two girls out every June. but Minsoo knew it wasn't a ghost. it was the creepy man
that lived near the playground. he would lure the kids to his little studio and
essay them. Minsoo said to be fair at the time, Na didn't seem creepy at all. in
fact he just seemed like a college-aged older brother that liked to treat kids like adults.
It's not like some stinky 60-year-old ajusshi trying to snatch kids.
He's like the cool guy, smoking cigarettes, drinking soju, and he's like,
hey kid, you want to come over and play games? What kind of eight-year-old says no to that?
Every day Minsoo and Haeun, the girl that goes missing, would have to walk by his house to get to school.
And Minsoo said for him, it was very natural.
They all started hanging out.
Minsoo remembered, and I would tell him, if you want to hang out, play games, and eat
junk food, walk to my house and knock on the wall.
If I hear it and my parents aren't home, then I'll let you in.
It's unclear if this was happening in his parents' house or if he was saying that to
get the kids to feel more comfortable around him. Because it's no longer adult and like we're all just
kids trying to hang out at first means who said he would willingly go to Nas
house to play games then the essay started once that happened means who
said he was too scared to say anything to anyone but he does start avoiding nah
and nah would chase him around town waiting for him.
Sometimes Minsoo would get out of school and he'd be waiting at the door.
With Na essaying Minsoo?
Yes.
And he would film it.
We'll get to it.
So he would wait at the door for Minsoo to get out of class.
Minsoo would try to run out the back of the school and run through the field and he wasn't
even running in the direction of his home.
He would just run in any direction to get rid of Nah but Nah would always be there
when he comes out of the wood clearing and he discovered that Nah is watching
him with binoculars stalking him it was terrifying the more means who avoided Nah
and refused to hang out with him anymore the more aggressive Nah became at
wanting to essay him it almost starts feeling like an obsession he says I
think he had videos of young children.
I think he had explicit videos with children my age.
From then on, he started molesting me and he would touch my private areas while watching
these explicit videos or make me touch him, and then it progressed into a full essay and
it was honestly so painful, it was very difficult.
Minsoo states that he was essayed several times by Nga and there would always be a camera in the room.
Other witnesses came forward. They're all adults now, but they stated that when they were a kid, Nga would lure them to their house on the premise of letting them play games, but he would constantly watch, force them to watch explicit videos of children with him.
Some of them stated he kept trying to molest them until they ran away.
he kept trying to molest them until they ran away
minsoo says he always filmed it when he molested me not a camcorder but you know those really old old videotapes?
the old big tapes that go into the video?
he filmed with that like a vhs recorder
it was scary because he said he was filming me
and he said he would sell it on foreign sites or something
when minsoo was asked why he didn't report it as a kid
and only now report it as an adult
he said, now that i think about it, i think mr. na was very obsessed with children
but at the time when i was a kid, i didn't think like that
it was only as time passed and i became an adult and i thought
oh, this man is likely kidnapping those kids
the police had nothing else to go off of for Minsoo's case and the girl's case.
They're able to locate the studio that the videos were allegedly filmed in.
And sure enough, a room like that does exist in town.
And it's near where Minsoo said it was.
But there were no tapes left behind.
Just a video recorder.
And Minsoo confirmed, that's the one he used on me.
Like he was filming it
how is that not enough evidence? all of these witnesses, all of these people
statute of limitations as well
oh so they're no longer even going after this
it's in the court of law victim stories especially when so much time has passed is not believed
because the defense attorney can easily argue that memories can be edited, altered, changed over time or completely false so they
don't have concrete concrete evidence and the statute of limitations is almost
coming to an end so it's not the highest priority case sometimes when there's
murders they will become higher priority when the statute of limitations is gone for first degree murder now in South Korea.
But when it was coming to an end, there would be like a renewed search.
But this was not that.
There was really no evidence to bring to court.
So police resort to the last option.
It's not the best idea, but it's usually done when there are no more ideas left, which is
to have Minsu confront Mr. Na and hopefully they can get a response out of him, trigger him into admitting something.
But when Minsoo goes to meet with him, it's said that Na just smiled at him leisurely,
just smirked.
Minsoo said it was so reminiscent of the smile that Na would give him when he was essaying
him.
He was terrified.
He felt like he was a kid again, back in that studio.
He said his whole body, his arms, he could feel goosebumps starting to come out and they
did not get a confession until right before Nas release date from prison so
this is this is the first time he's in prison 15 years yes he's about to be
released how's it first of all how you yeah and then give 15 exactly so he's
about to be released and out of the blue, Na states that he wants to talk to a
detective.
The detective goes to visit him in prison, sits down with him, and he allegedly tells
the detective, you were right about Minsoo.
I essayed him and you were right about those two girls.
I killed them.
Where are their bodies?
Near the river.
The detective gives him a map and watches him draw a circle with his pointer finger.
Yeah, I left their bodies there.
The detective glances at the prison officer because it's time for the detective to take a trip down to the river.
This is in 2010, okay?
He confesses. So why is this case still unsolved?
Why is he ultimately released from prison?
The confession he made was not only not recorded,
meaning the detective or the prison officer
did not even write a report on it at the time.
They were so busy.
It was not recorded.
No audio or visual or even written statements.
Just the officer's memories.
And now I would argue they were false.
He claimed he never confessed to a single thing,
and it's crazy that they're saying he did.
He told everyone, I never said any of that.
I never said any of that,
I never confessed.
So it became another, he said, she said, back and forth.
But why do you think he even tried to confess
in the first place?
If netizens' speculations are correct,
it seems that he was getting off on getting away with it.
Because around this time,
I think he knew that there was no evidence
and the statute of limitations was coming to a closer end. He gets released from prison in 2017,
walks out a free man, then walks back into prison accused of kidnapping, essaying, and torturing two
little girls. But he is free now again in 2024. He only got like two, three years for that.
So he is free?
He's free.
Is his identity hidden?
Just not.
That's all we know.
We don't know who he is, his name, his face, nothing.
Nothing.
Wow.
Yes.
Unbelievable.
And the reason that he ends up in jail the second time is so
reminiscent of everything else that people have been saying about him
kidnapping essay and the fact that a lot of netizens believe he went after a woman who
According to her mother has the quote mental capacity of a six-year-old
It just all of that seems really
disturbing now there is no statute of limitations for disappearances.
Meaning if you disappear, the police will hopefully, in theory, conceptually, look for
you indefinitely.
There is no statute of limitations for that.
However, if they find you and you have been kidnapped and essayed, there is a statute
of limitations for kidnapping and essay.
There's even a statute of limitations for murder at the time.
It was 15 years.
So if they find your body after 16 years,
the killer is getting away with it.
It's almost like a challenge for killers.
It was thankfully abolished in the National Assembly
in South Korea.
One of the policymakers said,
just the fact that a criminal can be punished at any time
can give hope to a victim.
So in 2015, the law is passed abolishing
the statute of limitations for first degree murder,
but it does not apply retroactively.
Meaning if the statute of limitations has expired by 2015,
then just because it's abolished,
which side note, I believe they abolished
the statute of limitations for a lot of other crimes as well,
but for first degree murder,
because it's abolished in 2015, if it's been 15 years since you committed murder it does not apply
to you only moving forward yes but if it's been 14 years it's not it's forever now like you can
get caught anytime but if it's 15 years if it's past the 15 year mark then you're free
15 years, if it's past the 15 year mark, then you're free.
Ha Eun was kidnapped in 2001. If Nye is guilty, then his statute of limitations
is up in 2016.
Meaning, if he is found guilty of murdering Ha Eun,
he could still be punished for it.
But they don't have Ha Eun's body,
and typically you need a body to prove
that it was first degree murder,
which is very different from things like second degree murder
So you're saying they only had one no the other case is past the statute of limitations
Oh, okay, so only one of the girls only one
It seems like it's a very unlikely and very hard mountain to climb regardless of if it is not or not or somebody else
It seems really hard to bring justice at this point and very hard mountain to climb. Regardless of if it is Naa or Nod or somebody else,
it seems really hard to bring justice at this point.
But Naa, whether you believe he's guilty or not
of murdering the two girls,
he was still found guilty of murdering his brother-in-law
and kidnapping and essaying a woman
with intellectual disabilities, and he is a free man.
Side note, remember the code he was using?
Still using it in prison.
He had added 200 pages of code into his diary.
So what has he been writing?
It could be plans for all we know.
Now there are supporters of Nah who believe
that he did not do this.
They state there were no sightings of him with the kids.
There were no sightings of him
at the site of the disappearances or even nearby.
There were no people coming forward
right after the crime took place.
So how do we know it's him?
We're just ruining a good man's life for no reason
we're just bothering him but the biggest supporter for not is his mom producers
from a separate show were able to get in contact with her and she told him she
told them don't even talk about what happened in Kang Jin you don't know
anything about it at all our baby is not someone who would do that don't go around
talking like this just because our baby is in prison What do you know? Do you have evidence?
My baby?
Yeah
Yeah
Full grown man
Convicted of murder at one point
But she says my baby
Most of the people that were asked about Nah had nothing but good things to say about him because they were all adults
Experts say with most child essayers
They could be very well liked or even highly regarded in the neighborhood because they only commit crimes with people they can control and
typically that's not fellow adults. typically those are children or someone
with disabilities. they're the most vulnerable. one of the detectives working
the case said, honestly, Nah may not really be the killer, which if that's the
case, I would really wish that he would explain then why he's not the killer. I would hope that he voluntarily steps up
and explains the parts he can explain such as, oh what kind of videotape it was
or at the time his ex-wife is referring to this or that, whether it actually
existed, where he was at certain points, but he doesn't do any of that. If he can
explain why it's not him, we would spend energy to verify the claims that it's
not him for ABC reasons and exclude him from the suspect list.
Finally, rule him out and spend more energy and resources searching for the actual culprit.
But he's not doing that.
All he did was confess and then retract, and since then he has not spoken about it.
But netizens are not so forgiving. A lot of netizens said the math is not
math-ing, it's not adding up. If it was maybe just his ex-wife, then that's one
thing. Maybe it's like an ex-wife who hates him. But the details she gave about
the tapes are oddly specific. Then Minsoo comes forward, another victim that
stated they experienced SA from that and they have matching descriptions of the
room. That's weird. His codes, the camera with no footage found
I mean they stated it's just too many coincidences
and clearly this is a man that is capable of murder, essay, and kidnapping
because he was convicted of those crimes
just not for these specific cases
so it seems, I mean
it seems pretty damning
one that is in comments, when he comes out, he will essay and murder again
pedophilia is incurable and these monsters are gonna keep doing it. Wake
up you idiots who defend him. Other netizens argue, sure we can debate if he
did kill those two girls or not but he did kill his brother-in-law, he did essay
and try to kidnap a person with intellectual disabilities, he did admit
briefly to molesting Minsoo and then retracting the statement. I mean even if
he's not guilty of what he's being accused of,
he's pretty freaking guilty for what he has confirmed he's done.
Others just argue that he should be surgically castrated.
Others argue sarcastically, I mean, even if he's done all these things, guys,
we need to rehabilitate him and make him adapt back into society.
It's sarcasm and a pain point
for the fact that he was released after 15 years.
I'll see.
Someone just commented,
that's why nobody's having kids anymore in this country.
Why have kids in a place like this?
Another angry Korean netizen commented,
our country is a great place to live if you're a criminal.
Haeun's dad, the second girl that goes missing said,
my daughter is still breathing among us, with us.
She doesn't speak, but my daughter is still by my side, inside of me.
If my daughter were still here, she would be 30 years old.
Had she not vanished, the family's life would probably be very different from what it is now.
Haeun's dad still regularly checks welfare facilities and hospitals to see if she might be living somewhere.
He said the best hope that can get him through the day is that his daughter was in some sort
of unknown accident, had amnesia, and did not know how to get back home.
And he has to go find her and bring her home.
He said once my daughter went through puberty, she was probably had lost a lot of the physical
characteristics that I remember of her.
I feel like she's even more lost now because if her appearance has changed too much, she'll be that much harder to find.
Sungjoo's mom, the mother of the first little girl that went missing, she keeps her front
door to her house wide open.
They said if she ever gets there while they're asleep or while they're not home, they want
her to feel like she can come inside, that she's home now and she's safe.
They have never locked the door since the day she vanished.
They keep it open.
They keep her room exactly the same,
textbooks stacked on her desk, bed made.
She said it feels appropriate because for her family,
it feels like time has been frozen since she vanished.
They can't throw away her clothes in case she returns,
which they know is silly because even if she were
to walk in the door right now, she'd be 30.
She can't fit those clothes, but they can't not keep it
in one of the tiny little jacket pockets she has a neatly folded bill cash the
producers asked why did you put money in your daughter's jacket pocket I put
money in there so she won't lack money wherever she is she can buy candy
wherever she is if there's one candy wherever she is. If there's
one thing I could say to my daughter it would be, let's not meet too late. Let's meet
as soon as possible if we can. And that is the case of the alleged snuff
filmmaker in South Korea. What are your thoughts on this case? I mean even the
documentary episodes feel like movies. It was crazy. I have never heard of a case like this
It was actually recommended by one of our Korean researchers and she was saying it's crazy
I mean it I was watching your BAM and I was like this sounds like the case in Korea
What are your thoughts? Do you think he's guilty?
Please leave it in the comments and please stay safe. I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye