0:02 Orchards are not fun at night. The rows and rows of fruit trees with the twisty little branches and the green leaves, those are all pretty during the day. But at night, everything is dark. Everything is gray. The rustling of the leaves, it no longer feels like a nice sunny breezy day. It sounds like somebody is hiding behind a tree watching you. The cute little twisty branches, they're now creating these eerie shadows on the ground. It feels like a maze from a horror movie. Standing in the middle of an orchard are a group of high schoolers and young 20 something year olds. A few of them are 24, 25, but a lot of them are 14, 15 years old. They're huddled in a circle and there's nobody else in this orchard but them, which makes sense because why would anyone else be in an orchard at
0:48 three in the morning? What was that? Is somebody here? Focus. They have to focus. Right now is not the time to get distracted. Nobody's here. Why would anybody be here? They need to hurry if this is actually going to work right now. They cannot get caught. That is the only rule that they agreed upon before coming out here together again. A few of them, they still need to graduate high school. One of them still needs to graduate middle school. If they get caught tonight, all of that, it's over. They cannot fail. What did Kim say? Kim said, you just mix these two together and it'll work out perfect. He said it's the perfect mixture. There's no reason for it not to work. I mean, it has to work, right? Hurry, just start pouring it in. They kick their shovels to the side and start pouring
1:35 in the mixture down into this massive hole that they dug up in the ground. They have to hurry. They're starting to get hungry. They pour the sludgy gray cement mixture until it covers what's buried. First, they completely cover A hand. Five fingers. Then it's connected to an arm and they start pouring the concrete on the arm. Then the torso. And then finally, the face. The face of the 15-year-old girl that they held captive for over a month and tortured. When they're done, they all leave. They head back to their cars with their little shovels. And honestly, they feel good because they freaking did it. They're gonna get away with it. That's how they feel at least. But don't they know? History always repeats itself. And a
2:21 very, very similar case took place 26 years ago in Japan. The case of Junko Furuta. The case of Junko Furuta is one of the most gruesome cases of sadistic torture we've ever covered. And it was all committed by teenagers. I think if you've ever kept up with true crime cases at any point, Junko's case would have been one that you've absolutely come across. And today we are covering the Korean version of it. This is the case that everyone in Korea has been calling the Korean Junko case.
3:14 We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the NAMI network. With an impressive international reach and a heavy presence in Asian countries, this nonprofit provides life-changing opportunities for survivors of sexual trafficking by providing workforce and life skills for the women and victims that they serve. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team. And we would like to thank our listeners for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates. As always, full show notes are available at RottenMangoPodcast.com A few massive disclaimers before we get started. There's going to be a lot of warnings for today's video. There are heavy descriptions of sex trafficking, SA, CSA, and graphic descriptions of torture, physical and psychological torture. It's a lot. If that is a
4:01 lot for you today, please go take care of yourself and I will see you in the next one. Many names have also been changed for anonymity and also because many identities have been not released. They've been protected by the law. A few statements have been condensed for time and we had our professional translators help us with the gathering of the facts of this case. But if there is anything at all that is mistranslated, miscommunicated, or anything we didn't include, please let us know down in the comments. So with that being said, let's get started. The best way to drink soju is on the floor. I mean, there's just something about it that usually hits better. You get all of your friends in a circle. You get bottles of soju, which is hard liquor. You get cup ramen, snacks, and you sit in this circle on the floor playing drinking games. I think it's nice because you only do that when
4:48 you're younger and it's always this memory. In South Korea, a mix of high school girls and college-aged boys, yes, very alarming, are sitting in the motel room on the floor drinking soju. At first glance, if you were to just peek inside this room, it looks like they're playing drinking games. And maybe that's why one of the girls is more drunk than the others. Typically in Korean drinking games, it is slightly unfair because if you lose the first few rounds, you have to take a shot of soju every time you lose the game. But if you're already drinking soju, you're likely to lose the next round of games. So then you end up drinking more rapidly than everybody else. So that results in some people being way more drunk than the others. But usually everybody catches up by the end of the night. That is not the case here. The energy in this motel room is not normal. The group
5:38 of seven, there's seven of them, they're joking around. They're having fun. They're engaged. And then one of them, the eighth one, the very drunk girl, Yuna, she's kind of sitting off to the side, crouched down with her hair in her face. It looks like she's being forced to be there. Like she just wants to go lay down, but for some reason they're not letting her or for some reason she can't leave. Nobody is even engaging with her. But every once in a while, they'll grab an empty cold noodle bowl, a naengmyeon bowl, fill it to the brim. These are big bowls. Think of like a pasta dish. They'll fill it to the brim with alcohol. About two bottles of soju. They put it on the floor, right in front of Yuna. Drink it. She will have to bend down and drink the
6:24 entire bowl. They will not let her stop. To give you an idea, soju typically has an alcohol by volume of 20%, which is about half of vodka, but it's still strong enough that most people will take shots of soju. It's not like beer or wine where you just get like a nice big glass of it and drink it. It's a spirit. You take shots, you mix it with something else, or you sip it really, really slowly. You do not ever chug two bottles of it. That would be like getting eight shots of vodka, pouring it into a single drinking glass, and then chugging it like a glass of water. You're not going to have a good time. The minute that the two bottles of soju goes down Yuna's throat and into her stomach, it comes right back up. She throws it right back up, all over the floor. The teenagers around her are a mix of disgusted and also kind
7:12 of intrigued about what's gonna happen next. Cause she's not supposed to throw up. I mean, she probably would throw up, but she's not allowed to throw up. The guy sitting next to Yuna smirks and for a moment it's quiet. until he grabs her by the back of the head, shoves her face into her own vomit. Eat it. Yuna is the group's plaything. And just like Junko Furuta, she will be held captive and tortured for a month straight by teenagers her age. Do you think history repeats itself? I feel like that's a big question people like to ask. And if it doesn't, then how does the same crime happen 26 years apart from each other? It's not even the same in terms of, oh, it's both a case
7:59 of kidnapping, sadistic essay, torture, and murder, but the cases feel eerily similar down to how the perpetrators are caught, how the victims try to escape, how they're lit on fire. Everything feels similar. Two girls, Two different countries, 26 years apart, held captive, tortured in very creepy, similar ways. Was it inspired by the first case? It doesn't seem like it. So just evil repeats itself. Yes. Wow. Because I imagine if it did, it would have come about like, oh, this person was obsessed with these types of dark cases. They had a fascination for serial killers. You know how it always comes out. They had a journal where they wrote Richard Ramirez, heart, nothing. Both cases, the case of Junko Furuta in Japan in 1988 and the case of Yuna in South Korea in 2014,
8:50 both cases start with a kidnapping from a helpful hand. Someone that they believe is going to help them. But there is this saying, better the devil you know than the devil you don't know. Japan 1988. 17 year old Junko is rubbing her bruised knee. She's laying kind of awkwardly in a ditch on the side of the road. Her bike is practically on top of her at this point. It's 8.30 PM. It's not the most optimal time to get injured alone. Junko looks up, she's frustrated, she was riding her bike home from her part-time job, when this random 15-year-old boy comes up to her out of nowhere, completely unprovoked, and kicks the side of her bike. She and her bike go flying off the road into this ditch, and now she's rubbing her slightly bloody knees. She's dusting the dirt off her legs when
9:39 this figure walks up to her. Another boy, maybe a little older, perhaps 18, he offers to help her up. That guy is famous around here, the one that kicked you, he's a pervert. He once threatened me with a knife, you know? Come on, let's get you up. I can escort you home if you'd like. I'm sure he's still somewhere around here. It's a split-second decision. Do you risk being alone and vulnerable to the bike-kicking pervert to come back and get you? Or do you take the helping hand, hoping it's someone safer? The possibility that the two of them planned for this to happen probably does not cross your mind. Oh, it was pre-planned? Pre-planned. They're friends. As Junko and the helping hand are walking towards her house, they pass by one of those abandoned warehouses and suddenly this guy's attitude completely switches. You
10:26 know I'm a Yakuza member, right? It's like the mafia, but in Japan. This is our whole thing. We kill you by faking an accident. We hit you with a car, but I can forgive you if you offer yourself to me. He drags Junko into the abandoned warehouse and essays her. But when he's done, he is sitting next to her. She's very panicked and he tries to convince her. Actually, there's more. The yukuza still wants to kill you, but because you look kind of like my girlfriend, I feel a little bit of sympathy for you. I want to let you live. I can talk to my superiors and ask them not to kill you, but you have to stay with me for maybe the weekend. He leaves to call two of his friends and he tells them, I've captured a woman. Do you guys want to eat together? That night, him and his three friends would take turns gang
11:16 essaying her and they would invite more friends over and soon the torture would begin. They decide, why let this girl go? Why let her go home when they can keep her captive and make her their little personal plaything? Jinko would be kidnapped by what was supposed to be a helping hand. South Korea 2014. A guy named Kim is sitting at his desk, texting his girlfriend, Yuna. He's comforting her. Yuna is, to put it nicely, she's going through it. Her home life isn't the best. Her mom was an alcoholic. Her parents are divorced. She's living alone with her dad. But they were never really that close to begin with. So they're always kind of a little awkward. The house is quiet. Yuna could probably benefit at this point from some stability. But instead, her dad picked up all their bags, moved to a
12:03 completely different city where she has no friends, no connections, and she doesn't even speak that city's dialect. Which results in her new high school friends bullying her relentlessly. Another girl from the school would say... I mean, some of the bully girls didn't like Yuna because she was quiet. She kept to herself. She didn't try too hard to make friends. She also had a pretty face and I guess the bullies did not like that. She's like what, 15, 16? She is 15. She would text Kim, her boyfriend. I don't like school. I don't like my dad. I hate everything. Kim debates on how to respond to something like that and he settles with, then just leave. What? Are you suggesting I run away right now? I'm not saying that, I'm just saying you can leave and get some fresh air. 바람세, which means truly, get
12:49 some fresh air. It's obvious you're not going to feel better when you're stuck at home with your dad. I guess that's true. So then, does that mean you're going to stay with me? Kim hesitates again before he starts clicking away on his phone. The text reads, Of course, I have a car so I can drive you around. We can go grab some yummy food, have fun, and just relax. Then I can drop you back off at home. I don't know, I feel like my dad's going to be really worried. Well, if you ever do, just call me. Your dad will understand if you just tell him you're gonna hang out with friends. I did all of that too when I was your age. Kim is 24, she's 15. I did that too when I was your age. You trust me, right? Yuna responds, of course I trust you. Thank you. I always feel better when we talk. Kim responds, good, I'm glad I can help. Ah, I can't wait to meet you in person. What
13:36 about tomorrow? Kim- Wait, they haven't met or- They've never met. They met online. It's 2014. Kim is anxious because what if Yoona doesn't want to meet with him or she's not ready for a serious relationship? Maybe he's coming on too strong. Maybe it's too quick. He's tapping his feet, anxiously waiting for a response, and it finally comes in. Yeah, see you tomorrow. Kim turns to his side where a guy friend of his is standing, nodding his head. Fuck yeah. They high-fived, then they turned around to the two girls sitting on the bed. I told you he could get her to meet. The girls giggle, and now the only question is, how much do you think Yuna is gonna go for? Yuna's boyfriend, Kim, helps her with her little suitcase, gives her a helping hand up the steps. She's glancing around like, this
14:25 is where you live? They're walking into a very shady-looking motel in a rough neighborhood, which she's not trying to judge, but it's just... I guess it's just not what she expected. When you're 15, you think a 24 year old is a full grown adult and they have their own house in this economy. That's not true, but you get it. And he reassures her, it's just temporary. He swipes his card on the door and lets her in first. Once she steps into the motel room, Yuna likely has a gut feeling to you turn it right out of there and go back home. The motel room is filled with people. In one singular motel room, there are now seven plus Kim plus Yuna, there's nine people. He never mentioned having a roommate or that there was gonna be other people around them. I mean, not that anything is wrong with that, but again, it's just nothing what she was expecting. There's three
15:12 guys in their 20s, 24 and 25 years old, and a few girls that are her age, 14 and 15 years old. A whole group of seven people in this motel room, what is going on? Kim turns to her and explains, they're kind of like us. We call ourselves the runaway family. We're all just helping each other out while we can. Yuna expresses, maybe this wasn't the best idea. Maybe I could just go home and I'll be back and it'll be great when I get back and maybe now's not the time. But they block her from leaving. The girls her age start pleading with her. Come on, it'll be fun. You can just stay here for a few days. Just kill time and then go home. You know, if you go home now, your dad is going to freak out that you ran away and he's probably going to beat you up and shave your head. Because that is a very
15:58 common threat in Korean households that they're going to shave your head. It's typically reserved for daughters. because I guess they think that you're having too much fun getting attention and going outside, so they threaten to shave your head. I think it's toxic. I don't think it's normal or okay, but I don't know how many people actually follow through with it. But if you go home in a week, he's going to have missed you so much. He would have been so worried and so stressed. He's not even going to be mad. That's how it always is. It always works for us. Trust us. Do you want to get your head shaved and lose your phone? Or do you want to go home the king of the house? It was a question, but it didn't really feel like a question. It didn't really feel like a choice. So Yuna ends up staying with the runaway family. And they were right. Just like they said they would be. Of course they were. Two weeks later, Yuna
16:48 is standing in front of her home door. It's open. I mean, she has no idea how her dad is going to react after seeing her for the first time in two weeks since she ran away. Instead of being upset, her dad slams into her, hugging her so tight that she can't even breathe. He's so happy to see her that he doesn't even notice that Yuna is fidgeting. She's barely making eye contact with him. She's even hesitating to step inside their apartment. It's not until they get inside, he realizes, oh, something is weird. Something is off about my daughter. He would later state, you know those stories where they say like if a clone replaced your loved one? That's what I think he was trying to say the feeling was. How would you know? This looks like Yuna, talks like Yuna, remembers the same thing as Yuna does, but this doesn't feel like his daughter. It feels like something
17:35 happened and made her a different person. She's sitting on the living room couch, barely moving, as if she wants to keep her body as small as possible, touch the least amount of couch surface area as possible. And the smell, the smell hit him before he even opened the front door. But it's even stronger now that she's inside. Not that he cares about the smell as long as his daughter is home, but it's such a strong cigarette smell. Of course, she's been gone for two weeks. He's not expecting her to smell great. But even if Yuna had spent two full weeks, every second, every day, every night, inside of a club, a hookah bar, surrounded by chain smokers, he doubted she would smell this bad. Her dad stated it was so bad that he even later washed her clothes multiple times and it was embedded in the fabric. The scent would not leave. But most alarming is Yuna's eyes were very
18:25 unfocused, like she's in a daze. She's sitting on the couch, staring at the wall as if she can see through the wall, like she's hypnotized. It seems like she's disassociating. And he walks up to her and he tries not to scare her. And he asks, what happened to you during the two weeks? It's okay, you can tell me. What happened? When a child goes missing, all the parents typically care about is getting them home safely. Maybe the first few hours they're missing, there's confusion, there's anger, they suspect the kids are out late so that they can hang out with all the bad friends that you do not approve of. But when they still don't come home at the end of the night, I think all of those feelings are just replaced by sheer panic and concern. It doesn't matter why they're gone, where they went to, who they're hanging out with, what they're smoking. None of it matters as long as they come home. Japan, 1988. Junko has the phone up
19:15 to her ear. Part of her just wants to scream into the phone, please help me. These kids are holding me captive and they've been gang-essaying me 12 times a day. They're using objects to essay and burn my areas with the lighter. She just wants to scream that and see what happens. Another part of her is replaying the captor's words over and over in her head, which is along the lines of, you see that? That car over there? Yakuza. We know your home address. If you don't do as we say, I'm going to kill you and that car over there is going to drive directly to your parents' house and kill them. Is that what you want? Junko waits for the phone to stop ringing and she hears her family on the other line. Junko? I'm running away. I'm not in danger. Call off the police search and tell them I'm okay. I'm going to stay with a friend. I don't want the police looking for me. Junko's parents are confused and they don't believe her
20:05 because it doesn't make sense. She's never been like this. This is the daughter that rarely misses school. And the night that she ran away from home, she had been talking about that night for weeks. It was the night that she would come home from her part-time job. She was going to watch the finale of her favorite TV show. She told her brothers, don't you dare even touch the TV that night because it's mine. Additionally, it was Junko's mom's birthday. The night that Junko disappeared, she had already been in the process of buying supplies to bake her mom a strawberry cake. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, with no event, no fight, she just runs away. It just doesn't make sense. Junko hangs up, but she would call again a few more times over the next five days, begging her parents to stop looking for her. Junko's parents would never stop looking for their daughter. But the police were no longer
20:54 as concerned. It hardly seems like an emergency situation anymore. I mean, Junko's reached out to the parents. She said she ran off. The police reassured the parents were still actively investigating. Just sit tight. But she's no longer their top priority anymore. Junko's kidnappers' plans are working. Before we opened our Grandpa Mango business, I heard so many people talk about how hard it is to open up an online store. And don't get me wrong, it's very hard. But the parts that they were focusing on were, you have to make a website, make it look pretty, and then do all of that. And you need to know how to code, and you gotta learn all these technical things. Except you don't. Setting up a store was so easy all because I used Shopify. Shopify is
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24:55 get $20 off your first fix. That's stitchfix.com slash rotten. stitchfix.com slash rotten for $20 off. stitchfix.com slash rotten must redeem within seven days of sign up. South Korea 2014. Yuna's dad just wants to know a few things now that Yuna's back home. One, what happened during those two weeks that you were gone? Two, why do you seem so traumatized? And three, why is she acting like she's going to leave any second? She's constantly looking over her shoulder like she's got a go bag stuffed in her closet ready to go. Yuna tries to reassure her dad, it's nothing. Seriously, I was just hanging out with my friends and You were being dramatic. You didn't need to call the police. He does not believe her for a single second.
25:42 And he's determined. He's going to figure it out. He's going to find out what the hell happened in those two weeks. It is very rare for someone to do something for 12 hours a day. If you were to work 12 hours a day for seven days, you'd be working 84 hours a week, double the average work week, and then some. Most people don't even sleep 12 hours a day. Truly, it's very hard for someone to do one activity for 12 hours per day. I imagine it can't be enjoyable in any sense. 12 hours a day though, is just how long both girls, Junko and Yuna are essayed during their captivity. 12 hours every single day for over a month. Japan, 1988. Junko is not allowed to wear clothes. The first few days, Junko was taken into captivity. She
26:30 was held hostage and gang-essayed by the four main perpetrators. There's four teenagers that are mainly responsible for this. The bicycle boy and his friends. But soon, she would hear them calling their friends over. And they would tell their friends and their friends. And this is a paraphrase, but along the lines of, they'd be on the phone saying, we have a free woman trapped inside, ready to be used. Every single day from then on, 12 times a day, 12 to 18 hours a day, Junko would be S8. Eventually, the captors and their friends would get bored of, quote, just assaulting Junko. The fun was more so in the power and the torture and the humiliation. They would force Junko to lay there while they all took turns urinating on her. Sometimes
27:15 they would play loud disco music and force her to, quote, dance for them while touching her privates. They would make fun of her, It was estimated that Junge was essayed by at least 100 different men during her 44 days in captivity. The sexual torture would only escalate in the next few weeks. It's almost like her captors and the other friends who would be invited over were playing this game of who can be more sick, who can be more twisted? Within a few weeks, they start essaying Junko with other objects. They initially start with random objects that they could find to get their hands on, but eventually they start intentionally looking for objects that would cause the most damage. They begin to torture Junko by inserting sharp scissors, metal rods, metal skewers that you use to grill meat on, glass beverage bottles into
28:03 her private parts to essay her. At one point, they placed a hot light bulb into her private region and roughly moved it around until it shattered inside of her. Junko would be essayed so regularly and so brutally that her internal organs were quote mangled by the end of the 44 days, by the end of the six weeks of hell. South Korea 2014, Yuna had come home after two weeks and she was finally ready to tell her dad everything that happened. Do you know a chat room called sex meeting? Well, Yuna had a listing on there and it reads, hourly rate of $150. No perverts allowed. Condoms are mandatory. No young people. People should be 30 or older. Yuna is 15.
28:52 And every single day, she would be forced into meeting up with at least eight clients. Every day for 10 to 12 hours a day, she was essentially essayed and sex trafficked eight times a day. Yuna explains to her dad how she was sex trafficked, forced into sex work by who she thought was going to be her boyfriend, Kim, and his friends at this random motel room. They call themselves the runaway family. And it all happened so quickly. By the time she realized what was going on, it was too late. It started with a favor. Yuna is sitting in the motel room and the whole group is crowding around her. They're all staring at her, starting to stress her out. It's just one hour. Yuna is clearly uncomfortable. It's not that hard. Just go and talk to some old adjushis, some old men, inflate their egos, spend time with them, quality time, and that's it. And you get paid. Yuna doesn't
29:40 say anything because it doesn't really feel right. But they tell her that Helen, the girl that usually does this, she's sick, so she can't go. Do you want her to get more sick from exhausting her body? Besides, you can get money for that hour. Doesn't everybody want money? Doesn't everybody need money? Kim tells her that he never likes to ask for any favors and he really would never unless it was absolutely important. Besides, they'd all be in the same motel waiting in the car in the front when she gets out so they can all go out to eat afterwards. That's what Yuna thought it would be. Talking to some old middle-aged men providing emotional comfort. One hour, that's it. But instead, it would be the start of a nightmare two weeks of being forced into sex trafficking and tortured by her clients. and the
30:26 runaway family. They would tell her, I don't know if you understand, but the situation has changed. Things are different now. Kim, your boyfriend, is gone. Kim leaves. He was never really your boyfriend, Yuna. He's gone and he's left you with us. You're ours now. AKA, she is now gonna be sex trafficked and every penny she makes will go straight to them. Wait, so Kim is no longer in the picture at all? No, he leaves. Side note, Yuna was making about $1,000 a day and the group would blow it all on food and drinks. And they tell her, you're going to do whatever we say if you want to stay alive. When Yuna's dad hears this, he is ready to go straight to the police. But Yuna starts freaking
31:11 out, basically grabbing his arm so that he can't walk out of the room. You cannot, like you just can't. What do you mean I can't? I'm going to. Yuna starts panicking. You can't tell them because they told me the whole world is going to find out that I'm a sex worker and they're just going to say that I chose to do this and I'm just a slut and a whore. Everyone will know and my life is going to be ruined. Which, if that's the case then, why would the runaway family let Yuna go? Why would they let go of their only source of income? Their, quote, product, as they say. There were whispers around town that Yuna was gone, that she vanished. Her dad was looking for her everywhere. This is when she's missing for two weeks. Most people at Yuna's all-girl high school, they knew that something obviously happened to Yuna. It's the first year of high school. Only one of the most important years of your entire life in South Korea. And it
31:59 sounds like a joke. It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but I'm very serious. It is one of the four years that will determine where you go to college. And for the general public, that is going to determine your socioeconomic status for the rest of your life. Nobody just transfers out the first week of high school. Something must have happened to her. The most popular theory was that she ran off with a new boyfriend, which isn't inaccurate per se, but everybody knew that Yuna was dating someone. They could see it. She went from being this very quiet girl the first two days, and then literally in the span of a few days, she starts smiling. She's skipping to class, smiling at her phone nonstop. Every class break, she's on her phone. That can only mean one thing. She's dating someone. But I don't think that any of that really mattered to Yuna's dad. He just wanted to find her, get her home.
32:47 And in order to do that, he filed a police report. Since Yuna's captors are 14, 15, 24, 25, they are all part of the same circle. Some of them go to the same middle school, same high school in that area. And they have connections to everybody in that school. And they find out through the grapevine that Yuna's dad is desperately searching for his daughter, getting police involved. The runaway family start freaking out. If they do nothing, the police will eventually track them down and they will have to explain why they kept a girl hostage in a motel room sex trafficking her. They think of maybe they can tell the police that she was just a poor runaway girl and they were trying to help her, but that's not going to work. The best case scenario is the police do not get involved at all with the group. So how do they do that? They turn to Yuna. If you promise
33:34 us something, we'll let you go home. They let her go home if she promises not to tell anybody what happened or who she met up with when she ran away. And that is why after two weeks of being held captive, they let Yuna go. Their plan was Yuna will not say a single thing and none of them will be in trouble. And maybe their plan would have worked better had they just made Yuna call her dad, just like 26 years ago in Japan when Junko was forced to call her parents, but they sent her home. And right when Yoona's dad saw her face, he knew immediately something was very, very wrong. When it comes to holding someone captive, usually there's one rule. Don't let them go. I mean, it's like the most standard of all the rules. Now, enforcing all of that, it's a whole different story. South Korea 2014. It's not exactly what Yuna wanted to do
34:25 right when she gets home, but her dad wants her to go to church. It's the best place for her to be right now. I mean, Yuna's been back. She's constantly anxious. She's looking over her shoulder. She told her dad, I think somebody's watching me. He convinces her that there's nowhere safer than church. He already told the pastor what happened. He's filled in. He's going to watch over Yuna to make sure nobody bothers her or even tries to talk to her about what she's been going through. She's going to be protected. But even then, the pastor's not going to be able to stop people from staring at her. Everything the runaway family told Yuna would happen was happening. Everyone in school found out about what happened to Yuna once her dad told the police. There were group chats dedicated to talking about how Yuna, the newly transferred girl, was caught doing sex work after running away from home for two weeks.
35:10 Some of the students feel sorry for her. Other students feel like, well, then she shouldn't have run away in the first place. Which is... mean you get it regardless of what people thought about you in a situation whether they felt sympathy or pity or just oh that's what she gets all these weird feelings the runaway family were right everybody knew what happened to her and her dad had reported it to the police everyone knew including the runaway family Church sermons are usually split into groups. The adult service, the youth service, the junior service, some churches even have sermons for the daycare group. Yoonah and her dad would be split up during their sermons, but he promises her the second that his sermon is out, he's gonna be right by her side again. But when he gets out, he would later state that he sees the youth pastor on the phone outside, and he's confused. What is this
35:58 man doing? Isn't he supposed to be watching over my daughter? Yoonah's dad searches every single room, every single bathroom in that church. Yuna is gone and he won't see her alive ever again. The runaway family had come to take her back. Kidnapped her from church. If you were to simplify the concept of keeping control over captives, it would boil off into two types of control, physical control and psychological control. The physical control are restraints, locked rooms, constant surveillance, just ripping them of any shred of autonomy or freedom of movement. And then the psychological control, And in a lot of cases, that just comes down to humiliation. Japan 1988. Junko could not
36:44 run from her captors. Literally, she could not run. They cut her Achilles tendon and lit her ankles on fire. You know that part right above the back of your ankle where you flex your toes up and it's slightly bony part that sticks out from the back? Junko's captors cut that part. They cut the tendon in there and they lit her ankles on fire. They did this due in part for the torture aspect. It's known to be unbearably painful when your Achilles tendon is ripped or shredded or even just torn. It's a very painful injury on the body. But also, once you cut or damage your Achilles tendon, the likelihood that you can run, let alone walk, almost none. Initially, a lot of the control that Junko's captors had
37:30 on her was physical. They locked her up in one of their rooms, would not let her leave, always had someone watching her, tied her up with tape. But eventually, they would start beating her every single day with golf clubs, those long bamboo sticks, iron rods. She was so badly injured that for her to even crawl to the restroom to drag herself to the toilet took her an hour. There was no way that she was physically going to get away. But there is a very strong psychological aspect to her captivity as well. They made sure that she knew that she had zero control over her life. They had the ultimate power. And that came through some really perverse methods of humiliation. They would force Junko into the freezer. A giant standalone freezer. They would throw her body in there, close it, and just leave her in there for hours. They would throw her outside on the balcony to sleep in
38:18 the middle of the night where temperatures can get as low as 23 degrees Fahrenheit. If she's lucky, sometimes it can go down to negative 13 degrees Fahrenheit, which by that point, Junko likely isn't even gonna think about escaping. She's not focusing on that. She's focusing on getting out of the freezer. She's focusing on getting off the balcony. That's where her attention and energy are inevitably gonna be. Most experts say that psychological control is more restraining than the actual physical restraints. In Junko's case, her captors fed her mainly a diet of live cockroaches, centipedes, and her intake of liquids were mainly her captors' urine and feces, as well as biological fluids. Later, during her autopsy, coroners would find
39:05 what they described as a translated but quote, unthinkable amount of semen, so much so that they did not believe it was possible for her to even be able to digest it without severe issues. Once tested, it was discovered later that some of the biological fluids belong to animal life. Animal semen. Some netizens suspect bestiality, some netizens suspect they were getting it somehow. Wow. South Korea 2014, 26 years later, humiliation was also the focus in Yuna's case. The runaway family, her captors, once they... kidnap her from church, bring her back, that's where a lot of the abuse starts escalating. They start using her as a personal punching bag. They would take degrading photos of her body,
39:52 post them onto texting apps. They would force her to connect with creepy old men online that wanted to pay for intimate relations and do really disgusting actions in bed with a 15-year-old. Even after being kidnapped from church, Yuna would be sex trafficked four to eight separate times per day. And these sessions would last hours. And when she wasn't being essentially essayed, they would grab her by the hair, throw her onto the ground, and they would scream at her. The runaway family kept telling Yuna that they were really upset that she told her dad what happened. They called her selfish. They said, you only think about yourself. We let you stay at our place. We fed you. And this is what you do. And for that, they claimed that she deserved to be punished. While the runaway family would lounge on the bed
40:37 or the little sofa in the motel room to watch TV, drink, and eat good food, Yuna was mainly crawled up on the floor in a fetal position when she wasn't being sex trafficked. Sometimes one of the younger girls would turn around just to pick on her. If you don't stop staring, I'm gonna scoop out your eyeballs. Yuna would be forced to drink ungodly amounts of alcohol for the group's entertainment. She would be forced to eat her own vomit. She would be physically assaulted and beaten every single night. They would host fight clubs where they would taunt Yuna, we'll let you go. As long as you can fight every single one of us and win. Most of the time when they proposed such a game, Yuna was not in a state where she could even fight. Whether she was too injured or too drunk or both.
41:23 And God forbid she actually did harm one of them, it's likely that they would hold her down and assault her together. They would grab objects to throw at Yuna and when they didn't feel like that was enough, the group would throw literal chairs and desks, just full pieces of furniture at Yuna's body. They would grab her by the hair, force her face all the way back so that her neck is extended forward. like this where you're, I guess if you were to have an Adam's apple, it'd be poking out, right? And they would essentially karate chop her neck, the soft spots of her neck using the edge of their hand. They would beat her with steel bug spray canisters. They would spray bug spray all over her and she was starved. In both cases, the girls were starving. They were both dehydrated and even if they were given food, it is likely that once the physical abuse escalated, they would
42:13 not be able to keep any of it down. because they had such extensive injuries they would throw it all right back up. I think the most confusing part about both cases is how nobody did anything for the month or in Junko's case, 44 days that the girls are held captive. It's not like both of them are secretly held captive in some sort of isolated dungeon. They're both being held hostage in plain sight and nobody did anything about it. Japan 1988. Over 100 people knew that Junko was being held captive and tortured because she was essayed by at least 100 different people. But there were others too. Others who did not partake in the essay, but they saw her and nobody did anything. Or I'm sure they're all telling other people too. Like, you know, in that age, you must be telling
42:58 all your friends and your groups. So you could probably safely estimate hundreds of people. Some of them would later say, well, we were too scared because the captor had ties to the Yakuza. So one of the four main high schoolers that kidnapped Junko, apparently his uncle has ties to the Yakuza, which side note, like I said, the Yakuza is like the mafia of Japan. They are a very scary group, but I digress. That means every single day, that there were new people, several people at a time, finding out about what was happening to Junko and they did nothing. But you would think that one of the few people who aren't scared to say something would be the parents of the guy who's holding Junko captive. Because Junko is held captive in Shinji Minato's house. Upstairs, in his room, where he lives with his parents
43:44 and his brother. So the whole family knows. Yeah. At first, Shinji lied to his parents stating that Junko is his girlfriend. But eventually, everybody just drops the act because it's so obvious that Junko is not his girlfriend. She's screaming for help and begging for mercy on a daily basis. Every part of her body is broken. She is a shell of a human. There is no way. She's just a girlfriend who's willingly staying upstairs. Shinji's parents knew that. Some sources state that Shinji's mom tried to help at one point. tried to help Junko escape, but the attempt was unsuccessful, and she was beaten for a few hours by her 16-year-old son, Shinji. I don't feel bad for her, because since that night, it is stated that she pretended that Junko had gone home. She just stopped going upstairs, she didn't want to get beaten by her own son, she didn't want the neighbors to know what their son was up to,
44:32 she didn't want their good family name to be ruined, so she just lived in her fake Delulu land, where she told herself the screams are just the walls creaking, and Junko has gone home. So nobody was helping Junko. At one point, there was a young girl around Junko's age that came over and saw Junko. And instead of doing something about it, I mean, I don't know if I would expect her to do something about it right then and there, but maybe go home once you're safe and tell your parents, tell everybody. The girl takes a pen and starts doodling a beard on Junko's face. Doodling a beard? Yeah, like taking a sharpie and doodling a beard. South Korea 2014. It's hard to estimate just how many people knew what was going on with Yuna, but it can't be nobody. It can't just be the runaway
45:17 family. I mean, they're jumping from motel to motel. They have to check in with the motel staff, use the elevators, run into other people in the hallways, outside. They have to move Yuna because near the end, she wasn't even able to walk on her own. Her whole body was filled with cuts, bruises, and puss. Nobody said a single thing. Even without Youna's extensive injuries, you would hope that some motel staff would say something after seeing a bunch of 20-something-year-old men checking in with girls that are clearly 14. But nothing. The runaway family are basically running a child trafficking ring out in the open. I believe they jumped even from multiple different cities and nobody said a single thing. But fine, if the perpetrators... their friends, and even the motel staff do nothing, at least the police are going to
46:03 do something, considering both girls have been reported missing by their parents. It's not like nobody's looking for these girls. Japan, 1988. The police receive a very strange phone call. A college boy had called to tell them that his younger brother had witnessed a crime. His younger brother came home overly excited but also panicked and stressed out and he starts rambling about he just saw at his friend's house. There's this girl that's like a circus animal. She's tied up being essayed over and over and all sorts of strangers are like coming and peeing on her and they're sticking light bulbs and bugs inside of her. She has zero autonomy and they're torture. They're hanging her up from the ceiling and using her like a punching bag, beating her like a piñata. This is by far the strangest call that the police have received all day. They immediately dispatch two officers to the house in question. They knock on the Minato house.
46:50 Shinji's parents come to the door. Shinji Minato. What's going on? The police explain the bizarre situation of the human punching bag forced to eat cockroaches. It sounds crazy. Oh, I'm sorry. There is no girl in the house. Just our two sons. You're sure? You're more than welcome to check, but we've never heard of a Junko. Doesn't ring a bell. The police pause, they look upstairs towards the second floor. It's a small house, I mean there's no way that a girl is in here experiencing this level of trauma and torture and abuse and the parents don't hear a single thing? There's no way. So they brush it off. They thank Shinji's parents for their cooperation and have a nice day. It doesn't matter to them that there is an active missing persons case for a high schooler in the same area named
47:35 Junko. South Korea 2014. When Yuna goes missing the second time. when she disappears from church. The police do not consider Yuna a high priority missing persons case. Honestly, just like Junko's case, they're just lazy. They kept trying to bounce Yuna's dad off to other police officers. It's not my jurisdiction. It's not our jurisdiction. You got to call these people. To show you how lazy they were, Yuna went missing from church where there are lots of CCTV cameras at this church. If they just played through the footage, they would see that Yuna did not walk out on her own. She was effectively dragged out by these two girls. Her body language is screaming that something's not right here. She does not want to leave. But by the time that the police actually checked the footage, it is too late for Yuna. She would be dead. So if nobody, not even the police are doing their jobs to look for
48:22 them, the girls would end up trying to save themselves. Japan, 1988. Junko's captors are drunk. She can hear them. They went from being belligerent, well, which isn't really different from when they're sober, but they're starting to snore. This would be her only chance. All of them are drunk. They didn't tie her up. They knew that she was so badly injured that there's no way she can get to a phone. The only working phone happened to be on the first floor all the way downstairs. She's... They didn't think she was going to get there. So Junko starts crawling. all the way downstairs. It takes her a very long time considering her injuries and she finally makes it all the way down, reaches for the phone, dials emergency services. The phone finally picks up. What is your emergency? But right at that moment, she feels
49:07 a hand closing over her mouth. She turns to her side and one of the captors is there with his finger up to his mouth. Shh. He grabs the phone. Sorry, my sister just misdialed by accident. He hangs up and drags her all the way back up. She had just been caught. South Korea 2014. Yuna knew it was her only chance. The motel staff are clearly not doing anything and the police weren't coming to save her anytime soon. The only phones that were in the room, in the motel room, were in everybody's pockets and they had disconnected the motel landline. But one of them had left the laptop open and unlocked on the desk and everybody else had fallen asleep. She could sign into her Facebook and send out her location, get help. It would just take a few quick clicks, that's
49:53 it. She quietly drags herself over to the computer, glancing around the room. She gets up and starts clicking on the keys so slowly that it doesn't even make a noise. She likely is frustrated how long her email and password is for security reasons, but she's sitting there, key by key, slowly entering it in. And then finally, she logs on. She uses the little trackpad to hover over, and then someone grabs her hair and slams her head back. and there is a hand gripping her throat. She had just been caught. So she only locked out and didn't say anything. Yeah. Both girls would have to pay for trying to escape. Japan, 1988. Candle wax was how the captors decided to punish Junko. They tied her down and
50:40 started running a candle up and down her body, burning her, dripping candle wax in the most painful places, They would hold her down and drip the candle wax onto her very thin eyelids and even into her eyes. They would drip it into her private regions and all the areas where she had exposed flesh and wounds. Exposed meaning not just a scrape where the skin had been scraped off, but muscles are showing likely. A lot of Jinko's torture focused on her legs. Whether it was so that she couldn't run or if it was because they like to torture her private regions the most and her legs happened to be nearby, she had such severe muscle damage that she could not even move her legs. They start dripping the candle wax onto her legs, but that's not doing it for them. So they grab lighter fluid,
51:29 douse her legs with them, and light her legs on fire. That way she could not even try to crawl. They held her down by her arms and legs, tied her up, in a starfish shape on the ground. They grabbed dumbbells. They would stand over her and hold the dumbbells out about shoulder height and drop them onto her body, smashing her bones. Junko's hands, every finger bone, every hand bone was smashed to pieces, not broken, but smashed. Her fingernails had shattered into little pieces and she was no longer even able to grip anything, let alone a phone. They hung her from the ceiling and used her as a punching bag. They held her head down against concrete and they would take
52:16 turns using all their strength to jump as high as possible and land on her head. Her face was so swollen and smashed, you could not tell where her eyes were anymore. Junko was completely broken and fractured in every way possible. But she was still alive? Still alive. South Korea 2014, 26 years later, Yuna was held down while one of the main captors, Lee, a 25-year-old man, would grab an electric fan. In the older motels, they have these older fans where the blades are more metal and they're exposed. So it's actually a bit more powerful, but it's not like your little plastic fans where you can stick your finger in and it stops the blades from running. It's pretty sharp. Like back in
53:05 the days, the fans were metal. Yes, and they would hold her down. and they would run the blades and have it smash into her ribs over and over in the same spot. Many of the sources that I found stated that she had either cracked or fractured ribs at this point from the metal blades of the fan. And in that state where her ribs are fractured, which is an injury that people say even it just hurts to even breathe. It is such a sharp pain that is so severe and deep inside of you and so constant that you don't even want to move an inch, let alone breathe. You want to exhale air as slowly as possible. One netizen said, I fractured a rib once. Anything other than a small breath felt like a knife to the side, rolling over in bed. Knife to the side. Bending down to tie your shoes? Two knives to the side. Reaching to get something?
53:54 Knife to the side. People with fractured ribs say they were terrified of sneezing because of the pain it was going to cause. But the runaway family would force Yuna to do 100 squats with fractured ribs for their entertainment. She would be delirious from the pain and barely conscious from everything that was going on. And they would, in that state where she's not even there, they would force her to memorize multiplication charts. And if they would quiz her on math and she answered incorrectly, they would beat her more. It sounds like this group is more like having fun with mentally torturing her, like enjoying the process. Yeah, I would say that Junko's captors are just purely more sadistic. This feels like
54:41 sadistic bullies. Yeah, they are looking for entertainment. Yes. Whereas I think Junko's group, I'm sure they are getting a level of entertainment, but it seems more like they're getting off on the pain. But this group, for Yuna's case, they're getting off on the entertainment of pain. I know it's like such a slight difference, but it is... No, it's so sick. Yeah. Yeah. they would just keep beating her. Now, both girls' bodies, for example, Junko's injuries were a lot more extensive. I don't think that people call the Korean case the Junko case because of the extent of injuries per se, but because everything is so eerily similar. So I don't want to make it seem like, oh, This is the same amount of injury or physical pain. Both girls had sustained injuries that were really bad. Junko obviously worse. But near the
55:30 end, neither of them could walk on their own. Neither of them could hold down food or even water without throwing it up immediately. They were both severely malnourished. Both groups of captors just kept going and coming up with more creative ways to torture their hostages. It almost becomes a sick game of who can torture them in the more creative, sadistic way possible. It seems like they become addicted to the pain that they are causing. I do think that every single one of these people in both cases are sick and twisted and would 1000% commit these crimes with or without their friend group. But I think the uniqueness, as they say, of the torture aspect, the acts of torture, is was egged on by the group mentality is what a lot of experts say of wanting to outdo each other almost. Oh, like that's all
56:17 you could come up with. I'm way more creative, which I hope nobody takes this as me excusing any of them or lessening the impact of what they did. I honestly think this just makes it worse. This is more sick. A lot of netizens were confused because obviously when it comes to sex crimes, it's never about the sex. It's about power. But Junko's captors were really excited to have a, quote, plaything ready at their disposal. They stated that they no longer found Junko attractive, so they had to go and find another one. They kidnap and start gang essaying another woman, a 19-year-old girl. In the Runaway family case, the whole reason Kim even reached out to Yuna was so that they could sex traffic her. But now they had assaulted her to the extent that she could no longer work and make money. It's just interesting. A lot of people point out that both groups of captors, they kidnapped the girls
57:06 for a very specific reason, but they become overtaken by the sadistic torture. And the torture becomes the new motive. Japan, 1988. Junko had five fireworks placed inside of her. One in each ear, That makes two. One in her mouth, that's three. Two in both of her private regions, and that's five. Her captors would wait for the fireworks to go off inside of her, and they would let them explode. I don't have the medical knowledge to tell you exactly what injuries she would have sustained from that kind of torture, nor is there enough readily available research online that I could pull from, but... Especially when it comes to her private regions, Junko had already been so viciously abused that it's hard to
57:51 state which torturous action caused which injury because they had been essaying her at this point with glass shards, knives, metal grilling skewers for over a month straight. But as for the ones in her ears, the fireworks, her eardrums were busted from the fireworks. She was nearly deaf at this point. They placed fireworks in all of her orifices Her captors also shoved sewing needles into her chest. They stabbed hundreds into her chest to the point where later on the autopsy showed there were no gaps in between the needles. They just kept shoving more and more and then they would take turns punching her in the chest. They would leave the needles in there. South Korea 2014. Yuna just wanted some water.
58:41 She had a very high fever. Her body was giving up on her. Everything felt sore and bruised and cut up and she cannot breathe. She begs her captors, just give me one sip of water, just a little bit of water. Water? You think you have the right to ask for water? Lee, the main abuser, the 25-year-old captor, tells the girls, the high school girls, to run the kettle, boil some water. What? Just do it. They rush over to the kettle and they turn it on. When it's done boiling, Lee grabs it. He stands over Yuna's body, who is crawled up in a fetal position on the ground, and starts dripping scalding hot water near her. She flinches a little, she's terrified, and that gets him going. He gets closer and
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