Speaker 1: It's March twenty sixth, nineteen ninety one, and South Korea
Speaker 1: is gripped by election fever. Local elections for district, city
Speaker 1: and county councilors are being held for the first time
Speaker 1: in thirty years. A national holiday has been declared, and
Speaker 1: many people, including military personnel and school children, have been
Speaker 1: given the day off. Pupils from the Syongsou Elementary School
Speaker 1: on the outskirts of Daegu are no exception. Among them.
Speaker 1: It's Kim Hyon dos eleven year old son Yong Jieu.
Speaker 1: For the purpose of clarity, South Korean names begin with
Speaker 1: the family name followed by the given name. That morning,
Speaker 1: he On Dou watches Young Jiu wave goodbye before disappearing
Speaker 1: into the small maze of interconnecting concrete lined alleyways behind
Speaker 1: their house to meet up with his friends Wu Chiolwan,
Speaker 1: Joho Yon Park Chanin, Kim Yong hikh and Kim Tai Ryong.
Speaker 1: The boys, aged nine to thirteen, are all neighbours in
Speaker 1: an area known as Dlso, a modest working class neighborhood
Speaker 1: on the western edge of Daegu city sprawl. They often
Speaker 1: play together around their houses in the nearby rice paddies
Speaker 1: or on the thickly wooded slopes of Woyong Mountain just
Speaker 1: to the north. On that morning of elections. With no
Speaker 1: classes to keep them in school, the boys have been
Speaker 1: given free reign to enjoy the spring day. Just after
Speaker 1: eight a m. A young man gets annoyed with them
Speaker 1: playing outside his apartment and tells them to go and
Speaker 1: play somewhere else. A short time later, one of the
Speaker 1: boys returns home, as nine year old Kim te Ryong
Speaker 1: explains to his parents, he wanted to keep playing, but
Speaker 1: the others decided to head off to Woyong Mountain and
Speaker 1: he struggled to keep up with them. Having also been
Speaker 1: worried about going too far from home, he decided to
Speaker 1: cut his losses and come back. Middle school student MoU
Speaker 1: Yon is riding his bike past the entrance to the
Speaker 1: mountain trailhead when he sees his younger brother walking with
Speaker 1: the four other boys. He calls out to him and
Speaker 1: asks where he's going. Oh Yon replies that they're heading
Speaker 1: up to the mountain to the Salamander Pond, a water
Speaker 1: hole where salamanders are known to congregate to look for eggs.
Speaker 1: MoU Yon watches for a moment as the boys head
Speaker 1: up the trail, then turns around and cycles off. It
Speaker 1: has just gone nine when a woman named Kim's son Nam,
Speaker 1: who lives at the foot of Woyong Mountain, heads out
Speaker 1: of her home to cast a vote in the elections.
Speaker 1: The sun is shining, the spring air fresh and cool,
Speaker 1: with a thick carpet of last year's fallen leaves on
Speaker 1: the ground. When she too sees the boys as they
Speaker 1: head up the mountain. As they pass it by, they
Speaker 1: wander aloud if they can get there and back in
Speaker 1: two hours. That short, innocuous question will echo through her
Speaker 1: mind for many years to come. You're listening to Unexplained,
Speaker 1: and I'm Richard McLean Smith. It has just gone eleven
Speaker 1: thirty when another pupil from Xiongsou Elementary School named Ham
Speaker 1: climbs alone to a grave site located on the middle
Speaker 1: slopes of Wyong Mountain. Just then he hears a series
Speaker 1: of unusual sounds, sharp and urgent, coming from the top
Speaker 1: of the mountain in roughly ten second intervals. Then he
Speaker 1: hears another sound. This one is unquestionable, a marrow melting scream,
Speaker 1: followed swiftly by another. The intensity of it seeps under
Speaker 1: his skin. This is followed by an unnerving, eerie silence.
Speaker 1: By the end of the afternoon, the young boys have
Speaker 1: yet to return, and as dusk falls, the boys' families
Speaker 1: begin to get seriously worried. Mister Kim, father of nine
Speaker 1: year old young Chkh, knows there are some fierce dogs
Speaker 1: kept part way up the mountain trail. He worries that
Speaker 1: the dogs might have escaped and attacked the boys, and
Speaker 1: so the parents quickly assemble and begin to search the
Speaker 1: mountain path, calling out their children's names as they climb
Speaker 1: higher up into the trees, but they find no sign
Speaker 1: of them. It is seven point fifty when they're reported
Speaker 1: missing to the police. With the help of some local officers,
Speaker 1: the parents continue to search for the boys into the
Speaker 1: early hours of the next morning, but still no sign
Speaker 1: of them is found. The police see, I'm unconcerned. The
Speaker 1: boys are just being boysed They say they'll come home eventually.
Speaker 1: That night, at his home, a petrified Kim he Undo
Speaker 1: drifts into a fitful sleep and starts to dream. Rain
Speaker 1: pours down, sluicing off his home's roof, dripping noisily into
Speaker 1: its tiled courtyard. Heyon Deu stands on his porch and
Speaker 1: looks up to see his young son, yon Jiu, playing
Speaker 1: in the alley outside. It's a replay of the morning before,
Speaker 1: turned hideously inside out. The boy pokes his head around
Speaker 1: the half open metal gates to the yard and smiles, Then,
Speaker 1: without a word, he turns and scampers off. Gripped by terror,
Speaker 1: heyon Deo runs after his son out through the gate
Speaker 1: and into the narrow alleyway beyond its concrete walls, damp
Speaker 1: and stained with rust. Up Ahead, he sees the back
Speaker 1: of his son as he runs up the alleyway. He
Speaker 1: tears after him, frantically calling out for him to stop
Speaker 1: and come back, but the boy never stops and never
Speaker 1: looks back. As he on Deo fights desperately to keep
Speaker 1: up with him, his son recedes ever further into the distance.
Speaker 1: Then he wakes with a gasp in the dark, his
Speaker 1: eyes streaming with tears, gripped by the horrifying certainty that
Speaker 1: his beautiful son will never be coming home. When the
Speaker 1: five young boys fail to return on the second day,
Speaker 1: the frantic parents demand more help from the police, only
Speaker 1: to be told they still can't be categorized as officially missing,
Speaker 1: and there's little they can do until then. The police
Speaker 1: also begin to wonder if the boys have run away.
Speaker 1: Perhaps they've been getting up to mischief, because that's what's
Speaker 1: expected of boys who come from lower income, working class family.
Speaker 1: But there are no problems in any of their homes
Speaker 1: and none of them have done anything like that before.
Speaker 1: The parents protest to no avail. Then one of the
Speaker 1: fathers receives an anonymous phone call. The man on the
Speaker 1: other end of the line claims to be holding the
Speaker 1: missing children. He says that the boys are all suffering,
Speaker 1: that two are very ill, and that the parents must
Speaker 1: bring a large sum of money to a street near
Speaker 1: Daegu's main train station before it is too late. Scraping
Speaker 1: together what they can at short notice, the parents go
Speaker 1: to the location the following evening, racked with worry but
Speaker 1: also fuming with anger. They are ready to beat the
Speaker 1: perpetrator to a pulp, but also determined to sacrifice all
Speaker 1: they own to get their boys back. Five, then ten,
Speaker 1: then twenty minutes go by as the parents wait where
Speaker 1: the caller had told them to go. They continue to
Speaker 1: wait for another hour, feeling helpless, but in the end
Speaker 1: no one comes. In the days following the boy's disappearance,
Speaker 1: People in Daegu and across South Korea glue themselves to
Speaker 1: their radios and TV sets, completely immersed in the emerging
Speaker 1: news from the elections. There is widespread interest in the
Speaker 1: country's politics at the time, especially because of a growing
Speaker 1: pro democracy movement struggling to emerge South Koreans since there
Speaker 1: is a chance for a transition from military dictatorship to
Speaker 1: free and fair elections on the horizon. It isn't until
Speaker 1: almost a week after the disappearance of the five boys
Speaker 1: from Dalso that the media really begins to pick up
Speaker 1: the story. When one broadcast the reports that the boys
Speaker 1: had gone to try and catch frogs. The missing children
Speaker 1: become known as the Frog Boys. As public interest in
Speaker 1: the case intensifies, the boy's parents are invited onto the
Speaker 1: popular news program The Square of Public Opinions, where they
Speaker 1: angrily lambass the police who continue to classify the boys
Speaker 1: as runaways rather than missing. The program hosts phone lines
Speaker 1: for members of the public to call if they have
Speaker 1: any information on the boys. Suddenly, during the middle of
Speaker 1: the broadcast, one of the phone operators shouts out to
Speaker 1: the parents that they have one of the boys, Kim
Speaker 1: Yong Chikh on the line, the operator says the boy
Speaker 1: is sobbing and asking to speak with his mother. Yong
Speaker 1: Sheikh's mother rushes over, but by the time she reaches
Speaker 1: the phone, the caller has hung up. It is a
Speaker 1: prank call. Though wild rumours quickly spread about what might
Speaker 1: have happened to the boys, many believe they are still alive.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen seventy nine, close to the city, also
Speaker 1: about eighty kilometers southwest of Daegu, three children aged between
Speaker 1: six and seven went missing after going foraging on a
Speaker 1: nearby mountain. Rumours became widespread that a terrible fate had
Speaker 1: befallen them, but after almost a month, the children turned
Speaker 1: up malnourished but alive, having simply got lost despite their
Speaker 1: young age that used their knowledge of foraging to survive,
Speaker 1: having done relatively little to help. On May fifth, six
Speaker 1: weeks after the boys disappeared, President Rode Tewu issues a
Speaker 1: special order mobilizing the police and military in a massive
Speaker 1: search operation. In July, an investigation headquarters is established by
Speaker 1: the Daegu Provincial Police Agency, and thousands of police and
Speaker 1: military officers are drafted in to help search teams form
Speaker 1: lines and use sticks to probe the ground as they
Speaker 1: go exhaust over the region surrounding the Salamander pond, and
Speaker 1: then in widening circles around the entire mountain. The undergrowth
Speaker 1: on the mountain is short at that time, leaving few
Speaker 1: places for the boys or their bodies to remain hidden.
Speaker 1: But still nothing is found in lieu of any concrete answers.
Speaker 1: The case attracts many false reports and prank calls. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: theories about what has happened to the Frog Boys get
Speaker 1: more and more extravagant. Back in the nineteen seventies, North
Speaker 1: Korean agents kidnaps some South Korean high school students to
Speaker 1: help them train North Korean spies to blend into life
Speaker 1: in the South. Some people wonder if the Frog Boys
Speaker 1: were taken under similar circumstances. Some wonder if the boys
Speaker 1: have been abducted by aliens. Others that a group of
Speaker 1: patients suffering from leprosy have taken the boys to help
Speaker 1: treat their disease. At one point, even visit a leper
Speaker 1: colony just in case the rumor is true. No end
Speaker 1: of self described psychics and fortune tellers also join the
Speaker 1: ranks of people claiming to have insights as to what
Speaker 1: has happened to the boys and where they are, but
Speaker 1: no one can provide any information that brings the children back,
Speaker 1: so the boys fathers decide to take matters into their
Speaker 1: own hands. In the summer of nineteen ninety one, the
Speaker 1: fathers of the missing boys quit their jobs and rent
Speaker 1: a small truck. Together. They deck it out with posters
Speaker 1: containing pleas for information about their sons, as well as
Speaker 1: a large portrait of each boy. Then the desperate fathers
Speaker 1: drive across South Korea, beseeching fellow citizens to help them
Speaker 1: find their sons. Often, the fathers find a busy spot
Speaker 1: in a city or town where they park and hand
Speaker 1: out leaflets appealing for information. The men watch on hopefully
Speaker 1: as one middle aged woman in a hurry pauses briefly
Speaker 1: to grab a flyer, only to then use it to
Speaker 1: wipe chewing gum off the sole of her shoe. On
Speaker 1: the first anniversary of the disappearance, in March nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: the parents hold a press conference involving media representatives from
Speaker 1: across South Korea. At some point, people begin to notice
Speaker 1: a number of men in the audience who don't look
Speaker 1: like journalists taking notes. Whenever the parents speak. It later
Speaker 1: transpires that the men are from an unnamed intelligence agency.
Speaker 1: For several months, they have shadowed the fathers, recording every
Speaker 1: detail of what they do and where they go. Some
Speaker 1: have even turned up at the boy's homes, claiming they
Speaker 1: are there for the parent's protection. It is the final
Speaker 1: indignity that the boy's own fathers are now in the
Speaker 1: frame for the disappearance of their children. As month after
Speaker 1: month rolls by, the fathers continue to drive across South Korea,
Speaker 1: pleading for any information that will help find the missing boys.
Speaker 1: They continue for three long years, but finally, disheartened and
Speaker 1: in serious debt, the fathers hold another press conference in
Speaker 1: the nation's capital, Soul to announce that they are giving
Speaker 1: up their search. They will go back to what is
Speaker 1: left with their families and attempt to restore some measure
Speaker 1: of normality to their daily lives. For their part, the
Speaker 1: police continue their efforts. Twenty thousand leaflets containing computer generated
Speaker 1: images of how the children might look now are distributed.
Speaker 1: One thousand welfare facilities and religious organizations, along with eleven
Speaker 1: thousand households and forty eight mountain areas are searched. Eighteen
Speaker 1: hundred elementary school pupils are questioned, along with around nineteen
Speaker 1: thousand industrial complex workers. Around five hundred and seventy reports
Speaker 1: as to the boys whereabouts are received from all across
Speaker 1: the nation, even from fishing boats along South Korea's extensive coastline.
Speaker 1: Several large Korean companies also join in the effort to
Speaker 1: help the search, with details about the case and requests
Speaker 1: for information being printed on all manner of products, from
Speaker 1: cigarettes to milk cartons, sweet wrappers and telephone cards. Po
Speaker 1: Hag Steel and Korean Airways also provide money for the
Speaker 1: police to distribute tens of thousands of flyers with employees
Speaker 1: and customers. But finally, after five years of fruitless searching,
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six, the Frog Boys Investigation Department of
Speaker 1: the Daegu Police Agency is disbanded. The search is transferred
Speaker 1: to the local Dalso Police station, where the local police
Speaker 1: chief takes over the investigations with the team of just
Speaker 1: ten men. For the missing boy's parents, who are still
Speaker 1: under intense public and media scrutiny, the years since their
Speaker 1: boy's disappearance have been interminably hard. Not only are they
Speaker 1: dealing with the heartbreak of losing their children, Any sign
Speaker 1: of happiness in the fleeting moment that they might experience,
Speaker 1: it must be fiercely suppressed. If not, the press might
Speaker 1: use it as evidence that the parents never really cared
Speaker 1: about their boys and that they are the ones truly
Speaker 1: had fault for them going missing. Some members of the
Speaker 1: media continue to harass the families on occasion, manipulating their
Speaker 1: words and even publishing fake stories about them. But eventually
Speaker 1: even the media grow tired of the story and it
Speaker 1: can completely drops from their headlines. Then one day, the
Speaker 1: parents receive an unexpected calls out of the blue. The
Speaker 1: families are contacted by military personnel from the fiftieth Division
Speaker 1: of the South Korean Army, who happen to have a
Speaker 1: base close to where the five boys went missing. The
Speaker 1: parents are told that military personnel want to see them
Speaker 1: all without the police knowing. Rain lashes down and water
Speaker 1: sluices along the drains in the narrow concrete alleyways as
Speaker 1: the parents gather outside their homes before being escorted by
Speaker 1: soldiers into minibuses. The parents are driven the short distance
Speaker 1: to the military base and through the gates. Commissioned army
Speaker 1: officers greet them and lead them through the rain into
Speaker 1: a large tent where more officers and some regular soldiers
Speaker 1: are waiting for them. Mystified and alarmed, the parents come
Speaker 1: even more confused when one of the officers steps forward
Speaker 1: to speak. He tells them that one of his soldiers
Speaker 1: is a medium who has special talents. In fact, continues
Speaker 1: the officer, this soldier will be able to give the
Speaker 1: parents supernatural powers which will help them find their children.
Speaker 1: Before the bemused parents can ask any questions, a man
Speaker 1: steps forward and proceeds to solemnly place his hands on
Speaker 1: each side of Kim Kiondu's head, father of missing boy
Speaker 1: Young Jieu. The man feels nothing, but then his wife,
Speaker 1: with a boldness none of her neighbors have ever seen
Speaker 1: her display, suddenly demands that everyone follow her outside and
Speaker 1: into the deluge. The woman begins striding up the mountain
Speaker 1: as if totally convinced where she is going, and everyone
Speaker 1: hurriedly follows. It's hard to walk, as the heavy rain
Speaker 1: has turned the mountain slopes into a quagmire, and most
Speaker 1: of the parents have only their regular shoes on. They
Speaker 1: stagger uphill, slipping and sliding on the muddy terrain. Then
Speaker 1: missus Kim suddenly stops and screams while pointing at a
Speaker 1: spot in front of her. The children are there, she yells,
Speaker 1: I can see them. Unnerved, everyone looks around, their flashlights
Speaker 1: cutting through the drenching rain, but to their immense distress,
Speaker 1: there is no sign of the children. Eventually, the search
Speaker 1: is suspended and the disconsolate parents are returned home without
Speaker 1: a further word of explanation. It is January nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: six when a well groomed, respectable man dressed in a
Speaker 1: black suit comes to speak with some of the parents.
Speaker 1: The man is not from the government, but a psychology
Speaker 1: professor named Kim Garwan, who tells them that he's spent
Speaker 1: some time studying criminal psychology in the USA. As the
Speaker 1: professor goes on to explain to the desperate parents, having
Speaker 1: reviewed the available evidence, he believes he knows exactly what
Speaker 1: happened to the five missing boys. He tells them first
Speaker 1: that it is his firm belief that they never actually
Speaker 1: went up into the mountain. For a long time, he's
Speaker 1: been developing doubts about the alibi of Kim chio Du,
Speaker 1: father of Yong Sheikh, one of the missing boys, who's
Speaker 1: been somewhat vague about his whereabouts for three hours on
Speaker 1: the afternoon the boys went missing. The reason, according to
Speaker 1: the professor, is clear. Mister Kim is the killer, and
Speaker 1: if his suspicions are correct, they will find the remains
Speaker 1: of all five boys underneath mister Kim's own house. Very
Speaker 1: few criminal psychologists in South Korea in the mid nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: Professor Kim's rarity, combined with the utter confidence with which
Speaker 1: he announces his reasoning, are enough to convince the police
Speaker 1: that his claims were at least worth investigating. Several of
Speaker 1: the boy's parents openly tell the professor that he is
Speaker 1: completely wrong, but some also begin to wander, and so
Speaker 1: one weekday, afternoon, police officers accompanied by workmen armed with
Speaker 1: sledge hammers, pickaxes and shovels, all watched on by the
Speaker 1: parents of the missing boys and other curious neighbors, turn
Speaker 1: up at the Kim family home. Before long, the media
Speaker 1: have arrived too, to film the unfolding events. Inside the home,
Speaker 1: police find an area at the back where a new
Speaker 1: toilet and cement floor have quite clearly only recently been installed.
Speaker 1: The accused Fatherill Gioux, watches on with anguish as the
Speaker 1: workmen get to work, swinging their sledgehammers and pickaxes at
Speaker 1: the back wall of the house. Then others quickly join
Speaker 1: in excavating the area around the toilet. As police investigators
Speaker 1: warm all over the family's belongings, They move furniture and
Speaker 1: scatter the belongings into the yard as they search for clues.
Speaker 1: After hours of searching, with only a five foot trench
Speaker 1: dug into the back of the Kim property to chow
Speaker 1: frit only then do people begin to question the psychology
Speaker 1: professor's logic. Even if the were three hours unaccounted for
Speaker 1: in the father's schedule, how would he have had the
Speaker 1: time to kill all five children, including his own son,
Speaker 1: then bury them and completely hide the evidence of his crime. Finally,
Speaker 1: after a day of searching, with some embarrassment, the police
Speaker 1: announce they have drawn a blank. Nothing at all incriminating
Speaker 1: is found. As the professor tries to make an inconspicuous exit,
Speaker 1: enraged onlookers begin chanting to catch him and attempt to
Speaker 1: rush at him. The police are forced to make a
Speaker 1: cordon shielding the disgraced psychologist and hurry him into a
Speaker 1: police car before driving off at speed. The following day,
Speaker 1: under the full glare of the media, Professor Kim is
Speaker 1: forced to make a full apology to the parents, but
Speaker 1: especially to the wrongly accused father, Chure Giu. Before the
Speaker 1: boys went missing, Kim chi or Giu was a robust
Speaker 1: and healthy man, but after this incident, his health goes
Speaker 1: downhill fast. He turns to drink to numb the pain
Speaker 1: of it all. Within a year, he is diagnosed with
Speaker 1: liver cancer and dies shortly after, still in his forties,
Speaker 1: having never found out the truth about his son's disappearance.
Speaker 1: Though the official cause was his cancer, those closest to
Speaker 1: him know that the stress of everything that had happened
Speaker 1: was a major contributing factor. Other parents also lose themselves
Speaker 1: in drink or become severely depressed. They find it hard
Speaker 1: to hold down jobs. Part Gun Sou, father of chan In,
Speaker 1: who was ten when he went missing, is consumed with
Speaker 1: unresolved anger. He repeatedly gets into fights with the police
Speaker 1: and is eventually placed in a detention center for a while.
Speaker 1: Only one thing keeps him and the remaining parents going,
Speaker 1: the hope that they might finally one day find their sons.
Speaker 1: You've been listen link to Unexplained Season eight, episode twenty nine.
Speaker 1: Go tell fire to the Mountain Part one. The second
Speaker 1: and final part will be released next Friday, May sixteenth.
Speaker 1: This episode was written by Diane Hope and Richard McClain smith.
Speaker 1: Diane is an audio producer and sound recordist in her
Speaker 1: own right. You can find out more about her work
Speaker 1: at Dianehope dot com and on Instagram at in the
Speaker 1: sound Field. Unexplained is an Avy Club Productions podcast created
Speaker 1: by Richard McClain Smith. All other elements of the podcast,
Speaker 1: including the music, are also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained.
Speaker 1: The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
Speaker 1: You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and
Speaker 1: other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in
Speaker 1: touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've
Speaker 1: heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of
Speaker 1: your own you'd like to share. You can find out
Speaker 1: more at Unexplained podcast dot com and reach us online
Speaker 1: through Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com.
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