Rotten Mango - Man Survives Real Life “Squid Game” That Killed 551 People - Funded By Rich Australian Family
Episode Date: January 15, 2025December 12th is the night that everyone has been waiting for. The invitation is cryptic - it takes some guests weeks to figure out what it reads. “Sdaeh tsilaer & sesserd gnol eit kcalb?” The ...secret is this - you have to reflect it into the mirror to figure out what it says. “Black tie, long dresses & surrealist heads.” Welcome to the Rothschild's (one of the wealthiest and most powerful families) newest secret party. Everyone walks in donning a giant bejeweled mask of animals that you would normally hunt. Stags. Deer. Birds in cages. The staff in the massive mansion are dressed as cats, perched on the stairs, meowing at the passing guests. There’s no way they’re not hunting people afterwards right? That’s always been the conspiracy. Rich people hunting the poor for sport. But what if it is true? What if it happened in South Korea and became the inspiration of the Netflix show - Squid Game?
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The conspiracy that one of the richest families in the world hunts humans as sport started
a really long time ago.
It started way before TikTok.
But this party definitely did not help with the conspiracies.
December 12th is the night that everyone who is anybody has been waiting for.
I mean, they don't even know what they're doing, who's going to be there, or
really a start time and end time to this party, or whatever it is that they're doing. all they've
received so far, thus far, is this invitation. at first glance the invitation seems like it's in a
different language. it's s-d-a-e-h-t-s-i-l-a-E-R and S-E-S-S-A-E-R.
It doesn't make sense.
Some invitees took weeks to decipher this code.
It's an invite to a party because it's not in a different language.
It is in English.
You just have to hold up the invitation in front of a mirror and the
reflection will tell you about it.
It says, black tie, long dresses, and surrealist heads.
People spend weeks having the top designers hand craft surrealist heads and masks for
this gathering because it's a party that you have to wear masks.
And it's not every day that a Rothschild invites you to a party.
And it's not every day that a Rothschild invites you to a party. Side note, the Rothschilds were one of the wealthiest families in the world.
At their height, calculated with inflation, some estimates put their net family worth
around $1.4 trillion.
They're still all very wealthy, but there's probably hundreds and hundreds of Rothschild
descendants.
Their wealth is much more scattered and spread across, with only a handful, just a mere handful, being billionaires
still. But back then, they were likely the single most influential, wealthiest family
in the entire world. If they tell you to jump, it is probably in your best interest, perhaps
even safety, to jump as high as you can. If they tell you to wear black tie long dresses and surrealist masque heads, it is probably
in your best interest to get the best surrealist masque head that you could possibly find or
get a top designer to create one.
These invites are so coveted that another wealthy socialite at one point threatened
to self-exit if she was not invited to the next party held by them.
I don't know what the guests were expecting, but when they get to the chateau in France
– it's hard to miss the house, by the way – 80 guest bedrooms, a library with
over 80,000 books, with about 30 square kilometers of dense forest land surrounding this chateau,
which that
amount of land is about the size of a small city or a quarter of Manhattan or
maybe if you combine all four Disney themed parks Magic Kingdom, Epcot,
Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom into one, that's how much forest they have.
It's massive, it's isolated, it's outside of Paris and the guests are coming in.
Audrey Hepburn is there
wearing a bird cage filled with birds on her head. Another guest is just wearing a
giant apple covering their entire face. Another guest has this giant mask. I'm
sure everywhere they walk they're just slapping people with this mask and it's
just giant cutouts of Mona Lisa with different expressions, different ugly eyes, staring at the guests, all chopped up everywhere.
Then the hostess wore a giant stag's head, like a deer's head, with tears of diamonds streaming down the stag's face.
Real diamonds. What the hell are those?
In front of the main staircase are the waitstaff.
In front of the main staircase are the waitstaff. They're dressed as cats. And they're all meowing and pawing at each other, purring and sleeping on the steps.
And when you sit down at the dining table, the plates are covered in fur.
Not like, oh, someone's cat put fur on my plate, but the entire plate is made out of fur.
And then on the table you see a taxidermy turtle. I mean, are we supposed to,
I don't think you're supposed to eat the turtle.
Then what are we supposed to,
what's the real food here?
The food is placed on a giant mannequin
that is laying nude on a bed of roses.
And the menu consists of slightly cannibalistic
sounding titles such as, Sir, Loin.
Welcome to the surrealist ball held by the Rothschild. It has been decades
since this now viral ball but everyone still talks about it, mainly because of
the creepy pictures of the host and the hostess, the Rothschild couple that's
hosting. They're standing there, black tie, event gown, to the floor, hand in hand,
just wearing giant masks. It's very unsettling.
So much so that netizens believe that after this little dinner they were most
likely hunting people in the dense woods in the thick forest afterwards. That
makes the most sense, does it not? They're hunting humans! There are two men in the
forest. They have long rifles. They're looking through their scopes. You see that? Yeah I do. I see it.
They see a person in the middle of the woods.
This is not in France. This is not connected to the Rothschild.
At least not directly. This is in Uersan, South Korea.
And the two hunters see another person on the other side of the rifle.
Which is not alarming. It is the season for hunting for pheasants.
But the intriguing thing is it's not another hunter.
Wait, look, there's more.
There's more people.
There's a lot of people.
And then there's another one and another one.
Seeing a few people in the middle of the woods at this time
should not be the most alarming.
But when you see nearly 100 people
in the middle of the woods gathered, it's weird.
It's intriguing.
The hunters get closer. It looks like some sort of construction site. Maybe they're
building out here. I mean, again, it's not too strange. This is a developing area. They're
about to walk back when one of them stops. No, something's weird about this place.
The next day, that man alone, one of the two hunters, comes back. This time instead of
a rifle, he starts bringing a telephoto lens and he's shooting shooting pictures if you look from afar
This feels like a regular construction site. It's very typical, but once you get closer
There's a dog
13 dogs German Shepherds
They're not watching the woods though. So imagine a construction site and you see 13 dogs
Would they not be watching the woods for anyone coming,
I don't know, to loot, to take stuff,
to stop them from developing?
I don't know, right?
You would expect that they're watching outside,
but they're watching the construction workers.
If the dogs are guarding them,
why would they need to guard them?
It doesn't make sense.
The 13 German shepherds are all attached to some sort of human handler
that is also holding a giant wooden club.
Again, they're not watching the woods for intruders or anybody that's approaching.
They are watching the construction members.
The man with the camera waits until the sun sets and he starts taking photos of the guards
and the guards are tying everyone's ankles together.
Dozens of people tied together by their ankles with chains.
And then they're shuffled into this shipping container.
The door is slammed shut and padlocked from the outside.
The people in the woods are victims of brother's home.
They have been transferred from Busan, South Korea, where the welfare facility that houses
over 4,000 people is located, into URSAAN to start building a second location.
You're kidding me.
The man with the camera though?
He's going to figure out who's behind all of this.
He's going to figure out the people behind Brother's home and do something about it.
Because he's not just a hunter.
He is the newly elected prosecutor for URSAAN.
This is the real life case behind Squid Games.
We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to directly support a survivor of today's episode.
This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing
team, and we'd also 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.
With that being said, today's case has mentions of internment, essay, trafficking, torture.
Please take a break, this is a very heavy case.
Another note, South Korea at the time that this took place was not a democracy, it was
run by a dictator.
So clearly, times were different, but I don't know how different because these things keep repeating in history
Not just in South Korea, but everywhere
Additionally our amazing Korean researchers and translators were able to travel out to some of the survivors in today's episode
They conducted interviews. They translated the survivors book the surviving child written by Han Jung-seon
He's a huge part of the case
We will refer to him as Han.
Which, he explains why he even wrote this book in the first place.
He says,
no media outlets try to directly talk to the Welfare Center victims.
No one has listened to the victims' stories about what actually happened there.
It seems like they didn't even want to try listening.
So in the end, many citizens have no idea about the reality of what's happened.
One last note, this is part three of the case. This is the final part. In part one, we went through the
torture games of the Brothers Welfare Center, which are very similar to Squid
Game. In part two, we did a deep dive on what they do with the 551 plus dead
bodies that were at the facility, as well as some of the torture methods and what
happens when you escape. And in this episode episode We're gonna go in depth on the wealthy benefactors of these games
The facility if you will so with that being said, let's get started
There's been a lot of recent conspiracy theories surrounding squid games like how BTS is V is gonna be in season 3 of squid games
So that's a huge conspiracy. I guess theory not a conspiracy or. Or like how everyone is related. That the old man,
player 001 from season one, the old man, could be the father of our main character, Ki-hoon,
or as well as the father of the front man, the one that facilitates the games in the all-black
guard suit. So there's so many conspiracies of what if they're all connected. There's also the
conspiracy that the front man, he's infiltrated the games
to just presumably teach the main character a lesson.
That at the end of the day, all humans are the same.
That if given the chance to do what the front man does,
or the chance to be a VIP,
they will choose to do that.
Or a really crazy theory
that there's this old lady in the second season.
She joined the games because she needs to make money so that she can pay off her son's
gambling debt, and her son is also in the games, right?
That she might be the wife of the old man that started the games.
There's so many conspiracies.
There's a character in the game that happens to be heavily pregnant.
Naturally, there's theories about her and her unborn baby, one that
perhaps the main character might have to sacrifice himself to save her and her
unborn child, make sure that she's the last one standing, or another conspiracy
that in the end everyone must die and the only thing in the corner that is
surviving is that little baby, that she gives birth and only one can survive so
she has to sacrifice herself so her baby lives on. So many.
But a lot of the recent conspiracy theories have to do with the VIPs of the show.
The premise of the show is that every year, hundreds of contestants that are riddled with
debt are invited to have a chance to win tens of millions of dollars, typically around 40
million dollars.
And the catch is, once you enter the game, you're taken to a facility in the middle
of nowhere with no escape guarded by pink suit wearing guards while you wear a green tracksuit and
you're forced to play and win childhood games and if you lose the game you die on
the spot.
But that prize money, the facility, the guards, they have to be funded somehow.
It is funded by a global elite club of VIPs that find it enjoyable and entertaining to
watch these people fight to the death,
for to them, what feels like pennies.
In season 1, it's so interesting.
You get a glimpse of the VIPs.
They're watching while getting served food and drinks.
A lot of the masks are eerily similar to the ones worn at the Surrealist ball held by the
Rothschild family.
The staghorns, the bejeweled masks, they're so similar. In season two though, someone points out a conspiracy.
They never show the VIPs again in season two.
They never show them.
They never show them watching their reactions, nothing, even
though they did in season one.
Would it not be more natural to show them again?
There could be a play of dynamic of people are dying and the
VIPs are reacting and maybe they form interpersonal
relationships and they grow attached to some characters and not other characters but no
and at one point it feels like the main character breaks the fourth wall and is telling others in
the game that the VIPs are watching them but it almost feels like he's looking at us the viewers
watching Netflix we're in the game yeah leading. Leading to the conspiracy that we, all the people of the world,
are the VIPs watching for entertainment.
Others are saying, well maybe it's not you and me that they're looking at,
but maybe they're breaking the fourth wall looking at the elites of the world.
It's a nod to them, cause they might be watching this too.
We know what you're doing.
One net is in comments, I don't think Squid Games is even hiding anything. I think
the purpose of this show is that this is actually happening somewhere in the
world for real. At Brothers Home, everyone hates to see Madame Park coming. Once you
hear her shoes click clacking down the long hallway, all the doors leading up to
the rooms filled with bunk beds
with children in there. I mean you just know that somebody's in trouble. They
need Jesus. That is why Madam Park is called because they need Jesus. Usually
she has her purse and it's filled to the brim with choco pies. They're like these
fluffy cream sandwiches. I guess imagine Oreos but fluffy, just packets of
individual choco pies in her purse walking
down the hall.
She's staring at the hundreds of children standing at attention because they're like,
please don't let it be me.
Please don't let it be me.
Which one is it?
The guards point at the two boys and they already look like they've been beat.
Nothing we've done seems to fix it, Madam Park.
We've already tried everything.
We've tried the first step as well.
The guards mean that they've already tried to tie the private parts of the two boys together with a small thread. What? The logic behind it is these
two boys keep peeing in their sleep, they keep wetting the bed as they sleep. If they're connected
by their privates, if one of them starts wetting the bed while they're sleeping, then the other
boy's private part gets wet and he wakes up and says, hey wake up. You're using the restroom. We got to go use the restroom
What are you what it almost never works?
So the idea that they continue the practice seems to be based off of torture alone
And if that doesn't work, which is almost always the next step that the guards do is call in Madame Park. She's the cure
She sits down with the boys and if this is your first time
seeing Madam Park, she almost seems maternal. She looks like a little ajumma, like a church
lady, and she's got all these children's snacks in her purse. You know I can help you,
right? The truth is, the reason you're doing this is, it's the demons. The demons are
making you wet the bed. Come here. She makes the boys one by one, all the bed
wetters, lay on her lap on their backs. Their private part is across her lap and
she pulls down their pants and their underwear and she starts grabbing and
squeezing their private areas. Say it with me, Lord I believe, and then she'll
squeeze as hard as she can and they all scream out in pain. She screams, boys who believe in the Lord will be cured! Many victims say that the pain is
so unbearable that you can't even think. You can't even think to say what she
wants you to say because you just want to stop the pain, yes, but you can't even
think to say, what did she tell me to say again? I just want you need to scream.
It's almost a reflex. Until finally it's just white hot pain and they're
screaming, I believe in the Lord! I believe in the Lord and it seems like their vision is going white
Only then will the madam let you put your pants back on and as you wipe your face with all the tears
this is also documented in the book she will reach into her purse and
Pull out a singular choco pie
It is the best and worst thing many of them will taste in weeks.
Han, the author of the book, if you watch the first two episodes, he's the
survivor that authored the book that was used for source material but also he's
the one that was trapped with his sister. He and his sister were taken to the
brothers home by police officers after their father dropped them off one drunk
evening. He just didn't know how to take care of the kids anymore.
Han, like many of the other survivors, he has these nightmares.
But this one feels different.
Like you're being watched.
I mean, it's crazy how humans can feel the feeling of being stared at.
Han opens his eyes and right in front of his face are two floating eyeballs just glowing
in the dark, unblinking.
He jumps up out of bed, on the light and it's older sister
the one that was trapped with him at brother's home i thought the older sister is in the
the other side board yeah this is once they're out they're trying to live together once they escape
we're gonna go into detail on how they all escape. Oh. And he turns on the light, Shinne, what are you doing?
I told you we're supposed to sleep now.
Yeah, I'll go to sleep.
But when Han looks up again, she's not asleep.
His older sister is just sitting there staring at the wall.
Some nights she laughs at the wall.
Other nights she cries at the wall.
Whenever Han would ask her,
Shinne, why are you laughing?
Why are you crying?
She'll turn around and tell him stories about their lives before brother's home.
She never talks about what happened at brother's home, at least not in these moments.
Han says, there was a time I thought about just killing everyone.
For me, I had nothing to lose. It was entirely possible to do it.
I could have become a psychopath that society could learn to fear. I could have.
Instead, he thought, well, why don't I just start small? I'll
just kill one person first. I'll kill my dad. Because he thought, he's the reason
that we're in Brothers Home. My older sister who was so smart, so very kind,
ended up in Brothers Home, put on psych ward meds. I mean she lost her mind in
there. She was beat every single day. She was tortured in ways that I mean Han was tortured the same way. They were both essayed. It was a lot.
The whole thing became more complicated when Han finds out that his dad was also trapped in Brother's home later
But that doesn't make things better. So over a decade after they're released, Han decides
I can't do this anymore. For the past decade after Brother's home, I've just been floating around
My sister is still not my sister like the sister I remember. I gotta do something."
So he goes to see his dad with a knife. He says, I visited my father. He didn't realize
I was his son. He didn't recognize me, but I recognized him. And at the time I was carrying
my knife. My intention was to kill my father. I asked him, do you remember sending your children to Brother's Welfare Center?
He responded, I remember. I had no choice at the time. It was difficult.
Again, his father does not recognize him.
He asks, sir, what do you think Brother's home was like for your children?
Do you think it was a nice place for your kids?
Hans said, if his dad said anything along the lines of, I think it was okay, I think it wasn't the best, but it's okay, he would have killed them right then and there.
He would have no second thoughts about it. His father opens his mouth, looks up at Han.
That place was not a place for humans. They broke my ribs in there. I was beaten badly.
I feel…
And Han could see the guilt in his dad's face, and for a second Han is holding the
knife in his pocket, but he thinks, what if I were my dad?
Would I have done the same thing?
What if I had no money?
The government said, the Olympics are coming, we want to help clean up the streets.
We'll take care of your kid, we'll feed your kid kid we'll educate your kid for you your kid will be better off
would I send my kid there maybe because it's the government and they both stare
at each other and before Han asks who do you think I am standing in front of you
I don't know some government official are you here to monitor me or something? I'm your son."
Han writes, my father's eyes suddenly lit up. He looked up at me for a moment and
then suddenly lowered his eyes. After that, he didn't say another word for three
years. I think he was tormented by guilt. Han tells his dad that he'll be back to
see him and since then Han has visited his dad every single month in the psych ward.
After being released, Han's dad has been left in the psych ward.
And on Han's way out, he throws out his knife.
After escaping brother's home, the biggest memory Han has was being in brother's home and the words were just ringing in his head.
He didn't even know what he was thinking about.
It just kept saying, with a knife.
He would wake up and in his mind it would just say, with a knife, with a knife, with
a knife, with a knife.
And he initially thought once he gets out, okay, I'm going to kill everyone with a knife. a knife with a knife with the knife and he initially thought once he gets out Okay, I'm gonna kill everyone with a knife like I've lost my mind in there
I'm gonna turn into a psychopath so that people listen to me and I'm gonna stab everybody with a knife and then he thinks no
I'm just gonna kill my dad with a knife. That's what my brain was telling me to do
But now he realizes with a knife that feeling
It's I just want to carve out my painful memories with a knife in my head.
He wishes he could just clean, cleanly cut those memories from brothers home and throw them away.
And for 25 years, nothing happens until 2012.
A man named Vincent steps into a taxi, a cab in Los Angeles.
He offers the cab driver a very interesting proposal.
Drive me around to five different stops and get paid $600.
Max, the cab driver, he agrees because he doesn't know that Vincent is going to five
different places to kill five different people.
He's a hit man.
Are the people he's killing bad people?
Are they good people?
Vincent doesn't care.
He doesn't know.
He just kills them.
But Max, Max cares.
He doesn't wanna be a part of this.
All he wants to do is save up enough money
to open up his own limo company.
That's it.
He's not even supposed to be a cab driver.
He's been a cab driver for decades,
but he's really supposed to be a limo company owner.
This is all temporary.
He's just trying to save up enough money
to start his own company. And all of this all temporary, he's just trying to save up enough money to start his own company
and all of this is just, it's rough.
And he's, Max starts putting two and two together, he knows that he is going to be
collateral.
If Max knows what Vincent is doing and the police know that five people are dead, that
means wouldn't Vincent logically, if he is a hitman that he is pretending to be that
day, would he not kill Max and frame everything on him as collateral damage in the car?
Max, the cab driver asks Vincent, why haven't you killed me yet?
Because I know you're killing people.
Why haven't you killed me yet?
Answer the question.
How did he find out that he wants to kill people?
Oh, he's been going place to place killing people and he gave up his little
facade and has started killing people in front of Max. What? Max is like, just tell me why haven't
you killed me yet? Vincent tells him, look in the mirror, look at me. Paper towels, clean cab. How
much you got saved up for your limo company? That isn't any of your business. Someday, someday my
dream will come. Yeah, well, one night you'll wake up and discover it never happened.
It all turned around on you.
It never will.
Suddenly you're old, didn't happen, never will,
because you were never going to do it anyway.
You're being hypnotized by daytime TV for the rest of your life.
What the f*** are you doing still driving a cab?
Max, in a weird twist, has this wake up moment
where he starts driving the cab faster and
faster realizing Vincent's planning on killing him.
And he starts running red lights going 100 miles per hour.
You're right.
You're right Vincent.
We're all floating on a rock in the universe.
Nothing matters anyway, does it?
Does it?
If not now then when?
Right Vincent?
And he purposely flips the car over, nearly killing the both of them, but ultimately taking control over his own life.
This is the plot of the 2004 movie Collateral.
There's this moment where Tom Cruise's character Vincent says something along the lines of,
you became a hostage to someone like me because all you do is a dream.
To achieve your dream, you should have done everything, but you didn't.
Han says 2012 he's watching that movie and he realizes, I mean listening to that conversation
I thought, it felt like he was speaking to me directly.
Nobody had been speaking about brother's home.
What had happened there, we all just sat in our own places agonizing and thinking about
it.
It almost felt like it didn't happen.
That was the moment I decided,
I was gonna tell the world what happened in Brother's home,
even if it killed me.
Prior to Han protesting
at the National Assembly in South Korea,
for the past 25 years,
nobody has even spoken up about Brother's home.
None of the other victims or survivors. Everybody hid it.
Sometimes people hid it from their future spouses, partners, kids.
Nobody in society wants to feel bad for people without homes that are begging on the street.
They are humans that need to be cleaned up.
The stigma was so strong that the victims, once they escaped Brothers Home,
being tortured for years, forced to play these weird torture games, some were left permanently paralyzed.
Some had each of their teeth plucked out one by one for fun, they have no teeth.
Most of them were essayed by guards every night for years.
They're forced to do manual labor and yet they can't tell anyone about it because they're
gonna be judged.
Han said during his protest, one citizen even grabbed him by the collar.
He's peacefully protesting in front of the National Assembly this citizen spit in his face
and said what even people like you scum of the earth want taxpayer money now
some cursed at him others looked at him with pity and said kid you're hitting a
rock with an egg give it up but he stood there every single day sharing his story
I am a 37 year old man but I was 9 years old when I was taken into brother's home.
This is the 9 year old me speaking. Please listen.
I have no idea where my life went wrong or why I have to live like this.
Being born as one in billions, I wonder if I might have been sent on some kind of mission.
But looking at myself now, it seems like I have no mission at all.
I'm just mission at all.
I'm just pathetically aging. Han explains that his dad and sister are now confined to
a mental hospital, even after being out of brother's home. They cannot adjust back
to society and there's nothing that he can do to help them. All he can do is visit them,
using what little money he has left to buy snacks. And he splits them exactly in half.
If he accidentally purchases three of the same snack because sometimes the supermarket does
buy two get one free specials, he has to either eat the third one or keep it for
the next time he visits. He explains over and over again till finally people start
listening. When our researchers went to interview Han and his sister, they told
the researchers that they have a really hard time sharing food.
They all do. Most of the victims from brothers' home.
In Korea, when you go out to eat, you often order family style,
meaning you order like a bunch of big plates, fish, beef dishes, veggie dishes,
and then a big thing of rice comes out and you all put onto your little plate
and you eat kind of like a Thanksgiving meal, but that's typical for a lot of restaurants.
Han and his sister don't really feel comfortable and they preface this because they don't want to make our researchers feel awkward
They say it's um, you know after years of fighting for our food and eating from a single dish sharing can be very stressful
Like subconsciously we feel that when others serve themselves, of course, we want them to eat
But we feel like our own portions shrink even though we know logically now we can just order more food, but it's really hard.
Han will have to monitor his sister's water intake throughout dinner.
She almost has an addiction to liquids, mainly water. Back at brother's home, the water that they had to drink was extremely unclean.
There were little squiggly things that were alive moving around inside swimming.
Flies would get in the water and drown, and that's the only water that they received.
So whenever Han's sister gets water to drink, she drinks it excessively to the point where it hurts her stomach.
Our researcher noted that Han's sister has a very young charm about her.
She behaves more similarly to a younger girl even though she's in her 40s now. She has very high emotional intelligence and she's very attentive to others around her
asking how she should properly address them.
One thing they noticed is that she has these really long graceful fingers.
When she picks things up and puts them down, it's like someone who's done ballet for years.
It's very elegant.
But then at one point in the dinner, she looks at her nail and then just breaks it off.
Just like that, unprompted.
It seems perhaps to be a stress response.
Just like other interviews with other victims that we found online,
Han's sister will stop talking about her experience at brother's home to Medicaid.
She has at least eight pills that she takes three times a day. Some are antidepressants, anxiety meds, other
psychiatric meds, and Han interestingly takes none. He tells her researchers that
the doctors are actually more concerned for him because his sister is medicated
so they can try to stabilize her condition, whereas for him, he can't be
medicated because he's trying to take care of his sister, but because he has
all this trauma and no way of really helping
not that medication is the only solution
but it just puts him at a higher risk
but Han will do anything for his sister
he says, when he first got her out of the mental institution
this is after brother's home
she was sent to another mental facility
he fought to get her out
and she wanted to go back
he realized, you know know they're at the
hospital you can't eat when you want you can't skip meals you don't make choices
so the real world all the freedom to make choices was overwhelming her. He
said it reminded him of you know those beautiful birds that have their feathers
plucked out to prevent them from flying and over time even if no one pulls out
their feathers they pluck them out themselves.
It's like a bird locking themselves back in the cage because it feels safer.
But now she's learning to love her freedom and Han asks her researchers,
you know, what kind of colors do you think people like us like?
People like me who have gone through all of this.
Think about it.
A lot of people will say we like dark and gloomy colors, but most
of us, the victims and survivors of Brothers Home, we all like really bright colors. When
thinking about how he even survived Brothers Home, he says, I think it's from my sister.
I think it's because in this world, only my sister loves me without discrimination.
But still, how did they get out of Brother's home?
The prosecutor in the woods has pictures of what Brother's home is doing to their victims.
In fact, he has multiple pictures.
The ones that he took when he stumbled upon the construction site in the middle of the
woods.
I mean, this is a slam dunk case, are you kidding?
Chaining people by the ankles, throwing them into a warehouse, locking them up, padlocking
it from the outside.
The prosecutor thought, my thoughts on this were quite simple.
This is a very serious crime.
Even confining and forcing one person to do labor is a very serious crime.
Confining and forcing hundreds into labor, there's no room for excuses.
We have to launch an investigation.
He gets a search warrant for Brother's home.
He says the first thing he noticed when he walked into that massive compound, 60 plus buildings
in the middle of the woods in Busan, the smell. It's like human grease. Like you
don't wash your hair for a few days and it starts to smell like scalp, but so
much worse. Every building is darkly lit. He says, the people, the team that I went in,
the prosecutors, we couldn't believe
that a place like this exists in Korea,
even though we were standing there,
seeing it with our own eyes.
During the search warrant,
they find the massive safe in the back,
the size of a bank vault,
where they found $8 million
with a ton of foreign currency in there.
And the prosecutor is looking around like,
bring me whoever is in charge of this place now.
The prosecutor himself can tell what kind of power he has because everybody around him starts hurrying
to do what? I don't know, to call the director of this place. All of them are running around acting
busy because he's a prosecutor. They're gonna look busy even if they're not. They're gonna try their
best to look like they're innocent. That's normal. This is how normal people react and respond to prosecutors like him.
So he sits there and he waits for the director.
He waits and he waits and the director walks in
and you would think that the prosecutor begged
for this meeting on his hands and knees like a dog.
His name is Director Park.
This is Madam Park's husband.
He runs this place.
He started this place.
He's a short, unassuming
ajusshi. He looks like a regular, like 50-something year old man. He does have a more built figure.
He used to be a boxer. He walks in and he's instantly agitated. Someone like me cannot
be interrogated by someone like you. Let's not even have this conversation. Bring me
the chief prosecutor. Bring me your boss. No, you know what? Bring me your boss's boss's boss's boss.
You're kidding.
That's what he said.
Yes.
Wow.
Where the hell does this guy get this type of confidence?
To have this level of confidence when facing a prosecutor, you have to have one of two
things.
In a very serious crime like this one, kidnapping, entrapping, forcing thousands of people into
what can only be considered the closest thing to a modern day concentration camp in South Korea
that's how people have described it
you have to have three things
a lot of money
a lot of money
two, you better have connections
not your average, I want an aquarium in my home the size of a dining table by 3pm connections
you better be well connected to the most powerful people
if you're talking like that to a prosecutor, maybe you're like a chebar.
That level of connection.
And three, you better have a lot of luck on your side.
So who the hell is Park In-geun, the director?
Mr. and Mrs. Park are living legends in the welfare sector in South Korea
for nothing other than starting, running, and expanding their business of brothers home. The welfare
center in South Korea that has kidnapped entrapped and tortured 3,500 plus people
making them work in factories 12 hours a day with no pay and ultimately if they
die from severe beatings they're just buried in the massive grave in the
compound or their bodies are sold for medical purposes. The government is
paying the parks for every head they bring in.
They're receiving government subsidies, forced labor contributions.
Park, the director, the man behind this facility, we don't even know much about him.
We just know that he used to be a boxer at one point.
Not a famous one, not a good one, but a greedy one.
He just wanted to make a lot of money.
It didn't really matter to him how he makes money as long as he makes money. He never wanted anyone
to know that. In fact, even at brother's home in front of thousands of people that
he is actively taking advantage of and torturing, he has the audacity to act
like he's helping everyone. He makes it sound like he spent his own personal assets to help people.
That he's this pure godly man. It's so bizarre.
And nobody could complain because they knew that Director Park was very close friends with the then dictator Chun Doo-Hwan.
The dictator of South Korea. The most powerful man in the country at the time.
What's their relationship? Is it just close?
It seems like they're close friends now. He won multiple awards. And then I don't
think they started off as friends. He started building brothers home, won an
award cozied up with the then dictator and then they became friendly. The
government would even help fund these vanity projects.
The director, Director Park, would be the main character.
So they would promote how great welfare centers in South Korea are, and there would be a narrator
for this honestly propaganda film, and the narration would start, a blue fireball burns
inside Director Park's chest. In the mental structure of vagrants, it seems that the concept or even the habit of law and order was not ingrained in them, even from birth.
The welfare center houses vagrants and homeless people from 2 years old to 70 years old.
The weird propaganda films would go on to state that this is a day in the life of our director. A vagrant holds a knife to the director's wife's neck and stages a hostage situation demanding
they're literally cosplaying this, acting this out for a propaganda film,
demanding to be let out of the facility.
Director Park prays,
Lord, what should I do? Should I let them kill my innocent wife, or should I give in to the evil vagrant's demands?
The narration continues. The vagrant believes order is oppression, but how is that so?
The vagrant repents his wrongdoings after Director Park persuades him and prays for him.
Director Park has fixed the vagrant.
Director Park has always firmly resolved to watch over the people until the very last person.
The government funded these videos and, I mean, they would have segments that even say,
Homeless people, people who have run away from home, beggars, all these people are being accepted at Brother's home.
The video even shows tours of the psych wards.
Here, there are not only vagrants and children, there are psychiatric patients, mentally unstable
patients, disabled people.
In the cafeteria that we have here, there are five choices of side dishes that everyone
can choose from.
The video shows massive amounts of fresh food being dished onto everybody's plate, which
you know is not true. We talked about this in part two, you know, the truth is everybody is starving inside of Brothers Home
They're eating baby mice sucking on pinecones eating caterpillars to get nutrition
but this propaganda film is showing them eating like kings and
They show director Park and his wife always eats meals with everyone at Brothers Home
One victim says director Park was as close close to a monster as it gets.
He really is a monster.
Hardly anyone could even look him in the eye.
You know how one word from the North Korean dictator at the whole country responds?
It was exactly the same in brother's home.
One word from Director Park and everyone moves under his order.
And it's interesting that the propaganda videos are very reminiscent of something North Korea
would put out.
But now he's been arrested.
The doors to all the buildings in the massive compound are open.
Sunshine is coming in and it's the best disinfectant.
Victims are speaking with the prosecution.
Director Park would say things like, you guys are all evil in society.
Even if you were to catch diseases,
skin diseases in here, you're not worth being treated.
You are scum.
You're making South Korea a worse place.
They're telling the prosecutors everything.
If someone tried to escape,
Director Park would tell them, you are a social evil.
And then they would be beaten in front of every single person
at the mandatory church segments every single Sunday.
Is he the one that's beating people with the boxing gloves or no?
Yeah, he and his brother-in-law, Pastor Lim.
Pastor Lim is the more religious one.
That's his brother-in-law.
So this whole compound is really run by Director Park, Director Park's wife, Madam Park, and
then her sister and her sister's brother-in-law.
Her sister's brother-in-law.
Yeah, it's like a whole family business.
And they're just beating people with a boxing glove
while running this religious church.
Yeah.
And Pastor Lim was, okay,
I don't even wanna call him Pastor Lim.
Lim, he was technically the pastor at the church
and he did this, a lot of victims believe he did this
because they say when you're a welfare
center in South Korea at the time no one internationally wants to donate but if you say hey we're a Christian
welfare center in South Korea a lot of Christian churches in America and overseas would donate
and they would just steal the donations yeah they they would even run these big campaigns of these were kids without homes and we took them in and now we want to reunite them with their families.
But we need money to do that. We need manpower. So a lot of people overseas was donating to the church and there was a victim who came forward and said,
I was a child with a home. Parents and siblings. I just couldn't understand why I was there. why I was being trapped in this place and being robbed of a proper education. I clearly gave Pastor Lim my home
address and phone number. I even told him my parents run a Chinese restaurant. Here is where
you need to go and look, they took me to a different neighborhood, found a random Chinese
restaurant, threw me in there and said, hey owner, is this your kid? The owner shook their head
because obviously these are not my parents, but they took that as proof that I was not wanted by my family so I needed to
stay in brother's home. They documented this for people that were donating. As for embezzling,
it's pretty clear that that is what they're doing. Another advocate says the brothers home embezzled
money by finding loopholes in the government subsidy payments So when it came to food purchases, for example, they would receive enough money to feed 3,000 people
They would only purchase food to feed less than half of that
They got to pocket the rest of the money that's supposed to be spent
the first trial found director Park guilty in unlawful confinement and
Embezzlement charges. Oh, they're actually taken in, all of them. Mainly just Director Park.
Okay.
He was ultimately in prison for 10 years,
in prison with a $500,000 fine, which is far too lenient.
But the problem is, Director Park appeals that decision
and it goes into a second trial.
The second trial results in, instead of 10 years in prison,
four years in prison, and the new fine is $0.
The sentence is then reduced by more than half, and the fine vanishes.
And just like that, 600 people died in brother's home in 4 years.
That's all he's getting?
Wow.
Yeah.
But this too gets appealed.
And finally, his ultimate final sentence gets boiled down, reduced to 2 and a half years
in prison and $0.
The main reason for the reduction being
they argued that the unlawful confinement charge,
there's no proof.
They're saying there's not enough proof
that he was holding people against their will,
which is about as unhinged as if I were to see a kangaroo
building a three story house in the middle of Central Park.
It's just absurd.
The logic behind it is not making sense.
One victim says, I was a living victim
and witnessed all the terrifying
and horrendous abuses that were happening in there. And that wasn't enough? What power do we have?
The prosecutor was being bullied by the mayor of Busan as well as the dictator at the time to drop
all the charges. So it seems like there was a lot of just corruption to let him out.
In two and a half years, he is released
and they continue to open up more welfare centers.
What?
And get government subsidies.
What is the role of the government in this?
In Squid Game Season 2, the main character tells the game makers, you take advantage of desperate people with nowhere else to turn, and you watch as they die one by one to entertain
your clients.
You say it's their decision to participate like you're trying to sugarcoat it, you act
like you're running some charity event.
The frontman responds,
Anyone who died was simply a player who lost the game.
Trash eliminated from the competition.
And as we speak, the world is filling with more and more trash.
You still don't see it, do you?
If the world doesn't change, the game doesn't end.
The main character responds,
You say that it's just the way the world works,
That we should shut up and accept it and go on with our lives,
but that's a story you made up to excuse your atrocities.
I know that people are nothing to you, but animals.
You think you can buy us like racehorses.
Director Park thinks like that.
He opens up welfare facility after welfare facility,
getting all the government funding.
The facility is called Siloam House.
It's a welfare facility for people with disabilities.
They received in total over 11 million dollars in just government subsidies and
likely tens of millions of dollars more in the forced labor. So why not do it
again? And when he finds that to be less exciting financially, he later moves to
Australia. The whole family immigrates to Australia and opens up this massive golf course, sports center, hot springs, and interestingly he buys a
company called Jobstown and starts operating his business under that name.
One advocate says the golf range and assets in Australia owned by the family
were purchased with funds from brothers home so it was bought using embezzled
money. This asset represents blood and sweat of victims and it cost them their lives. Even at the golf range, one employee
was brought from brother's home in South Korea. He was a victim of brother's home,
trapped there. He was flown out to Australia on a visitor visa. Meaning he's not allowed
to work in Australia. He's a tourist. But he's forced to work 16 hour days at the golf
course, manually picking up the golf balls, fixing golf equipment,
and mowing the lawns.
If something is not up to standard, he alleges Director Park would use a golf club to beat
the hell out of him.
He said, if I was in Korea, I would try to run away again.
Or at least, I would try to, right?
But I was left in this place.
I had no money.
Nothing.
Where would I go?
I don't even speak the language.
To get to the nearest public transit from the golf range, it's about 30 minutes by car.
Park's adult children. So Mr. and Mrs. Park, the directors, they have adult children.
They would see him, Director Park, beating this employee at the golf range with a golf club,
and they would never try to stop their dad. He says, as soon as they saw their dad get the golf
club, they would just leave. They would get in the car and run away in fact Australian citizens saw this that Park was hitting the employee
so this is clearly Park thinks he can just get away with anything that day the
lawnmower's tires kept falling off and he wasn't able to cut the grass that
well that week the grass had grown the golf balls are practically hiding in the
grass he could barely find them Park is pissed he grabs a golf club in front of
everybody at the golf course and just
goes in on the employee. The police are called in Australia. They investigate and nothing.
Everything goes back to normal. That employee was stuck there for eight years. He said,
I just curled up for about 30 minutes and I was unable to move. The youngest daughter,
Park Chi-hee, is now the director of the golf range in Sydney.
She and her husband.
Today? Yes.
How old is she now? Do you know?
She's probably in her 30s.
The golf range is being listed for sale right now for 11 million dollars.
It is poorly maintained but claims to profit about $300,000 a year.
The daughter, she's the one running it. Park is dead now.
But she's posting about going on overseas vacations, international trips. She refuses to
talk to reporters. Clearly, she knows what's going on. She knows what her parents have done.
Her husband later tells her reporter, we're only obligated to answer questions in the court of law.
So Park is dead. What about Mrs. Park? She's alive. Pastor Lim is alive and
they're all in Australia. They run a church. Oh my. Pastor Lim spends his time doing chores,
playing golf. One news station tried to get an interview with him, following him, asking him,
do you have any intentions of apologizing to the victims? And he laughed and he said apologize for what? Wow
Meanwhile the victims for them they have been suffering for decades
Initially they state the stigma of being a vagrant was worse than the stigma of being a victim
It would be the same as telling someone that you were abused in prison
The general sentiment albeit wrong the general sentiment from general society at the time is but you were in prison
What did you do to get into prison then?
Even when they were released from brothers home, they would have nowhere to go
They were shipped off to other facilities or just thrown onto the streets
Han writes the welfare center closed the young children were put on buses
Transferred to other orphanages the remaining adults were sent home welfare center victims came into society without any money
They were scattered like beggars throughout the city. Many victims
starved to death throughout the years. So you're saying Pastor Lim and like
Mrs. Park and all of them, they're running a church. Yes, so while Director Park
went to prison for two and a half years, Brother's home shut down. When he was
released, they opened a few more welfare centers in South Korea but they they decided we don't really like it. And maybe the law is
catching up with us. South Korea is becoming a democracy. So they slowly
transfer all their assets to Australia, open up a church, buy a golf range, and
now most of them are living in Australia. They're kids, Madam Park. Are they still
running that church you think? Yeah, yes. These are recent interviews. How are they
still around? Because you know the community is small right? You think a lot of people don't know
the details of what happened? A lot of people don't know. So my dad is an avid news watcher. He's very
passionate in politics and with everything going on in South Korea recently He's very active in putting his voice out there as a citizen and being heard, right?
He doesn't know much about brother's home. This is the only case in Korea I've ever asked him. I've asked him about
Murder cases at kidnapping cases. He knows so much
This he's like, oh, I know it was a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah, so everything was like kind of it's very vague
It's like I think like lots of bad stuff happened for sure, but I don't really know what bad stuff
He doesn't even know the names of the people that ran it Wow
So if they're pastor Lin and then still around then it's do we know what they look like like all of that?
Mm-hmm. Okay, and they should be like hell accountable
they you know people should at least know these are the people renting your church yeah like this
is your pastor yeah the same person was like punching people like committing borderline war
crimes yeah like so many people died a lot of kids were just thrown into orphanages run by nuns
because han was sent to this orphanage the nuns they were shocked kids were just thrown into orphanages run by nuns, because Han was sent to this orphanage.
The nuns, they were shocked.
Kids were licking their dishes with their tongue like dogs
because they had been lacking food for so long.
And the nuns didn't know what to do.
Han says, it was rough because, you know,
we were children who had been beaten, tortured almost daily at the welfare center.
When we came to live at the orphanage,
there was no one beating us or giving harsh discipline. So we just started fighting each other. It's just,
you know, I think it's maybe the lack of resources that they had, all the torture.
They're on edge, they have all this PTSD trauma, they don't know what to do, and so
the nuns have a lot of trouble with them. Han says at the time, he was so stuck in
the resolving all the conflict inside of him
but now in hindsight he feels really bad for the nuns because they were just trying
but it must have been scary for them too. It was just an influx of kids coming in.
It was a lot. The worst part is right when brother's home closed down and
everybody was released, society did not welcome them. Society was warned.
The pickpocketers are coming.
The people that we didn't want to see, the scum of humans, they were locked up
and now they're being released. And if you were trying to get a job and you said
you were from brother's home they would not hire you.
Han says, no one in the world took interest in this issue. At the time there
was no voluntary civil society organizations for human rights and
because the words of the victims weren't covered in any media or news outlets we couldn't receive
any victim compensation but also we couldn't even just have people
acknowledge what happened to us why must we live bearing the truth like this in
squid game season 2 Keon the main character tells one of this game
facilitators someone like you you don't get it You couldn't know or understand how it felt,
what it felt like to be in there, what we did to make it out of the games. You have
no idea what it was like. Han writes, in the end the director was sentenced to
just over two years in prison for embezzling public funds and violating
foreign exchange laws, which has nothing to do with human rights violations, and
the case was concluded. Inconclusively. there is meaning in human death is there not? for us
brothers home victims there was no reason for our deaths, our disabilities
only we were just left with stigma. we were all in there dying like dogs. one
victim who was released and went on to have her own children states I can't
even sleep without the TV on because the silence is too much.
Even if I do fall asleep, I start panicking
because the TV is on and I'm asleep.
What if someone takes my daughters
who's gonna make sure that they're not taken
to a place like brother's home?
I have all these thoughts every time I fall asleep.
Another victim states,
I didn't even get to graduate from elementary school.
So when my son asks me about homework,
I can't even help him.
It's humiliating. I'm always scared someone's gonna find out and even now I'm always
trying to hide this from everyone and it's just humiliating. Park Sunhee, she
was taken in when she was 10. All she did was wait for her older brother at
Busan train station. She was gonna go stay with him but the police came and
offered to help her find him. She's thrown into the van, her ponytail is cut off, she's forced to change into a blue track suit.
She says, the trauma and stigma of those six years will stay with me until the day that I die.
She says the biggest memory that she has until this day is,
one winter, a lady with disabilities wet her pants.
The guards grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to the toilet.
They grabbed one of those floor mops to clean her body and poured cold water all over her.
And when I think about that now, I think, had I been a bit more mature, I may have been
able to protect her.
I know logically speaking I probably couldn't have really been able to protect her, but
all I did was watch.
And that still hurts me so much.
We were children with a bright future, but they threw that away.
They trampled on our futures.
After escaping, she gave birth to a baby girl.
She was not released.
She escaped.
She had been brutally assayed by a guard and she gave birth at 17 to the guard's baby.
Her mother forced her to give the baby away for adoption.
Soon after that, her father passed away.
She says she has children with her new husband and they've been married for 21 years.
He knows all about her past.
He's the only one that knows and it's still not easy.
She says, I've never left my children alone with anyone, not even once.
I didn't even let my own husband hold them until they were over a year old because,
I mean, they're his own children but they're girls and my trauma was so severe from brother's home.
Even now, I can't sleep with the door closed because I actually had him take off the door to our bedroom.
If the door is closed, it feels like someone is guarding it.
Even though it's bright outside, I have to keep the curtains completely open when we sleep. I can't have them closed.
If I'm out in society and something reminds me of brother's home,
I come home as quickly as I can and I have to take a shot of alcohol from the fridge
and then I can't do anything the rest of the day.
She joined a victim's group to talk about what she had been through
and there was this one guard that tried to she tried to convince him to come so it that
guard was a victim then was promoted to a guard and started inflicting torture and damage to the
other victims wow and she tried to convince him to atone for his sins because that's how he can
also get over it and i think a lot of the victims yeah they hated the guards but to a degree they
understood what position they were in.
I'm sure some guards were just evil for the pure sake of being evil, but some guards were
sympathetic to the others.
She says he had cancer.
I said it would be nice for you to just come to the victim's meeting just once before
dying and just apologize.
He said he would come, but two days later he called and said he couldn't do it.
A little while later, I got a random call stating the guard had died and they needed
me to ID the body.
He had deleted all the phone contacts except for my phone number from his phone.
I don't know why he did that.
When I went to the mortuary and lifted the white cloth, I should have cried because he's
dead, but not even a single tear would come out.
I said, brother, this is your karma. Even though he was a victim too, he tortured us as well.
Then I went to his house to get photos for his funeral and the moment I opened his door,
I was shocked. The objects, all of his objects were neatly arranged.
It's what I do at home too. I line them up in order at perfect angles. I think it's part of
our trauma because we had to go through inspections at brother's home
Everything had to be neatly arranged lined up in order at perfect angles
Even his blanket was folded military style with sharp corners
Seeing that made me shudder. She says for her death. She's been thinking a lot about it, too
Her only wishes even if I die tomorrow I have today my wish is that we all find a way to live peacefully, even just for one day. The
victims. Choi, he is the one that was accused of stealing bread from the first
episode. He said once he and his brother got out, he was trapped in there with his
brother. His brother came later, separately. He said he had such a hard
time adjusting back to society, but his brother had it worse. October 2009, 23 years after they were released, he gets a
call and Choi's brother had self-exited. He says I went to his house at 11 in the
morning and I begged and I held him for hours. I told him I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I
wasn't able to protect you. The past at brother's home has totally torn us apart, our whole family, and cut off our
futures.
Why?
Why did they have to destroy my family like this?
Everything I dreamed of was destroyed.
By the time I was 27, 28, my teeth were falling out.
By my early 30s, they were all gone.
From then on, I lived with dentures.
I couldn't even properly function in society. Now he and most of the victims and survivors cannot live without blood pressure medication,
antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds, diabetes medications. They have so many health complications.
And the worst part is, sometimes the victims would naturally, understandably feel resentment towards their parents instead of the facility.
One victim states, the police put us in there, but at the time we couldn't even think of holding the state responsible.
So we just resented our parents for
why didn't you come looking for us while we were in there?
I couldn't even call my father father for the longest time.
Jung, his dad, the toilet paper salesman.
Jung actually had a good relationship with his dad
when he was taken into brother's home.
His dad looked for him everywhere
and he too was taken into brother's home. He's the one that would stand in front of the bathroom door hoping for a portal
to go back to his dad. When he was released, he was sent to another facility and of course he just
keeps trying to get out so he can find his dad. Ultimately, his father passes away within few
months of leaving brother's home. His father had found work immediately
so he could try to find his son.
He was a day laborer.
He was found collapsed in a cold kitchen by himself.
Jung remembers that day when he got that call.
That day was really nice.
He said it was so sunny outside,
but all Jung could do was sit on the curb
and cry for three hours.
He said, tears just kept flowing without any thoughts.
I never got to see my father again. The last image of him is him in that blue
tracksuit at brother's home. If my father were here I would tell him I love him.
Han says even though he escaped, they all escaped, he just feels lost in the world.
That's the best way to describe what it feels like to be out of brother's home.
He wrote a poem about it and it reads, cars driving on dark night roads, where are those cars
heading in this late night? Shining bright lights and speeding, driving cars,
the destinations of those many cars must be the embrace of warm homes I have
never experienced. He says that's how I was abandoned by society and fell into a
life of wandering. I wanted to live a normal prison life, but society wouldn't accept me.
I have no social experience.
I was suddenly released into society from the welfare facility.
I have nothing.
I have no one ever taught me anything.
I had no idea what I was supposed to do.
I had only become an adult in appearance.
That's it.
He was sent to prison twice, in which one of the guards asked him,
you seem like a nice kid, but why is your killing instinct so strong?
Han said what? You know when people talk to each other you're supposed to look at each other in the eye.
I am. Aren't I? I'm looking you in the eye.
Yeah, I guess, but you have eyes like a wild animal.
Like a beast that's been dragged somewhere foreign or just attacked. You say you're looking someone else in the eyes,
but your eyes aren't eyes for conversation. You should try to fix it." And that's when
he started trying to fix his life and get it together. He spends $91 a month on
snacks to bring to his sister and dad who are living in the mental institution.
It was a big chunk considering he only has $500 to live off of every single
month, but it's all he can do for them. He writes,
when I bring snacks I have to divide the cookies and drinks exactly, equally.
If one thing is different, if one person, if my dad or my sister gets one more piece,
a fight breaks out between the two of them, even though they're old adults.
Father and daughter, they're like young children. And when I see that, my heart feels so pitiful
and sad and I always make sure to divide things accurately in advance. My doctor told me that treating my father and sister's
condition now is impossible. He said it's just stalling for their
deterioration. So with that he has been protesting and 33 years later the
government signs a reinvestigation. The second truth and reconciliation
commission is formed. The first case that they take on is the Busan Brothers Welfare Center brothers
home incident. they're still investigating but it's it's difficult
considering director Park and his entire family immigrated to Australia. they've
taken all of their assets and in 2016 director Park passed away. not that they
could do anything to him because of the statute of limitations but netizens are calling for a thorough investigation into who at the police
stations, which police stations were taking people. One victim states they
should conduct a thorough investigation. If the government needs to apologize for
anything, they should. We need to somehow try and resolve this resentment inside
of the victims. One survivor says, we were victims of the government's bid to purify the streets ahead of the
Olympics. We were swept away like trash. The South Korean government needs to
acknowledge what they have done wrong and ask us for forgiveness. But another
survivor rightfully states, because of one family's materialistic and selfish
ambitions, they kidnapped and abused thousands of innocent people all because
they wanted to maximize their family's wealth. The family has benefited and is living a good life from the
sacrifices that we all made. Their assets need to be seized and returned to the
country and I hope these will be used to appropriately help the needs of the
survivors. The Commission is still investigating to this day. Han now makes
miniatures of the compound. So the compound in Busan is gone. It's been
replaced by apartment buildings and maybe this has to do with the fact that for almost 30 years, nobody knew that this
was happening.
And he makes two-scale reconstructed miniatures of the church, of each building, of the bunks,
of people in the blue tracksuits out of clay.
Oh, these are all made by him.
Wow.
And they're remarkable.
Each and every person is different.
They all look troubled or sad or in despair yet
they all have completely unique and different facial expressions and
He is working on getting to live with his sister again
So he has times where she'll come live with him out of the mental facility
But then because they don't have enough money sometimes she'll need to go back
With his education background trauma. he can only do manual labor jobs, he does have a
lot of health issues, and his last dying wish is really just to live with his family.
That's why he's constantly calling the government.
Hi, is this the provincial office?
By any chance, are there any haunted houses or abandoned houses?
My sister and father have been living in a hospital all their lives, but the hospital
says they can't be fully cured
So I want to live in the countryside taking care of them in some sort of abandoned house. Is there anyone? They always say no
He says my father and sister are watching me doing all of this hoping believing that someday their youngest will liberate them
It must be like how I waited for my father at the welfare center, but all I can do now is write about the painful past like this
from my father at the welfare center. But all I can do now is write about the painful past like this.
Unfortunately, he will not be able to bring his dad home. Han's dad was confined in a mental hospital for the past 35 years and has passed away at 75, April 18th of 2022. Even after everything
he's gone through, Han says, I know that bad thoughts bring bad energy. I believe this. Because
even during welfare center life, I would invariably get beaten when I had bad thoughts. I believe this because even during welfare center life
I would invariably get beaten when I had bad thoughts. Maybe that's why I pride
myself on trying to be positive and having a positive personality. What we
victims probably want most is all the ordinary things that everyone else gets
to enjoy. I think our greatest wish is to be ordinary again." So now he is just
focusing on bringing his sister home. He
says, if that day comes when I can say those words to my sister, although my
sister's outward appearance may be that of a 40-something year old, the real 12
year old sister of mine is hidden inside that body. She'll probably hug me
smiling and say, I only waited a little bit. Don't worry, it was just a little
while. So I wait for the day to come when I can carry my sister on my back
the way she used to carry me on her back from school to home.
One victim states,
we were taken there for no reason.
Now we're survivors that are living very difficult lives.
I wish that there would be some sort of support.
Honestly, that's just how I feel.
Han says the only reason he didn't kill everyone was because
knowing that if I committed
a crime in the moment of anger, the welfare center incident would be buried forever. I tried not to
become a killer. I tried to make the welfare center incident known through various legal methods.
So did it work? The director was released from prison and is now living large as a tremendously
wealthy person without financial loss. Meanwhile, the victims are living with various after effects, worrying about their immediate livelihood.
Some are still confined in mental hospitals and other facilities, and many have died.
He says, I absolutely did not want the life of the welfare center.
Our family had to forcibly live a life that we never wanted.
Our researchers asked Han, if you could go back to tell your younger self something, what would you say?
He says, if I could go back to tell your younger self something, what would you say? He says if I could go back and tell my younger self something was you did
okay, you did well, you endured it. When asked about his biggest regrets he says,
I would not say the things to my sister that the guards made me say. They made
people lose hope even in religion. Usually when people go to a place of
worship, they feel hopeful that their God or deity will help them. At brother's home they would tell us to
pray, pray that your parents come to get you otherwise you'll never get out.
Han said that he did as instructed he prayed for his dad and he says I regret
it because I felt the answer to my prayer was my father ending up in the
same place as me but as a prisoner. So I always felt like it was my fault. He says that he has a message for our viewers. He says, I hope that as viewers, hearing about
this incident didn't cause you too much pain. But to prevent such incidents like this from
happening, not only in Korea, but around the world, I believe it's crucial that when the
policies are being created, you take an interest and we inform ourselves accurately. You should
raise your voice and support what needs to be supported and oppose things that
need to be opposed through opposition.
It's through active engagement that we can prevent situations like what happened to my
family from ever occurring again.
Han writes, people will find false comfort looking at incidents, thinking, well, such
things won't happen again in the future, right?
If the same situation happens again, though, what are you going to say?
It could be you then, or it could be your loved ones.
Will you then care and reveal the damage when that time comes?
Han has a beautiful poem that reads,
The life given to me, someone trampled from the beginning.
I want to get up, but I can't.
Every time I try to stand up with courage it presses down on me
I try shouting. Why are you doing this to me? No one hears. No one tries to listen
No one tries to look at the trampled life
it is beautifully accurate and tragic and
That is the case of Brothers Home
The final part of the real-life inspiration of Squid Games.
And a lot of people wonder, is this truly the inspiration behind the TV show?
The director that created the series, the previous project that he worked on was a movie called Silenced,
which is about the school for children with disabilities and all of the abuse that was happening there.
So it does seem like he is aware of a lot of these cases that are ongoing in South Korea
and it does appear that he must have come across Brothers Home.
I don't know to what extent he was inspired, but yeah.
Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Stay safe and I will see you in the next one.