#368: Wife Found a Missing Girl’s Torture Film On Her Husband’s VHS Camera
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And sold! Go to Carvana.com to sell your car the convenient way. Sohme 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 going to wipe the counters. She's going to get on all fours and dust underneath every single piece of furniture. She's going to 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.

Tomi'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. They're 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 Somi. It's somebody else. Is his face in there? Yes.

It's very disturbing. It's definitely going to 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. Oh.

And by then, VHS tape is not really around, right? No. Most people have moved on to DVDs. Okay. Yeah. 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. Yeah.

She rips the VHS tape out and inserts the next one. By this point, her heart is racing a little bit because is this going to be another video of him doing strange things? Is it going to 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 Somi. 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 an eight-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 nonprofit 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 rottenmanglepodcast.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 to 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 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, right?

Mr. Na 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, I mean, 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 SA and kidnapping his wife. 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 going to 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 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'll 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. It was 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 workers 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 SA and kidnap. 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 Monroe, 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, etc.

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 going to spread to the rest of his body or they have to cut his leg off. So they cut his leg off with a 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

that they R-worded her and they killed her and they set it up like this to get better footage. In the end, the community attack 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.

Faye, the screenwriter, is captured, stripped, gang assayed, 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 are 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?

Wait, so...

It was not released by NYU professor. No. Is he involved? He is 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 state 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 looked so much alike. A snuff film was...

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. 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 going to 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 going to smile for the camera, but no, they're like, you're going to just start running. And they're like,

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 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, uh,

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 involved.

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 like hurt core 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 going to get a true snuff film

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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 only the 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...

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 one's 2018? Yes. He, it's recent. Whoa. So this is like, he's been around for a while. A while. Yeah.

Now, Mr. Na 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 destroyed 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 going to 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 going to help him get somewhat 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 Na 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. 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. So-mi turns around and quickly goes back home. Later that night after dinner, So-mi 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 has. She has a lot of questions? 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, look

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 Ha Eun disappears.

She's eight. She vanishes. The title of the online post reads, I saw a girl who looks just like Ha Eun, 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 twenties. She did not just see someone like Han. She sold her. 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 Lord, 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 going to 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 going to 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 over age 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 going to be like, yes, go every single night. There's nothing inherently wrong or shady about them. There's bad people everywhere, but

But it is a place where bad things have known to happen just because it's associated with nightlife. And this was years and years ago, right? Yes. 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. 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, right?

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 hun. she might be working in a karaoke bar.

The missing girl's dad, Helen'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 had 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 wi-fi they usually have food and snacks and really fast wi-fi 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 footage 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. If it is a false report, who wrote it and why? What would be the reason for the post?

to confuse the investigators? So Mi 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.

So me 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 he 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. Nah 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 his homie is to him now, it's going to...

She's going to officially leave him and she might tell someone eventually, maybe five years down the line, maybe 10 years down the line, or maybe there's going to 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, not always hated her little brother, his brother-in-law.

He's the younger brother to Seolmi and he acts like he's the man of the house, always trying to protect his sister, giving her advice. Eventually, Na knows that Seolmi, 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 10.30 a.m., he starts hiding outside the bushes of his house. Hiding in the bushes. His house.

Nha 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 going to use to threaten his wife and kidnap her 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 So-mi. Yes, and he also assaults So-mi.

Like stabbing her. Doesn't stab her, but he beats her. But not try 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 Tomi and ask for her side of the story. And she's not going out of her way to tell the police anything.

not quickly get 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 going to leave him. That's what's stated in court.

Her brother was going to help her leave, but technically she 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 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. What was it called? Pretty Girls.

That's what it reminds me of. Yes. And the detective is like, there's no way this is real. They ask her to describe the girl in the video, her facial features. So Mi tells him enough detail, what she saw in the video, that truly it would be weird for her to make it up. 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 girl's homie is 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 Nas' house now. We need to find those tapes.

Before the police search Na's house, an interesting letter is sent out from prison. A letter from Na to his family. It reads, What did you do with my bag and computer? Not the ones in Gangjin, 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 supervillain 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 they 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 verbatim, 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. And the tapes haven't been found.

Right, but those writing scribbles, that is not normal. Exactly. So 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 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. Right, right, right. That's a good point. 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 yeah 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 yeah

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.

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Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. 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 like

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's, 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 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 15, 2000. She was last seen around 2 p.m. sitting on a bench in front of a stationery 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, Ha Eun. 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 Nas 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 Gangjin, which is where they went missing.

But the biggest piece of evidence, in many netizens' opinion, is the room. On the dark web, there's 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. So me 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 Min-soo 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 Han, 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 that had lured the two girls out every June. But Min-soo 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. Min-soo 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 ajoshi 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 8-year-old says no to that? Every day, Min-soo and Ha-eun, the girl that goes missing, would have to walk by his house to get to school.

And Min-soo said for him, it was very natural. They all started hanging out. Min-soo remembered Na 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 now it's no longer... Like there's adults, older people. And like we're all just kids trying to hang out. At first, Min-soo said he would willingly go to Na's house to play games. Then the essay started. Once that happened, Min-soo said he was too scared to say anything to anyone. But he does start avoiding Na and Na would chase him around town waiting for him. Sometimes Min-soo would get out of school and he'd be waiting at the door. With not essayed Min-soo. Yes. And he would film it. We'll get to it.

So he would wait at the door for Minsu to get out of class. Minsu 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 Na. But Na would always be there when he comes out of the wood clearing. And he discovered that Na is watching him with binoculars, stalking him.

It was terrifying. The more means who avoided Naa and refused to hang out with him anymore, the more aggressive Naa 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 full essay. And it was honestly so painful. It was very difficult.

Min-soo states that he was essayed several times by Na 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, Na would lure them to their house on the premise of letting them play games, but he would constantly force them watch explicit videos of children with him. Some of them stated 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 Min-soo was asked why he didn't report it as a kid and only now reported it as an adult, he said,

The police had nothing else to go off of for Min-soo'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 Min-soo said it was. But there were no tapes left behind. Just a video recorder. And Min-soo 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 Min-soo confront Mr. Na, and hopefully they can get a response out of him, trigger him into admitting something. But when Min-soo goes to meet with him, it's said that Na just smiled at him leisurely, just smirked.

Min-soo 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 Na's release date from prison. So this is the first time he's in prison. 15 years. Yes, he's about to be released. First of all, how are you...

Yeah. Kill someone and then give 15 years. 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're right about Min-soo. I essayed him and you were right about those two girls. I killed them.

Okay. 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 prisoner 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 Nal 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 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 netizen 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? No, just not. That's all we know. We don't know who he is, his name, his face, nothing. Wow. 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 SA'd,

There is a statute of limitations for kidnapping in SA. 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 a

it's abolished, which, 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.

Ha Eun was kidnapped in 2001. If Na 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...

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 Na or not or somebody else, it seems really hard to bring justice at this point.

But now, 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 Na 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 Na is his mom. Producers from a separate show were able to get in contact with her and she told them, don't even talk about what happened in Gangjin. 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 Na 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, Na 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 mathing. 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 Minsu 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 netizen comments when he comes out, he will essay and murder again. Pedophilia is incurable and these monsters are going to 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 Min-soo 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. 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. Ha Eun'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 was 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. Helen'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 thing I could say to my daughter, it'd 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, honestly,

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, 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.