South Korea "Erased" 4,000 People To Host The Olympic Games: True Story Behind “Squid Game”

0:02It is one of the biggest churches in the city of Busan in South Korea. only nobody really knows it exists. It's in the middle of the woods. You have to be invited in to join the church but it's also not a cult. This is not a cult story. The church has the capacity to seat 3 ,500 people give or take sometimes it's 4 ,000. There are just what feels like an endless row upon row upon row of rock hard church pews. Every church member is forced to sit on for hours every single Sunday, the pews, the chairs, they're at a firm 90 degree angle. And because attendance is so high, you're arm to arm. In the summer, it feels like you and the person next to you are going to fuse together in the flesh because the sweat, the moistness, just touching each other for hours at a time.

0:56Winter is not as bad, but every single Sunday, the inevitable moment comes like every Sunday, the red sack people. The pastor, Pastor Lim at the podium will ask the red sack members to come up. It looks like a row of red floating balls that just float onto the stage, but they're people. They're wearing red burlap sacks with ugly paint on the front and the ugly paint reads, I am a sinner who has gone against God's word. Everyone in the church holds their breath as the pastor approaches the red sack people. His eyes look soft. They look sympathetic. He puts his hands on their heads and they bow down.

1:35The pastor closes his eyes. In the name of Jesus, you are being punished. Then he moves to the next one. In the name of Jesus, you are being punished. And then the next one by one, he does this to all of them. In the name of Jesus, you are being punished. In the name of Jesus, you are being punished. And then he turns around. The pastor does. And when he turns back to face the row of red sack wearing people, he has put on a pair of boxing gloves and bam, he just starts pummeling them one by one to the ground. None of the thousands of people in this church look away. They're not allowed to. Their eyes are glued to the front.

2:11None of them stop the pastor. None of them scream. None of them shout. None of them do anything until these red sacks at the front are laying down horizontal on the ground. And now they're oozing red liquid. They're dead. The church members think, well, they're lucky if they're dead, actually. He punched them to death? A lot of them get beaten to death. The church members think, well, they're lucky if they're dead. You know, if they're dead, their bodies will be dragged off, probably to be sold. If not, they're going to repeat this again next week. This is not a cult. This is the brother's home, a government funded camp to cleanse the humans of South Korea for the Olympics.

2:49But instead, the welfare center known as Brothers Home basically is its own torture facility with sick, twisted games played with these prisoners. This is the inspiration behind the Netflix series Squid Games.

3:23we would like to thank today's sponsors we would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for rotten mango to directly support a survivor of today's episode this episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support rotten mango's growing team and we'd also like to thank you guys for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates as always full show notes are available at rotten mingle podcast.com with that being said today's case involves mentions of internment, essay, trafficking, and torture. Please take a break if it gets to be too much. This case is on the heavier side.

3:55But I also think it's very important. Another thing to note is that this is something that happens all across the world, like I said in the previous episode. And South Korea at the time that this took place was not a democracy. It was run by a dictator. So hopefully, massive changes have been made. And additionally, our amazing Korean researchers and translators were actually able to travel to some of the survivors involved in today's case conduct in-person interviews. They translated the survivor's book, The Surviving Child, written by Han Jung-sun. He's a huge part of the case. I'm going to refer to him as Han.

4:28Additionally, this is a three-part case. If you haven't watched part one, please go watch that first. I'm going to link it because none of this is going to make sense. In part one, we go through the torture games that were held at the Brothers Home Welfare Center, how they compare to SWID games. And in this episode, we're going to go through what they do to the dead bodies as well as the salt water food torture and what happens when you escape in part three we will go in depth on the wealthy benefactors of this facility so with that being said let's get started in season two of netflix's squid games the main character ki-hun he just survived squid games in season one he walks away with 40 something million dollars but he more or less i mean was it worth it?

5:10I don't really know. He more or less had to kill his childhood friend that dies in the games to win. And the minute he comes home, he finds out that his mom is dead as well. So for a year, he can't even touch the money that he won. The idea that he would have to use this blood money, it just reminds him of every single person, all 400 something people that died in the Squid Games. It doesn't even make sense. Couldn't he win all of this money without them dying? It's not like they died so that he could get the money. The money was already there. It doesn't logically, it doesn't connect. A year after his initial win, he finds out the truth.

5:46The games are created for rich people's entertainment and this lights a fire underneath him. The logical thing for him to do is find closure, walk away. But instead, Ki-hun vows he is going to get revenge on the rich VIPs and he's not going to stop. He is going to end these stupid games, even if it means losing every single penny that he had just won and even losing his own life. The National Assembly building in South Korea is this massive stone structure, but the legislators, they show up. So do the administrative staff, personnel, researchers. They show up to work and outside is usually a row of people, protesters.

6:26But this time is different because a lot of people will protest different things at the National Assembly. But this group, they've been very serious they've been here living here for three years living outside the national assembly in tents sometimes they walk sometimes they just hold a sign with tears streaming down their face sometimes they fast and people have to beg them to eat because they're becoming emaciated this time they're sitting next to each other one by one and they're all looking stoic they're not saying anything their eyes look like they're about to start crying some of them are already crying.

6:59There's just tears dropping everywhere. And they're all shaving their heads to get attention. How many people in that group? It's like a row of 10 almost. These are the victims of the brother's home. They have been protesting for three something plus years. I mean, it's a long time. And it all started with one man, the man who wrote the book, Han. He tells the legislators, I am a child who survived hell. You know, it's easy to go from human to beast, but very hard to return from beast to human, which is why after he escaped brother's home, he wanted to kill people. He admits he thought becoming a serial killer was the only way that he could escape brother's home.

7:40He says like a psychopath after I left, I just wanted to kill everyone around me. I felt like it was the only way to get everyone to listen to my story. But then I thought, what about everybody else? Everybody already hates us. We were labeled as vagrants. People saw us as less than human even after we got out of Brother's Home. Why give them more reason to look down on us? So he said, I'll give it one shot. I will go to the National Assembly and I will protest and see what happens. Escaping the Brother's Home compound is nearly impossible. In part one, we talked about how the walls are 30 feet tall.

8:15I mean, even if you somehow managed to Spider-Man climb the structure, they put in certain parts of the wall glass shards on top one attempted escapee lee he says he made it up the wall he climbed it and when he reached the top he had cut up his hands and legs so badly he was caught he says i was dripping in blood i couldn't walk so i was dragged across the concrete leaving these blood stains sent back to the office i was beaten by the guards everybody took turns hitting me i was beat probably 100 times in that moment then he was taken to the church to repent for his sins he had to put on that red sack and from there the pastor would pummel him in front of everyone to show everybody this is exactly what happens when you try to escape from brother's home the pastor is that the same guy as that head dude in charge or it's a no different guy but he's another top yes person they're a family whoa in the end of part one 12 year old jung do you remember him his dad is the toilet paper salesman he's trapped in brother's home for two years and the only thing keeping him alive is the thought that his dad is going to come and save him years later his dad shows up at brother's home but instead of being there to take him out rescue him jung's dad is standing there wearing a blue track suit it's very interesting because squid game even the actual show has a lot of interesting components like the fact that there's so many familial dynamics at play in season two i would say these are not really spoilers because season two is connected to season three so we don't really know what happens even but if you're adverse to any type of spoiler please be warned so for example in the new round of squid games there's a mother and son duo the two of them they meet in the games neither knew that the other party was going to show up.

10:03They have no idea. They get there. They enter the games and both of them are there to win the money so that they could pay off the son's gambling debt without giving any spoilers. I mean, how is that going to play out? We don't know. Cause like I said, season three is coming, but it's, if it's just like the first games, there's only one standing. It can't be both the mother and the son. If there's an unspoken familial bond that would indicate then it has to be the son right because he's younger and mothers likely have that innate desire to protect their own children or i wonder if it's a question of are humans just humans at the end of the day like when it really comes down to it survival instincts kick in regardless of who birthed you and it's about surviving in the end for example the recruiter remember the guy in the suit that works for the games his whole job is to go around approach people at subway stations he knows they have debt he's the one that scouts the potential candidates for the game invites them in he thinks all these recruits are beneath humans he thinks they're subhumans he believes genuinely that he is doing the world a favor by getting rid of them he used to be a pink suit wearing guard inside of squid games and he tells the main character in season two clearing and incinerating the bodies of countless people like you these things aren't human they're just trashed They have no purpose in this world.

11:20That's what I kept telling myself for years. And I worked hard. And one day, the game makers, they gave me a gun. I like the way it felt. It was like somebody had finally acknowledged my existence. One year, there was a man who lost. And I went over to shoot him, but I... I recognized his face. Can you guess who it was? His friend? My dad. Oh. And he still shot him. He killed his own dad. Why? That's what happens in the games. Killer be killed. And also, I guess maybe he thinks these humans are so subhuman and he has resentment towards his dad.

12:1012-year-old Zhang in brother's home is standing in the middle of the field and he's staring at his dad wearing that blue track suit. Zhang's dad actually looks worse than Zhang. he's lost so much weight it's like someone just draped a blue tracksuit on top of a thin wire hanger he can't even fit the smallest size jung says he looked terrible just skin and bones it's a complicated feeling are you happy to see the person that you have been praying to see for years or do you feel sad and miserable and depressed that they're going to share the same fate as you and that nobody can save either of you jung says it's even more complicated because you have this weird shame component.

12:47He says, I felt I didn't even want to meet my dad's eyes in there because I thought, wouldn't my father be ashamed to see me right now? It just was such a strange feeling. A few days pass since Jung first sees his dad. Anytime all the prisoners are gathered in the courtyard, he keeps his head down so his dad doesn't see him. And then one day he hears a familiar voice. Jung, are you eating well? It's his dad. His dad is looking around nervously and he's just glancing from side to side and finally he reaches into his pocket and pushes a package into Jung's hands. It's a rice cake. It's a hardened rice cake.

13:22During the holidays, each prisoner receives one rice cake. It's just a small square of rice cake. He had been carrying the rice cake for days, not knowing when he would run into his son. He starved so that his son could get an extra bite. Jung breaks down when he's telling interviewers about this moment later on because he said, I was 14 at the time. I was so hungry. I ate the rice cake. I ate it all as soon as I got it. But afterwards, I just thought, I'm so immature. I mean, thinking about it now, how my father must have felt when he saw me, when he met me from his perspective, what he did to give me that rice cake, seeing me there.

14:00I mean, I think I was just too immature. Turns out after Jung disappeared, Jung's dad spent a year searching for him, going everywhere, going to all the train stations, trying to figure out where the hell is my 12 year old son. He would never run away. like the police are claiming. So something's not right here. Also, the police, they're not telling him that his son has been taken into the brother's home. They're just saying, I don't know. Maybe he ran away. Who cares about your son? I mean, police. Are the one that took him in. Yeah, they're the one that kidnapped. They don't even tell him because they get bonus points from the government.

14:31This is just going to cause more trouble. So they don't like it. They don't want to tell him. So somebody, they kidnapped the kids and then the parents come in saying, oh, my kid is missing. And they're saying, oh okay we don't know what happened meanwhile they're the one that took them yes wow jung's dad spends a year searching for him no help no hope from the police or neighbors so he resorts to trying to drown out his sorrows and alcohol one day jung senior gets so upset that he's drinking i mean sure he's not the mayor of busan but he's thinking my son was a straight a student he meant something to the world he could have been someone he meant something to me isn't that all that matters.

15:08But the police, who are they? You know, they're here to serve the people and they're treating him like dog poop stuck on their shoe. He walks over to the police station, not to start a fight or to be violent, just to protest a one man protest. Just help me find my son. Where is my son? You must help me. The police take one look at him and they smell the alcohol on his breath and they think what a vagrant take him in wow he walked into a police station yeah wow that wow jung was in there since he was 12 till he was nearly 15 he says i strongly resisted the essays at the time that were happening every single night to others but because of that i was beaten even more it's a different humiliation that's different from just being beat even now wow, the shock is too much.

16:00I just knew I had to escape that hell. He's out in the courtyard one day and his eyes are glazed over just trying not to get burnt by the sun, which is really hard. Okay. So they're saying in the summers, even in the winters, it's really difficult because if you listen to part one, they're only allowed to wash their face with coarse salt grains. It rips your flesh. It makes it raw in the sun. And then you're getting punched in the face by these guards every day. And now you have no moisturizer, nothing. You're just in the glare of the sun. He's squinting and he looks up and his heart starts pounding.

16:31He notices all the guards are busy. And there's been this one building he's always looked at because if you were to get to the roof of that building, it's tall enough that you could potentially jump onto the ledge of the wall that's blocking them. Like the 30 feet wall? Yes. If you climb to the top of that building, the gap between the wall and that building are not that much. And it's about the same height, the roof and the upper ledge of the wall. So he takes a chance. He says, I ran like lightning to the building's roof. He jumps from the roof knowing that he could very well land on the floor and die or worse survive only to be beaten to death.

17:11Okay. But he jumps, lands on the ledge of the wall, scrapes himself from all the blood. He drops down from the wall on the other side. It's not nearly as high because it's built on a hill. He jumps down and just starts booking it. There's no looking back. He's sprinting through the woods, scraping his face. He can't even keep his eyes fully open because the branches are slamming into him and he doesn't want to slow down. He's just running. The next thing he knows, there's this massive barbed wire fence in front of him. What the hell is this? Some sort of secondary blockade. He doesn't even know how long he's been running.

17:44He just starts, without even thinking, climbing up the barbed wired fence, breaking the skin all over his hands, face, body. It's like going through a paper shredder. But he said he didn't even feel pain in the moment. The only thought being, I have to escape this hell no matter what. There is no other way. I have to escape this hell. He drops down on the other side. He made it. This is freedom. He made it past the walls. And then click. It's the sound of a gun right behind him. Put your hands up and don't move. He raises his bloody hands in the air and turns around It's a uniformed man holding a gun up to him He's not wearing a blue tracksuit He's wearing a military outfit A soldier Zhang had been so desperate Honestly, nobody knows how long he ran for He doesn't even remember But he ran for so long, he ran directly into a military base Sneaking into a military base To him still can't be worse than being stuck at brother's home Right?

18:38I mean, that's what he thinks He begs them to save him because all the other people that make it past the walls, if you're wearing the blue tracksuit, you're just brought immediately back in. You're seen almost like an escaped prisoner. And he begs the soldiers to save him or, better yet, don't save me. Don't do anything. Just let me go. I won't tell anyone. The soldiers load him up to a car and he's just begging, please sir, help me. Please sir, help me. The door to the soldier's car opens. They throw him out and then they throw something into his hands. It's a big loaf of bread. He's just standing on the road on the street.

19:14He's not back at brother's home. He's free. With that, the car just drives off. Wow. So they kind of saved him? Yeah, they did. They could have sent him back. I don't think that they knew anything of the true torture of what was going on at brother's home. But they had a lot more mercy than the guards at brother's home, clearly. they just thought if this guy doesn't want to go back that much that he's begging and crying and willing to climb over a barbed wire fence maybe he doesn't want to go back it's an even more complicated feeling though because at first jung said it feels very surreal he escaped he's free but then he starts panicking his dad is still there but he also starts panicking more because he realizes what is he gonna do call the cops and tell them that his dad is in brother's home It's not like he can tell the police.

20:02The police are the one that took them in. There is nobody that he can trust. He was only ever taught ever since he was a little kid. Hey, when you're in danger, report it to the police station and ask the police for help. Now what? Zhang decides if he's going to get his dad out. He still has to try and survive until then. He finds, ironically, a newspaper distribution center. He starts working there, sleeping there, eating there. and then one day the cops barge in and they take him in. They arrest him. Why? One of the neighbors reported a vagrant was living at the distribution center. What? They arrested him for being a vagrant.

20:43And just like in season two of Squid Games, just like Ki-hun, the main character, when Jung opens his eyes, he's back in a blue tracksuit in a bunk bed at the brother's home. You are kidding me. How long was he out? A few months. But he's a lot more bloodier now from all the beatings from running away. He said in that moment, he realized, I'm never going to get out of here. I'm never going to get out of here, at least alive. Another survivor says, as you keep getting beaten up, you know, you just, you just give up. The end of all this waiting, you think you're waiting to escape. The end of all of it is just death.

21:20There's nothing to wait for except the day that you die. Nobody's coming to save you wait so this was okay they started this whole initiative for the olympic right it was prior to the olympics but they amped it up and the government started pouring more money into these welfare centers prior to the olympics but the initiative started years before years before yes so meanwhile when this happened like he's now it's what what like three years into this yes has the olympic started yet or after like oh it's after i mean even after they're still taking people oh so now it's like they don't need to like put on anything for the for the tourism they're still taking people on from the streets wow okay han and his older sister the one who wrote the book han they're dragged to the police station by their dad their dad's always been very irresponsible when he's drunk but it never was it never was like this bad there were beatings here and there but this felt very different he drags them to the police station stay here dad will be back in theory this is the best place for their dad to leave them in reality this is the worst place for their dad to leave them because remember the police are the ones taking them in han is nine he says i mean my dad told us to wait at the police station for him he promised he would come back and get us the police don't care why did he the dad left him there it's unclear if he was trying to abandon his kids because it was too much responsibility or whether he was in some sort of trouble and he wouldn't be home for a few days and it'd be better to leave his kids at a police station than to leave them alone so the father doesn't know he has no clue that brother's home is a torturous place or that they're even going to get sent to brother's home he thinks they're going to be there when he gets back okay wow yeah the korean police stations are a little bit different so in korea there's even things like police boxes it's like a little box where police police officers are stationed in neighborhoods and they're part of the community you don't really see them as like a cop yeah like a security yes yes so it's a little more communal and he thought okay they'll be here when i get back if i do decide to come back for them the police don't care they throw the two han and his sister into the back of the refrigerated windowless van they drive them to brothers home wait so han had has a sister older or younger older sister she's 12 he's nine okay and in the van han says you know i started crying i i was asking to be let out and to be able to go home for a moment i remember the sky turning completely white i heard a noise like cicadas were embedded stuck inside my ears and then the stars were going around my eyes and then once that gradually faded I realized that man just slapped me so hard I almost lost consciousness I looked around the van only then did I realize there were about five other kids our age in the car besides the strange men and that's how I ended up at brother's home Han just like the others he has to go through all the survival games which consist of very creative ways to just torture everyone in blue tracksuits.

24:32The guards just torture thousands of people. And like I said, some of them are as young as four. Some of them are elderly people. The torture is non-discriminatory. Everybody's getting tortured. And the torture doesn't even end with the twisted activities. This whole place is almost manufactured to make every aspect of the day feel like walking on glass shards that have been heated to be a hundred degrees. There are two time slots for food for the day. Designated time slots. There is exactly 30 minutes to eat, which sounds like more than enough time until you realize there's 3 ,500 people who have 30 minutes to eat.

25:08Everyone only has about three and a half minutes to grab their food, sit down, inhale it before getting up for the next people to sit down. You always hear first X number of people go, go, go. People are getting smacked and beaten up if they're not eating fast enough. The first few meal times are said to be the hardest because it's hard to even swallow the food that they're giving you, let alone do it in three and a half minutes, just shoveling it in. You would spend at least the greater chunk of that time just gagging. The food is almost always the same. It's rotten rice. So the rice, they leave it in these damp containers and they become moldy and there's those rice bugs everywhere.

25:47They don't rinse the rice. They don't get rid of the bugs. they just steam it just like that fermented fish but the fish is always rotten and it's fermented without seasonings there's fermented cabbage but there's no red pepper flakes to make the kimchi so it's just salt sprinkled kimchi diced radish kimchi there would be some soup on some days but it would just be water with nasty oil floating around and then little radishes just floating around. It is not only a nutritionless meal. Every single ingredient is moldy, spoiled, and to the point that it was almost decaying. And they just slop it all together in water, cook it into a fermented rotten stew, and serve it with rotten molded unwashed rice steamed to food poisoning perfection.

26:33Even if you can stand the taste and digestion of the decaying food, there's still not enough food given to you to fill your stomach. Everyone in there is starving at all times of the day. Everybody is malnourished. And that's when you find out things that you never really think you would ever find out. Han says he has a lot of knowledge that most people probably don't have. For example, if you eat too many pine cones or pine needles, you get diarrhea and you're going to vomit for days. He says, well, you can pick the pine cones, peel off the outer layer with your teeth and then chew on the white part inside, kind of like an artichoke.

27:10You can't really swallow it, but you can at least feel like you're eating something. Or if you have the chance, you can catch and eat centipedes. It will feel like the most nutrient-dense meal at the brother's home. It's hard to say which part of that is worse. Is it the torture games? Is it the food? Or is it that non-stop itch that you feel on every part of your body that makes you want to scrape your skin off, but you can't because the minute that your skin breaks, there's just pus oozing out. Almost every single person in brother's home has a severe skin disease. Most of them have severe eczema and their skin is just raw.

27:45It's throbbing. It's like, it feels like there's a heartbeat under every part of their skin. Every single day without fail, regardless, it feels like their skin is about to slop off. They're forced to scrub themselves on this sensitive skin with coarse salt. During the winter, the ice cold water combined with the salt is so unbearable. Everyone avoids washing at all. Han writes in his book, many of us had skin diseases because we also shared blankets and you know hygiene was poor everybody's skin was always leaking pus and blood and it's now being rubbed all over everybody else under the blankets in the shared bunks and at night when you think okay maybe i'm getting used to the itch of this eczema itch and having these dry open raw wounds scrape with salt just when you think you're used to it at night there's the um you hear a lot of smacking sounds in brothers home at night.

28:37They're light smacking sounds because you can't be too loud. A slap helps more than a scratch. Maybe it's in your head because you think the lice are dying from each smack. It's the intense, inescapable itch of pubic lice. Even if you think the itch is bearable, it's the type of crawling sensation down there that makes you feel like there are a thousand little bugs crawling over you. It feels like they're trying to crawl inside of you. Lice. the only chance of getting rid of the lice is once a week you get a hot water bath for two seconds and it's only it's the only time to try and get rid of all the foreign friends it also doesn't help that you only have two pairs of clothes the two blue track suits which by the way they're so crazy about everyone being uniform a lot of people say it felt like north korea in there because it doesn't even make sense why the uniformity was so important yeah even if the zipper is broken and can't be zipped up, if the uniform requires it to be zipped up, you have to find a way to get it to stay closed.

29:40Otherwise you will be beaten to death. 600 people died in here at least. Han says it doesn't matter if your pants are the waistband stretches out. You have to find a way to tie it with no supplies because yeah, your pants falling down. Sure. In front of 4 ,000 people, it's a little embarrassing, but you're going to get beaten. Everyone's fingernails look like they've been not off by rats. They're always trimmed incredibly short. There are only five nail clippers for the whole place. But if you have long nails, you get beat. So everybody just chews off their nails. But there's no money in the torture itself because that's what doesn't make sense.

30:19Who is funding the brother's home? Why does it exist? So if the government funds brother's home and every quote unquote vagrant that gets brought in, there's government subsidies. the people who run brother's home they get paid per purse they get paid per person per day but that's not where the real money is the real money is in um okay so a few years ago there was a story that a good chunk of the prison population in china don't have fingernails you're talking about today yes you know it's like a whole thing everyone's like where their fingernails going are they chewing them off are they being ripped off like why don't they have fingernails are there certain conditions inside the prisons where their fingernails just fall off what's going on they do some investigating and a lot of the american consumption of pre-peeled garlic is peeled in chinese prisons so a lot of these people they would say you try to because you have to meet a quota every single month you have to peel enough garlic slices and garlic has certain compounds where if you keep peeling them your fingernails pop off whoa okay and it's not just china but incarcerated workers produce over two billion dollars worth of goods annually even in the u.s about two-thirds of the prison population work and a lot of them for some weird reason are in the food industry the prison complex and the agricultural business are like hand in hand so they're working you're saying yes and they're getting paid like 20 cents a day are you talking you're talking about brother's home or yes everywhere so in u.s prisons they're working in prisons across the world they're working and then in brother's home brother's home is this crazy trickle of money.