#391: Huge K-pop Record Store Founder Alleged Link To Murderous Cult, Forcing Young Men To Call Her "Baby"

27:35And she's running a farm. She starts with the farm. And in order to come into the farm, you have to give up all your land and assets to Baby. Baby starts the farm. You're essentially, allegedly forced to work for free on the farm. And then Baby was like, wow, I have so much money in the world that I don't know what to do with it. Starts Shinara Records and then has some of the people work for Shinara Records. it's alleged that that's how they got such crazy pricing when they first started their company because they didn't have to pay their workers whereas all the other record companies they had to pay their workers allegedly this is all alleged these are all just stories okay now this place houses three to four hundred people and they all live communally now the guys are all in one separate military style room the women are in another section of the compound even when there's married couples living on the farm or whole family units.

28:34Sometimes there'd be a mother, a father, and three kids. They don't sleep together. They don't share a space together as husband and wife. In fact, they don't even call each other husband and wife. They don't call their fathers dad or brothers or sisters or anything. They call them by their government names because on this property, everyone is equal. They are not attached by earthly connections. There is no mother and daughter or father and son. There is only baby and your relationship with baby. Every once in a while, all the members of the garden will get together and make these massive parade boats.

29:06I don't know, maybe they purchased them, but it looks incredibly homemade. They'll create these massive floats on wheels. It looks like a house sized tiered wedding cake with fabric hanging out. And on the boat, there's just a chair. It looks like a throne. It looks like someone plucked off the Victoria's Secret angel wings, the fluffy white ones, and then tried to create a white feather throne. And this house-sized float only has that throne on top of it. That's it. And it's massive. It takes 10 people to drag it across this massive green grass lawn. And there's hundreds of garden residents just standing outside in matching ceremonial attire, long yellow dresses, colorful frilly dresses, waiting to dance in a circle.

29:49It is reminiscent of the cult movie midsummer at least in my opinion but maybe more colorful really yes wait so they're doing it all on a grass field yes like in circles like they all dance together and that's why if you go to shindara records website it says the land of song and dance they don't mean k-pop allegedly everything is either slathered in frilly fabric in bright colors or these pastel colors There's flowers everywhere. It looks like a children's summer parade. I don't know how else to describe it. They would start singing songs. The door of love has opened. It has opened. Chase love.

30:29We need to love. We must love. My brothers and sisters and compatriots who are wearing these ceremonial robes. My sisters and brothers who received baby's blood. Baby, please allow us all to love. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. To baby, the king of love. We offer baby glory and praise. Our king of love, ruler of love. We dedicate our laughter, singing and dancing to you, baby. And sitting on that white throne is baby, Agaya, baby Kim, the middle-aged woman who looks older than her years, in my opinion. People will say at these parades, this is love. This is proof of love.

31:11In order to enter the kingdom forever, you just have to love. The answer is love. God is love, baby is love One person said It was like heaven on earth I thought everyone who lived there would die there And live eternally We would live happily ever after with the people that you love When the world ends Because love saves Clearly, things are very strange In the baby garden It's run by baby and it's been reported That if baby ever calls you to her room You should sit and kneel At her feet in a thankful position She sits on a chair while other members kneel in front of her. Baby garden is supposed to be heaven on earth.

31:50That's what everybody was told. The motto and meaning was supposed to be here in baby garden. We are all brothers and sisters. We are all one family. Here is heaven on earth. One former member of the baby garden says, baby garden? Looking back now, I was living in the devil's garden. Kim allegedly had a big pet peeve. When all the mothers in the baby garden were out working, There would be these little kids out there grabbing onto their mom's skirts. Mommy this, mommy that. Mommy, can we do this instead? Mommy, I'm hungry. Mommy this. The way they clung to their mothers, the way the mothers would stop working and pick up their child to talk to them, it's said that it made her very unhappy.

32:34One former member said she could not stand the sight of that. Thus, here are the three rules of the baby garden. The first, cut all ties to compassion and earthly connections. It does not matter if that is your husband, child, or your mother. Compassion with earthly connections makes your connection with baby weaker. It makes you weak. So get rid of it completely. Couples in baby garden, even the ones that have been married for decades, they have children. They're now not allowed to even call each other honey, babe, love, anything. Once they join the garden, even your own children, they should just be seen as fellow members of the baby garden.

33:12They should call you ma 'am, not mother. One former member said, I worked day and night not realizing my body was physically breaking down, but no matter how much I miss my mom and dad, I had to cut off all emotional ties with them. When it became too much, I would just sit in the bathroom and cry, longing for some sort of feeling of home. Another former member who actually was brought into the cult by their family members said, We all live separately. We never slept as families. The woman lived with woman. The men lived with men. And every morning we had to work as soon as we got up. Thinking back on it now, we were insane.

33:48I must have been crazy. I don't know what I was doing there. Second rule, cut all ties with material goods. One member said, we did not live to pursue worldly pleasures. We will all go to the eternal kingdom. This place was heaven on earth. Last but not least, perhaps one of the most important rules is cut all ties with sexual desires. You need to let it go. It is okay to love God, to love baby. But other than that, it should not be allowed. It is a sin for men and women to date and love each other. If you do, it's actually considered cheating, adultery against God. One former member states, men and women were strictly segregated from a young age.

34:29And of course, from their spouses, family members, and even relatives, familial bonds were not recognized. There were only rooms where men gathered and rooms where only women gathered. and it was set up so that anyone with any individual thoughts could not survive. Whether it was between spouses or strangers, any sort of romance or love or even anything similar between women and men would immediately lead to a terrible tragedy. One would either die or face near-death group violence, be treated as a slave and begin a life worse than a human, unlike anywhere else on this earth. The women and men in Baby Garden were just both servants to god and baby and she would not treat them as adults or humans but like servants when was this this was mainly in the 80s and 90s but 90s but shinera is still very active yes so 80 90s like this how long does this whole thing lasted like decades these people were in it for decades yes there are some people who are in it for decades wow yeah there were some people who were born into it and they're old enough to form these very traumatic memories from it there were young kids who were brought into it at a young age and they finally got out as adults and they grew up in this yeah if you even had a so-called feeling of romance towards anyone you would have to keep your head down forever like a criminal only staring at the floor one former member who was caught having emotional feelings towards another member said i used to work with this guy i began depending on him emotionally and eventually i started to like him i was having a really hard time because of my feelings but when kim baby found out i started to be treated like a servant like a slave they would only let me wear clothes that were incredibly old and they were like rags I had to work while others got to sleep at night And from then on Beatings were also very frequent There were others being beat too You know some people were being beat With things like bicycle chains They tried to hit you where people couldn't see To not freak everyone out too much Which this whole thing is ironic Considering Kim baby had lovers every single night Just waiting outside her door And she's a married woman Her husband lives in the baby garden And he is also allegedly essaying a bunch of women so what is he he's just part of baby's family they have three sons as well and they're all treated like baby babies can do no wrong they're the baby family she's the one mainly called agaya which is baby but all of them are supposed to be on the same level as her like a little bit lesser but same so they can't sin they can't do anything wrong they're all babies everything they do is correct that is crazy yeah and her husband is out there just essaying young woman in the cult and she's essaying young men wow and it's not like she tries to hide any of it in fact everyone thought well they're just all making love to god and the holy family i guess is how they might consider it people didn't think anything of it in fact a lot of the women in baby garden were upset that they were unable to love Kim the way that some of the younger handsome men were able to.

37:51One former member said, we were all jealous. Not of her being able to have intimate relations with men, but they were all, these men were experiencing her love, which I mean, we were born women, so we couldn't experience her love in that way. So we were all really jealous of the guys. wow yeah one former member said whenever she called for me he was a young man when he was part of baby garden she would lay on her bed in her pajamas that always showed her cleavage then she would say things like you want to look she would show me her breasts and tell me to touch them and she would say are you shy but i'm love remember take off your clothes come on pull your pants down.

38:34Just show me. He said, that's how she essayed me. He told Netflix, I don't even want to think about it. It makes me want to throw up. Honestly, looking back, she was playing with me very strategically. She was taking advantage of these young men's naiveness. Guys like me got a taste of that and thought of her as a love interest. So we started working really hard for her. And the fourth unspoken rule is laziness is not allowed. Now, one interesting aspect of baby Garden in comparison to other cults, if you will, is that they don't focus on recruitment. They're not evangelizing the world. The leader, Baby, always said, only the chosen few may enter the kingdom.

39:16So they were actually quite satisfied with their three to four hundred members. So all these other cults, they focus on expansion so that they can take more people's money. It's more profitable. But for Baby Garden, they decided that the profitable aspect were the hundreds of members who will sell off all their material possessions give it to baby but also once you're part of the cult you work for free for life allegedly they work 16 hour days every single day to provide labor for whatever business or whatever work they're told to do right and they're making a lot of money yes this in the records right yes i mean i think at their height one year they were bringing in like 50 million dollars a year at their height so they're they're one of the yeah well they kept it all like that's her business none of the cult members are shareholders none of them received money i mean most of them now these victims they're facing poverty most of them don't have educations no work experience they have ptsd they have all this physical trauma and nothing she's just a multi-millionaire suing netflix suing prosecutors for talking about her Is she free still?

40:28Yeah, she's free. She's live and she's suing everyone So here we are One member said I just wanted to give her everything that I had but we didn't have any money My husband's family was very poor too because we didn't bring any money She told us to make it up with our bodies So we had to get up early in the morning and go out and sell fish cakes Prepare and sell these lunch boxes and sell little rice rolls kimbaps We went to work every single day. Even if it was pouring rain We never skipped a single day going. I don't think I've ever worked harder in my life. Sometimes you're up in the morning selling tempura or rice cakes or kimbap.

41:04Other times you're forced to fix rubber buckets that people cook with. It was just a lot of work. One former member says, I could barely sleep. Honestly, I barely slept during that time. Allegedly, members were only allowed four days of rest a year. And those four days were just like celebrating baby. It's like you're off work to celebrate baby. They are not allowed to access their phones. Allegedly newspapers, TVs, nothing. They were completely isolated, cut off from the world. They couldn't talk to their family members on the outside. They didn't even have access to their bank accounts. Not that there would be much left inside anyway.

41:40Even the elderly members had to work. Nobody was allowed to be lazy. Laziness was not allowed. Even a regular work-life balance was not allowed. Kids were forced allegedly into labor. they would be forced to put these really ragged clothing pieces on forced into the subway stations to sell cheap gum and chocolate to passengers. Typically, nobody wants to purchase a warm off-brand chocolate bar from a stranger on the subway, but because these kids look like they really need the money, adults would purchase it. It said Baby Garden would even teach the kids which ones to target, which adults look like they'd be willing to purchase from them.

42:14This is what the kids did all day for years. Most of them dropped out of school, which is actually a very big problem because like I said, even after they've been freed from the cult, a lot of the members, they report issues of extreme poverty and inability to find jobs. They have no education. They have no work experience. Children were told to drop out of school. They were told, you don't need to learn anything. You're living in God's world. Education is unnecessary. Soon, professors doctors highly educated people will kneel before us and serve us like kings why go to school when the world is gonna end yeah on top of that a lot of the allegedly a lot of the guys that would reach military enlistment age oh right she did not want them to leave because that's two years of labor gone allegedly and maybe there was a concern that they would leave figure out what is going on inside of baby garden why is the military so much easier than baby garden wait maybe that's not a normal experience what's happening maybe i should tell somebody about it and because maybe they didn't want that happening nobody really went to military enlistment it's alleged that she would force starve them right before their health checkups and if they were severely underweight or had too many health complications they wouldn't have to list.

43:40Wow. And what do they get in return? If they're going to work to the point of breaking their bodies down, they don't get money. A former member says back then we didn't even get to go to the hospital. Only special people could go to the hospital. Normally people took care of themselves at the garden. You have to be very special. You have to have like a severe illness to go to the hospital. When our arms hurt from work, she told us to use moxibustion. Moxibustion is a Chinese traditional medicine where you take dried mugwort. Mugwort is a plant. So think of, I mean, I would say like sage. Think of it like that.

44:14It kind of has a similar sage-like scent. It's edible, but that's not how it's being used in the medicinal practice, at least not this one. You take the stick of dried mugwort and you start burning it very close to the skin surface. Sometimes you want it as close as possible. It's stated that the heat from the burning of the mugwort will help improve blood circulation. It stimulates the flow of chi as well, which is vital energy and just maintains overall health. If not done properly, one of the most common side effects are burns. A lot of the burns can lead to blisters, ulcers, secondary infections.

44:48A lot of severe cases of mugwort burns result in permanent skin damage and scarring. Obviously, nobody at Baby Garden is that skilled with performing these traditional medicine procedures, and I'm sure they're just trying going to do anything to ease the physical pain that they're in. Some of the former members were left with massive fist size scars from the moxibustion, giant scars all over their stomach, which resulted in them having infections, even more pain. One former member said, when you get moxibustion, the area starts oozing from the burn and then it gets so itchy while you're working.

45:21I mean, I couldn't stand it. There were a lot of side effects every day. I felt like a squid on top of a fire. Another former member said, yeah, it's like a squid shriveling up over the fire. Pain during birth was painful and horrifying. This was worse. This was worse than that. I have giant scars that are still there all over my body. But if you don't do a good job, if you're not working as hard as God wants you to do, despite your injuries, you would be beaten. First, God would instruct your family members to beat you first. There were even children who were forced to beat their parents. This is actually surprisingly and unfortunately not a unique practice to Baby Garden.

45:59Another alleged Korean cult that operates in Fiji, known as Grace Road, they would beat the sin out of each other, allegedly. Maybe we'll do an episode on it because I'm collecting letters. But the psychology stands. It's supposed to break down all family bonds and attachments. When kids are forced to harm their parents and vice versa, It just breaks down the protective relationship between parent and child. It hammers in the fact that you think your family bonds matter? No. The only thing that matters is the cult. They've got power and authority over everything. Even more important than the most fundamental human relationships, parent and child, it also makes it harder for parents and children to get closer to one another because the trauma, the humiliation associated with beating each other and seeing each other get beaten by all these strangers in front of the whole congregation, if you will.

46:48it's hard to even look at them afterwards. You have this strong sense of guilt and shame. One former member of Baby Garden said, how can a child hit their own parent? Well, in order to live, my older sister and I had to hit our mom. Kim said that my mom was going crazy. She was possessed by a ghost. She was in a possessed state, found a man, hugged him and made love with him, had sex with a man. She told me and my sister that we had to beat her up. So they did to beat the ghost out of her. They were taken to a quiet area away from a lot of the members Kim was there with a few of her right hand people And that is where Kim allegedly told them Hit her The former member said When my sister and I started hitting our mother All the other members joined in and started beating my mom too It just creates this atmosphere One member says You never really know who's going to rat you out Everyone is spying on each other including family members That's why I decided to try and run away from the baby garden I was in the fifth grade when I tried running away But before I made it out, some of the adults found me and dragged me back That's when Kim would really start beating us more Later, the same young former member would write to the court I'm writing this letter with a sincere desire to live in the same roof With my parents and younger sibling Even if it's just in a single room Before becoming involved with the pseudo-religious group Baby Garden I was just two years old Both of my parents were teachers We were one big happy family but eventually they started attending a local church and then somehow sold all of our grandparents' land to give to the church nearly$150 ,000.

48:20Then at baby garden, my parents would spend all morning cooking, leave to sell their freshly cooked rice cakes around 3 p.m. and would not return home until after midnight. I just remember crying, just feeling truly miserable. I remember as I got older, feeling conflicted about not being able to call my father father or my mother mother. I tried to run away. However, I was caught, brought back to the baby garden And I was then dragged to the leader's room Where I was severely beaten with a branch from the mulberry tree And a metal pipe from midnight until 4am There were bruises all over my body And the back of my calves were bleeding I spent sleepless nights crying Resenting my parents and fearing the leader's anger Since then, I've suffered from stomach pains that feel like gas buildup But when I would tell them, instead of proper medical treatment I was just subjected to alternative therapies like having dozens of acupuncture needles inserted into my stomach, having to lie still for 30 minutes to an hour, and even now, I occasionally suffer from stomach pains that feel like being stabbed with a knife.

49:21After school, I would have to return home and work at a cassette tape assembling factory till midnight every day just to set production targets. Yeah. For the K-pop tapes? Yeah. I would get beaten by Kim. I was beaten to the brink of death. I'm not lying when I say that every inch of my body was bruised. She did not miss a single spot. When asked later, where were your parents during this? He just responds, well, to be honest, it's not like they could stop it if they tried. If they tried to confront her about hitting me, there would have been bigger problems. They would have beaten us all up. My mother couldn't say anything, though she must have been really worried about me.

50:00She must have been hurting, but she couldn't say anything. You can't say anything unless you can defeat Kim, which is just impossible. In the Netflix documentary, there is a part where a former member starts introducing herself. She states that she is five-year-old Naguan's mother. She's sitting there. Clearly, she's not smiling. This is not a good moment. This is not a happy show. But she starts the interview with, well, I can't call myself a mother. I can't say the word mother because I'm such a horrible bitch. I'm so horrible. I wish somebody would just stone me to death. I'm really such a horrible fucking bitch and I don't deserve to live.

50:34And with each word and phrase, she's slapping herself across the face from the left side to the right side, left side to the right side. The producers eventually have to stop her and her cheeks are bright red on both sides. And the way she does it, sure, some people argue, maybe it's performative for the documentary, but regardless, the way she slaps herself does not appear to be the first time. The way she slaps herself is almost on beat to the way that someone does something on autopilot, muscle memory. It's as if she's been drilling herself in this method. The producers end up icing her face with water bottles when she tells them, I just can't forgive myself.

51:14What is it that she can't forgive herself for? Maybe it has to do with the fact that her son, five-year-old Naguan, was killed in the baby garden.

51:35There are three, at least three mysterious deaths in the baby garden. One of them is the death of a 21-year-old girl. Kim actually has children before she starts the baby garden, like I said. Now, the baby has babies of her own, essentially. But I'm sure at this point they're adults or practically adults. She's got three sons. They're probably adults. And there's not too much information about them out there. But it's said that the Kim's sons, they lived like royalty. They got to study abroad. while nobody else's children are even allowed to go to public school. She allegedly purchased three separate houses in Seoul for them to live in the future.

52:10They hired nannies, bought expensive foreign cars, private tutors to take care of these sons. They got everything that they ever wanted. And sometimes that includes other people. There are a few versions of how everything happened, but this is what you can find online. And again, the events are alleged, but this seems to be the one that a lot of the former members agree on. allegedly Kim's son really really liked this 21 year old girl named Mi Kyung she was brought into the baby garden by her parents so not by her choice everybody in the garden loved her she's pretty they said she's like stunning idol pretty exceptionally pretty they said not only is she pretty she has such a gentle soul unfortunately it said that one of Kim's sons took a liking to her allegedly requested to his mom that Mee-kyung work in their house on the property to cook and wash dishes.

53:03Now, instead of working outside in the baby garden or for Shin Na Ra records, she would be like a housekeeper of sorts. It's theorized that he essayed Mee-kyung. She wanted to self-exit after that. Words started spreading because she was having mental breakdowns after the alleged essay that people started finding out. And Kim spun the story, allegedly, that Mee-kyung had seduced her son. and she could not live with the guilt and shame. She allegedly said, my son would never do something like that. She seduced my son. This is all her fault. She made Mee-kyung's parents beat her first before dragging her into one of the empty warehouses.

53:42She grabbed a bunch of sticks and allegedly ordered everyone to beat Mee-kyung with it. There was another young girl nearby that was also brought in to be beaten, but it seems like all the anger was focused on Mee-kyung and she remembers hearing Kim telling Mee-kyung, all you bitches are the same you broke baby's heart so i'm gonna kill you and make sure nobody finds your body she's saying you broke baby's heart who's the baby is she referring to her oh she's saying you broke my heart yeah kim orders mi kyung's own mother to beat her with a stick and there was this one moment according to the other member one last look where mi kyung looks up at kim stares her in the eye and i guess that really unsettles kim and she allegedly freaks out and start screaming, you fucking slut, and orders her to be killed.

54:28And they just unleash hell. They beat her until she's no longer there. The other witness states, it was like a scene out of chaos and hell. My mind went blank as I watched all these people beat that poor little girl. She was such a small, frail, weak girl. They're calling her all sorts of names. They're cursing at her. It was completely heartless. By the end, she could no longer cry or scream or beg for anything. She ended up passing out and urinated all over herself. that was the last time she would be seen. The worst part is other members have reported that Mee-kyung's parents thanked Kim for their daughter's death, stating that she needed to be punished for rebelling.

55:09One former member stated they were practically raised in the cult, so this is a different death. So for most of their life, they didn't even call their parents mom or dad. Just by their government names or ma 'am and sir, even between siblings they had a level of coldness or else Kim would be very upset but regardless the former member said their family was going through a rough time because their father but they can't call him father was constantly getting yelled at by Kim for not growing the apple trees correctly Kim did not like the way that he was doing his job a few days later he vanished his quote children are called into Kim's room and she just tells them bluntly your so-called father passed away Self exit, he drank the pesticide But it's okay because I'm gonna let you live here forever That would be the best, wouldn't it?

55:55Kim would not let them see their father's body They didn't even know where his grave was Kim just allegedly went around telling everyone Well, it was only a matter of time He had a bad temper He mistreated all of those around him And he drank the pesticide once he realized how wrong he was And how guilty he was of raising the apple trees the wrong way One former member would later state looking back the 15 years I was there, my life was filled with nothing but emptiness, believing in an absurd fiction that no one else in the world would believe, wasting my life away. I believed and I respected baby as an absolute being and she trusted me as well.

56:32Therefore, I was able to live each day with the sole intention of being loyal to my death. Even in an immoral, inhumane lifestyle that betrayed human ethics, which nobody else could understand, life there was rampant with illegal activities, lies, violence. It was a group where one could only live and die for baby. Another member went missing and they were told that that person just left. But some believe it's more likely that they were killed. We don't have too much information on them, but it's stated that he suggested to his wife that they should leave. And soon afterwards, he was forced to drink some sort of herbal medicine and he quickly vanished after that, allegedly.

57:11then there's five-year-old Naguan Naguan's mom said five-year-old Naguan did not understand what was going on he just knew that his mom and dad were working all day long he wasn't allowed to see them he wasn't even allowed to call them mom and dad and anytime he did anything even remotely quote-unquote bad he would be beaten by Kim his mom said he just missed his mother but he wasn't allowed to see me and he didn't know how to express his frustration for that so he pooped and he smeared it on the window frames. Like think about how mentally disturbed a five-year-old has to be and how traumatized they have to be to poop and smear it on the window frames.

57:48Like at this point, the amount of trauma that this baby has faced already is probably very extensive. The mom states he got frustrated. He said he hated Kim because Kim would beat him. And whenever he saw Kim, he would start screaming out of fear. Kim would tell the others, a demon has possessed that child. The evil spirit is trying to harm me using him as the vessel. If we don't do anything, that evil spirit will try to kill me. Do you want your God to die? Is what she allegedly would say. In Korea, some people believe that one's name can determine their future. This comes up sometimes in crimes where mothers bless them because they can't understand why a violent crime has happened to their child, they almost start blaming themselves.

58:36And sometimes you'll even see in these crimes, moms who say, maybe my name was wrong and it brought bad luck to the family. Obviously, that's just the grieving brain trying to make sense of the senseless. But some Koreans do hold that belief that your name can determine your future. Some focus more so on the hanja, which is the meaning behind each symbol. So for example, something can sound like a regular name, but the meaning can be bright princess, but it sounds like Susie, right? Other Koreans focus on a mixture of that and Saju, which is Korean astrology. They say it's important for a name to be harmonious.

59:09Now, Nagwon arguably has a very, very good name. The Hanja, the traditional symbols for his name means two things, happiness and paradise. A happy paradise. It almost has the connotation of heaven. But how can someone who hates Kim so much, who is so terrified of Kim, be paradise. If he's paradise and he's terrified of her, what does that make her? Well, it would make her the devil, wouldn't it? But she can't say that. I mean, could she, right? So she changes five-year-old Nagwon's name to Naki. Ki, the symbol means ghost. She just renamed this kid ghost and she said the new name now symbolizes is go away ghost, go away spirit.

1:00:00And from there, the torture begins. He gets taken into the pig pens on the property. Baby garden, like I said, has these massive buildings for the pig pens. And when you walk inside these pig pens, it's like an artificially lit warehouse, just a long container like building on both sides. You just see these individually sectioned pig pens filled with pigs. And no matter how well maintained a pig pen is, if it's this size, it's not going to be a pleasant place to be. No matter how much someone spends on the ventilation system, when you walk in, it's an invisible brick that just hits you. The pungent aroma of a public restroom in the humid underground subway stations that has not been cleaned in years, mixed with this chemical scent of ammonia that just pierces through your nostrils to the point where it feels very raw and painful.

1:00:44In places like this, you don't want to be able to smell. You'd rather be oblivious, but you can't because the ammonia just opens your nose right up. And when you walk in, your eyes are watering and the humidity is the worst part. It feels like you're in a sauna where someone has gotten this big pot of pig sweat, pig feces, and has started steaming it until the whole air is foggy. That's where five-year-old Naguan is brought in to the pig pen where he is tied up in one of the pig pens. He is stripped of all of his clothes so that he's sitting completely nude and his hands are tied behind his back.

1:01:18His aunt, who is also part of baby garden, his blood relative, his mom's sister, comes in and Kim explains, according to the aunt, he pooped and smeared his poop all over the walls. He's possessed by a spirit. We need to discipline your little nephew, but his father is gone and his mother is at work. So you take her place and you need to beat your nephew. There were others there too. And the aunt looked around and they're nodding. Naki has been possessed by a Satan. The baby said, we can't just let the devil be. We have to exercise the devil. he should try the feces feed him the feces i don't know why the aunt listens i mean i know why i guess logically speaking she's indoctrinated to the point where her morals are like second place to her beliefs but like i don't know why she grabs a fistful of pig feces from the ground starts kneading it up into small balls with her hands with her fingers and tries to shove it into her nephew's mouth each time he would just push it out with his tongue and eventually they just get frustrated, they start scooping the pig pen feces into the shovel and grab a stick to smother the stick with the pig feces and then force feed it into his mouth.

1:02:26They start shoving the stick deep into his throat. And when that's not enough, they're ordered to beat him with the sticks. The aunt stated that she believed in that moment she was helping her nephew get the spirit out of him. They all allegedly did. They're all standing in a line waiting to beat this little boy up with these hard smacking sticks and they would scream, leave him be, Satan. How dare you come here, Satan? If one of them was a little softer on beating him, they would be accused of disobeying and still having human relationships and attachments or being on Satan's side, God forbid.

1:03:02they'd be forced to hit him even harder when Naguan would start crying in the beginning she would tell them that the spirit inside of him is stubborn and refuses to leave the aunt realized that there were these nails embedded into the stick that they were hitting him with so he was bleeding all over the place she never untied her nephew she never took him to the hospital she just leaves after beating him another member who was tied up in the pig pen he reported seeing little Naguan there for at least multiple days He said the worst part of it all was they didn't give him any food, not even water The only water that you can get is from this tap that the pigs drink from But you have to press it where you get the water and there's no cups there So I would press it gather as much water as possible in my palm Bring it over to him for him to drink But he could barely drink it.

1:03:49He had no energy. He was so badly wounded at this point The other member said while he was trapped in that pig pen one night He woke up and realized that five-year-old naguan was gone. He had undone his ties. He's gone. He had run out he ran all the way to the dining room and it's actually quite a far distance most of the adults they don't even seem to walk themselves and if they do it's a long process so this is a massive farm it's not like oh i'm gonna walk to my neighbor's house it's a long journey and it's not flat paved road the member said he probably went there hoping there was some food left i mean he must have been starving to run all the way there you know when he finally gets to the dining while he finds an adult and he asks, is there any food left?

1:04:31And the adult immediately goes to Kim, the baby, and tells baby, I mean, we got to do something. It's been reported that the adult tells Kim something along the lines of, I mean, he hasn't had anything to eat. He hasn't had anything to drink. And he ran all the way to the dining room from the pig pen to the dining room. He really must be possessed by some sort of spirit. Indicating you can't do that if you have no food and water and you're a five-year-old.

1:05:01That one was taken right back to the pig pen without even a single sip of water. From then on, witnesses said he would get beaten by Kim and her little associates. He couldn't even scream. She would beat him, but nothing. He had been beaten so many times his body was too frail to even fight. Some said the worst part was in situations like this, you would expect a five-year-old to scream for their mom or their dad or their aunt, but nothing. It's like he knew they weren't going to come and save him. And his eyes were just wide open, staring at Kim. He wasn't glaring. I mean, he could be, who cares, right?

1:05:35But he wasn't glaring because the witnesses said, he's just such an innocent baby. He was an innocent baby that he looked like he didn't even know why he was there. After days of torture, Naguan finally passed. He had died. Prosecutor Kang gets a report that there was a death at Baby Garden, but he gets this report 10 years after the death. The father of Naguan takes 10 years to come and report the death. He's in there for 10 more years, but before I guess he snaps out of it and then goes to report it to the police. Prosecutor Kang decides to take on this case. And at first the prosecutor, he thought, yeah, there's no way that these reports from Baby Garden are true.

1:06:24They run a massive K-pop record business. They're reputable all around the country. They have a farm. It's like a community lifestyle living, right? But there's no way it's a cult. Prosecutor Kang starts going through all the reports that former members had managed to escape and had filed now. There had been multiple mysterious deaths, aka they believed to just be straight up murders, which isn't as far fetched when you read some of the victim's statements. One victim wrote, I was beaten with a mulberry branch and metal pipe from midnight till 4am with bruises everywhere. Another writes, I felt that if I stayed there any longer, I too would eventually be beaten to death.

1:06:57But even if this is true, this is going to be one of the hardest cases that he ever takes on in his entire career. And this is when he's just starting off. He's so young. He's like a baby prosecutor. His higher ups practically tell him, yeah, it's just going to be you on the case. Nobody else is going to help you. I mean, yeah, you've got all the investigators, the police, but they're not going to trial. You're the attorney. You're the prosecutor. So it's really just going to be you when you're going to put the trial together. We don't have the manpower in this district. And not only that, prosecutors don't really like to go after religious cults.

1:07:28How do you convince victims that they're victims when they think you, the prosecutor, are the perpetrator. And on top of that, cults have a lot of financial power, especially in places like South Korea. They've got influence. They have money and sway to make prosecutors' lives a living hell. Regardless, Prosecutor Kang decides, I'm going to go full force straight into the devil's garden. Wow. In the middle of one of Kim's services, she's up there on the podium, probably spewing more nonsense about baby this, baby that, being baby, I am baby. It's kind of an odd fantasy if you think about it. She looks older than she actually is.

1:08:04I don't know what compelled her to come up with this train of thinking, this type of logic, her very bizarre obsession with being a baby and called baby. Anyway, she's up there, a three-year-old baby with a bunch of wrinkles, giving full-blown lectures on how to serve me, baby, when the doors to the auditorium that the baby garden members have built by hand slam open, detectives, 50 detectives swarm the place and a voice is just booming through the room you are completely surrounded surrender everyone just breaks out into a full-blown sprint everyone is scattering like bugs that just got raided there's people going that way this way that way people are full-on fighting attacking the detectives tackling detectives to the ground oh they're fighting they're fighting they're not running some are running most are fighting wow in the chaos kim and her right hand woman managed to escape conveniently into a passageway that leads underground.

1:08:58So I'm assuming someone planned for something like this to happen eventually. Kim manages to escape off the property and into the woods. They lose the queen bee. That's how they refer to it. It is a huge blow to the investigation because she's someone who has the funds to stay missing. When they open up one of her safes, it was filled to the brim with cash calculating inflation. It was filled with nearly half a million dollars in cash just in the safe one of her safes the investigators noted the living situation was bizarre the members are all living in these horrendous military barrack style rooms while kim is living in her little palace with a personal sauna her bed is a special custom clay bed even her speaker system for her room alone calculating inflation is estimated to be a quarter million dollars.

1:09:46Why do you need speakers that expensive? But now she's gone. They lost her. She got away. Prosecutor King says, we lost the queen bee. The search and seizure was a complete failure. I felt a huge sense of shame. Of course, we put her on the wanted list. We also tried to track down her vehicle. We tried so many other things. We revealed her face to the media, but she's not a stupid woman. She's a very smart, very wealthy woman. She's going to stay well hidden. The whole cult goes into lockdown. They keep operating and working as normal. Clearly they're getting instructions from somewhere, but anytime prosecutor King or any detectives would come around, they would avoid answering the questions.

1:10:22They're all protecting their queen bee. Where is Kim hiding? I'm not sure what you're asking and I don't have anything more to tell you. I have no idea where she is. Where is your leader? Leader? There's no leader here. This is a cooperative farm you don't know what you're talking about another member has asked where is your leader our leader she's this intelligent leader who guides us she's not a religious leader so in a way our relationship with her is more like friends or like sisters she leads us in business and life and finances like a wise sister so where is she right now i have no idea so nobody is ratting her out like everyone's still very loyal yes another cult member just responds there is nobody here forcing us to work what kind of coercion would it be huh where who's forcing us everyone likes it here i'm very satisfied with my life here i'm content i'm happy and yes it's a little noisy because there were a few people who left and messed it all up and they claimed to be victims or whatever but they didn't suffer any harm at all in fact they were receiving help when they left.

1:11:31Another member says, look, the content being reported to the media is vastly different from the truth. We're not being shaken about this though. Among the people who have been living here now, not a single person has left because they're disturbed by this incident breaking out. We are steadfast. At one point, one of the former members that left tries to go back to convince everyone to save themselves. They went with detectives and they said, come on Guys, wake up or else you're going to suffer for another 15 years. Wake up. Someone screams at her. Our hard work is worth it. How is it worth it?

1:12:05You left us, so don't bother us. Shut up and go live your own life. One guy is pointing at his teeth and he's bragging. Look, I needed dental treatment for thousands of dollars and Baby Garden was willing to pay it for me. It's likely that he's been working for them non-stop Ever since he joined Perhaps for over a decade for free And all he got was a few thousand dollars in dental treatments They argued that Kim is such a great leader She's just creating a world where everybody is fair That is all So people are now either looking for Kim Or they're actively hiding Kim None of the prosecutor's work will matter if they can't find her How do you find someone with hundreds of people devoted to her and tens of millions of dollars at her disposal.

1:12:50She could be on the beach of some remote island right now, but she's not. She's in the prosecutor's office, turning herself in. What? Her attorneys told her that if she turns herself in, they will hold her for three days to question her, they will get nothing out of it, and after that, they will release her. But instead, the prosecutors slap her with murder charges and they're going to trial. During the interrogation of Kim, Prosecutor Kang states she was not emotional, not even in the slightest. He states she's very calm, calmer than expected. She stayed composed while saying what she wanted to say.

1:13:25She was never swayed. Even when the investigators turned up the heat, made her feel pressure, she did not get provoked. She did not fall for any leading questions. She's not only experienced, but she's very well prepared. The only thing she was firm on is that she did not murder anyone. She denied it all, everything. She said, I don't know what you're talking about. I have children of my own. How could I ever harm a child? There might have been other violent people in the baby garden that tried to punish victims, but if that were the case, I never knew anything about it. I never ordered such a thing.

1:13:54The prosecutor is there having to listen to Kim deny everything, whilst also talking to Na-Gwon's mom, who vividly remembers everything. She explained that even when she found out that her son was dead, she was on her knees, practically bowing at Kim's feet when Kim said, Naki is gone. He's dead. When he died, his face looked like a cat that was twisted because he was the devil. If he grew up, he would have opposed this place. All of us, me. We have to demonstrate to the other children that they must be loyal to our cause. Since your family joined Lass and Lass' faith, it would have been hard for you to continue here without sacrificing Naki.

1:14:28But now with the sacrifice of Naki's soul, you will receive the blessing of heaven. So be cooperative on this matter. You just have to do as you're told. She was forced to sign a paper that stated that her son died from a genetic heart disease. She says, even though my child was tortured and beaten to death, I was forced to sign that document. But because he was cremated, there is no evidence that he was tortured to death. They tried to find the bodies of the other alleged murder victims. They brought in excavators all over the property? Nothing. Nobody. A former member who was close to Kim at the time alleges that Kim said, don't worry, they're not going to find anything.

1:15:09The prosecutor says trying to find the truth in a case where there are no bodies is very difficult, but at least they have testimonies from previous members and maybe they can save the others, save them from believing Kim, get them to see the truth. She has no God. So one of the biggest parts of trying a cult leader and getting them to trial and getting them even charged is getting them to admit that they're not God. It helps the members realize this person is a phony because only regular people are scared of the authorities. Only regular people are scared of prison. Kim is no God. She's just an evil old lady.

1:15:42She's not baby. She's a wrinkling middle-aged woman. That's what prosecutor King is trying to get everyone to see. He asked her nonstop in the interrogations, but aren't you, aren't you God? and she would have to say because it benefits her case i'm not god and he would just have her say it over and over and over again it helps her case because because if she's running a cult and you can't you know if you say that you're the coming of god coming of christ the messiah the prophet yeah yeah yeah you know you're running a cult so he's making her say that and then she will he will play this to the to everyone yes wow yeah he made her repeat over and over i'm not god i'm not god i'm not god it's alleged that kim is no first timer when it comes to rather extreme religious organizations though apparently before she started baby garden she was part of another church that was nicknamed the shaving church because members were forced to shave their heads but most notably the church was allegedly involved in naked dancing practices where the church leaders would encourage the congregation to get naked and dance for god which would be more on par with i guess a fun strip club rather than a church so i'm not really sure what the messaging they were trying to push here is allegedly all we know for certain is that before she started baby garden she was just a very ambitious housewife it said that those who knew her before she started baby garden.

1:17:10She was a nobody. She had nothing. Her parents weren't established. She didn't have good support. She just ends up marrying the son of a pastor because she had no other choice. It doesn't seem like she loves him much. Yes. But they said she always dreamt of glory and honor. She wanted to be somebody. She wanted respect. So once she brands herself the queen of love as the second coming of Christ, one former member says it's how humans are when you see someone as mighty as if they're god everything they do seems beautiful and lovely we all thought she was god so everything about her at the time seemed beautiful we couldn't find anything wrong with her but when it comes to trial everything is hanging on by a thread there's no bodies all the witnesses the former members they start slowly pulling out one by one from testifying either they're terrified for their lives or they've received financial benefits from kim to stay out of it allegedly the only person they really have is Naguan's mom and her moving testimony.

1:18:08Hopefully it's enough. During the trial, the woman who were forced to beat Naguan testified, stating they were ordered by Kim to do it. But finally, Naguan's mom takes the stand and she looks at the judges and states, her son, her only baby, her baby boy, died from a heart condition. He was not beaten. He was not tortured. He was not murdered. Wait, the mother? Yeah. In that moment, Naguan's father said, I wanted to kill her in that moment. that crazy deranged woman she lied i told her wake up you crazy woman listen to me our son was beaten to death but she didn't listen what happened some reports state that she might have still had a weakness for kim some reports state that she feared for her life because kim was threatening her the prosecutor prosecutor king saw his entire case just fall apart right in front of his eyes but what else could he do in fact he almost just felt worried for that one's mom he said what must have they done to her what kind of wicked things must they have done to get her to lie about the death of her precious son at that point it wasn't even anger it was just heartbreaking to watch this so-called maternal love get completely trampled upon in the end kim was found guilty of six charges of tax evasion embezzlement and assault she was sentenced to four years in prison and a fine of, if you calculate inflation, a fine of$8.9 million that she paid like on the spot, pretty much in cash, like liquid.

1:19:40She was liquid. Yeah. But she would later be acquitted of the murder charges due to lack of evidence. Now, years later, Naoguan's mom states, I sincerely regret taking a child to a place like that. I was foolish to do something that would break my own heart. I have nobody to blame but myself. I wish somebody would just stone me. I wish somebody would beat me. And she starts slapping her face. I wish somebody would just beat me, just beat me to death. I just wish somebody would stone me to death. I want to apologize. I want to say that I'm sorry. It would be shameless to ask for it, but I want to beg for my son's forgiveness.

1:20:09I want to tell him that it's my fault and that I'm sorry. What do I do now? Someone please beat me. It's my fault. What do I do? I wish I could die, but I can't even do that. To which some people felt really uncomfortable by. There's two episodes in the Netflix documentary in the name of God, holy betrayal. So obviously people are uncomfortable that she's slapping herself, but because they noticed a few things. The first being that she doesn't shed too many tears. She's just slapping herself to show grief. And maybe you could argue that the grief is so big that the tears are not flowing anymore.

1:20:43But the weirdest part is she still refers to her son as Naki. She doesn't call him Dagwon. Ghost. Yeah. One netizen comments, why are you to this day calling your son by the name that referred to him as a demon and not his actual name? I mean, it's very strange. I think she's just mentally not there, but it's hard for me. This is what the netizen writes. It's hard for me to feel sympathy because she betrayed her son to the very end. She let her five-year-old get tortured and murdered and then testified that he died from a disease to protect the cult leader. And then she still calls him Naki. just no words kim is now 83 years old and i think it's really freaking weird that she called herself baby and not once did she ever even look a year younger than her actual age that's all i have to say about that aspect it has also been alleged that one of the main reasons that shin that i like i said was able to dominate the record selling industry was so quickly was because of their free unpaid labor.

1:21:49It said that as recently as 2021, according to one article, their sales were in the near 50 to 60 million ballpark. I don't know how accurate that is, but I imagine it's safe to assume that they're raking in a lot of money and profits. One former member said that when they started Shinada Records, there was just so much money, cash specifically. They had just stacked it inside of Kim's room. She said her room is about 1500 square feet. That money, we brought it in and about two thirds of her room were filled up to the ceiling what yeah it's unclear now if the employees that are employed with shinera records is part of baby garden but the current ceo is allegedly was one of her right hand people during the operation of baby garden what happened to baby garden still technically operating she still owns a ton of farmland yeah now i would say it's still just not the best company to support in my humble opinion because i'm sure those employees are not getting the bulk of the profits it's all allegedly going to kim the music agencies that have been able to make the choice to stop working with shin nada have chosen to stop promoting sales at shin nada so most notably starship entertainment the agency that you might be familiar with that signed i've as well as a bunch of other massive k-pop groups but specifically for i've with their recent comeback they did not list shinada as a record seller so every time k-pop albums are released they list a whole group of reputable distributors like verified retailers shinada was not listed however they do sell ives albums because they can't pull their albums from shinada for legal contractual reasons it seems but they're not advertising them right okay so if i'm not mistaken 17 has also excluded shinnara records from their album release press releases so technically you can still purchase them from shinnara but the artists themselves have stopped promoting them as distributors which again nothing is ever the artist's fault so even if there are artists that are promoting on their press releases it's not like the artist has control over that it's the agency right and again i'm sure every k-pop group out there if they had that type of control they don't want their album sold there.

1:24:04Dispatch interviewed reps from most of the top music agencies in South Korea about this issue and even the agencies seem to be in a pickle. I'm not excusing agencies they clearly have more power in this than the artists but even the agencies have stated it's not very simple. If it was just a contract between us and Shin Nada like a one-time deal it's possible to just say hey don't send the album to Shin Nada. However agencies and distributors and Shin Nada have been intertwined through contractual obligations for a long period of time so they're saying if you pull now it's likely you have to pull every past group from this agency all of their records and then sometimes people have different contracts with different groups yeah they stated yeah they stated in an interview to put it simply they can't forcibly remove the albums from shinara it's not even directly between shinara and the agencies apparently a lot of the agencies have a bunch of middlemen that signed with Shin Nara.

1:24:58So what the agency seemed to be doing that is in their control is excluding Shin Nara from their official announcements. And thankfully, this is a situation where consumers have the power. I personally will be boycotting Shin Nara. And if you purchase with them before knowing all of this, don't go and like throw your stuff away or anything. Just now, you know, for future consideration, because there's just so many other places you can purchase albums to support your favorite artists. It's not like Shin Nara is the only place and allegedly this is what kim told her followers the one who escaped from baby garden they have no money and are uneducated nobody will listen to them i have plenty of money lawyers and prosecutors and judges who all love money so they're on my side even if someone brought me a lot of money i'm not going to give them a single cent back i would rather spend millions with lawyers than give 10 cents to those who left huh okay interesting one of the former members says now we understand why she always boasted so loudly about the media lawyers prosecutors judges and even the president for being on her side for being her servants she claimed she could never be found guilty of anything and that if someone came at her through one hole she could escape through 10 more we've come to realize how very true her words were another former member penned almost like an open letter to kim and again this is just one person's supposed feelings and memories this is not me saying this is what happened do your own research but they wrote you arranged grand weddings for your three sons and let them have children.

1:26:23You gave your husband, sons, and relatives who never did any manual labor or street vending positions as chairmen, presidents, and directors at Shinnara-affiliated companies. You distributed agadusan, which is baby gardens assets to them, bought them luxury homes and foreign cars, and let them spend money recklessly. You claimed they were exempt from any wrongdoing. In 1981, Jang Eun-ju, the eight-year-old youngest daughter of Chang Jing-ho had sold his house and farmland to join. He sold everything, was diagnosed with a brain tumor and hospitalized, this eight-year-old. But you said cancer patients would die anyway and it would just be a waste of money.

1:26:59She'd only be useful for experiments. You had her discharged from the hospital and that young child died just 15 days later. You made even elementary school children work in factories, making bamboo salt and farming without letting them go to school. when a 20 year old was in a traffic accident while selling goods outside you said even $2 ,500 in settlement money to bail them out was too much that young man was sent to prison to pay with his body this hasn't been proven but this is just what's out there and I personally will not be purchasing anything from Shinada Kim and her associates the baby garden church did file an injunction last year to prevent Netflix from releasing episodes on their organization same with JMS which we also covered Netflix released a series titled In the Name of God A Holy Betrayal the series as a whole covers multiple different cults if you will JMS we covered Odaesang we covered they're they're connected to this hair fairy we covered that one and Baby Garden has two episodes dedicated to them they like the other organizations tried to stop Netflix from releasing the series.

1:28:07Baby Garden stated Netflix's depiction of them was fictional and misleading which a lot of people were nervous about considering Baby Garden had filed an injunction against another massive Korean media house SBS and they did not release their episode. Really? This was a while back though early 2000s. So it had worked in the past. It worked in the past and even the producers were a little bit nervous. Now the injunction was thrown out, meaning Netflix was free to release the episodes to which the director of the series stated, I hope many people watch those episodes to see just how cruel and scary religious cults can be.

1:28:45I will say it's not over. Then Baby Garden files a lawsuit against Netflix for good old defamation, demanding them to pay nearly$10 ,000 per day that the episodes were available on the streaming platform with the total amount at that point being a quarter million dollars the lawsuit took place in korea from what i can see and essentially it was thrown out by the judge now i will say if it gets thrown out in korea it doesn't even stand chance in places like the united states like even the sbs injunction i wonder if it was taking place in the united states i don't think that baby garden would have won yeah so it's it's very interesting how that's done but according to some sources baby garden was also allegedly ordered to pay for the other party's legal fees but she did sue the author of the book the prosecutor working on the case the one that we were able to interview managed to get 17 000 in damages from him but that was the least of his concerns according to our interview it seems like kim used a lot of her money and influence to get him technically i don't want to say out as a prosecutor but basically made his life so difficult that it would be hard for him to continue down his career trajectory.

1:29:53Or at least that's how it felt to a lot of people. We asked the prosecutor if he ever regretted going against Baby Garden because clearly it impacted his career. He said, as a human, I can't say that I have regrets. I did suffer a lot of damages. Sometimes I can't lie. I do wonder, did I have to go that far? Did I have to take it that far? But if I think about it, if I went back to that time, would I make that same choice again? Yes. Because if I can just save one person from baby garden, I would feel a great sense of accomplishment. So the losses I suffered, it's not that big of a deal. About the trial process, he said, there was no one helping me and I was being systematically harassed.

1:30:34Handling that case with limited people and conducting all three trials alone, I just felt very lonely. No one was helping me and instead people were trying to bring me down. That was the most hurtful thing in the end. Looking back now, it seems like I was too ambitious taking on a case like this. It should have been handled by a larger office. But when the victims filed complaints with other jurisdictions with larger DA offices, nobody wanted to take it because the baby garden influence was that large. No prosecutor wanted to do it. I was young. I was naive at the time. I just had this sense of justice, I guess.

1:31:09And I recklessly jumped in and I tried to fight as hard as I could. When victims of the baby garden had thanked prosecutor king for his work, he said, Every time I hear those words, I feel choked up with emotion. And I realized once again that the sacrifices made were not meaningless. They were worthwhile. He now has his own private practice. But he does say this about Kim. That woman is truly evil. She is an evil woman that is extremely clever. A victim said about the situation, it's not enough that Kim received a light punishment compared to her evil deeds but also after her release she is enjoying her wealth as if she's mocking the world it has now been reported that Kim is suffering from dementia and is receiving treatment in Seoul yeah I don't think that's karma enough yeah what are your thoughts?

1:32:05let me know in the comments have you heard of Baby Garden? and please stay safe and I will see you in the next one.