Speaker 1: You're listening to the second and final part of Unexplained,
Speaker 1: Season eight, episode twenty nine, Go Tell Fire to the Mountain.
Speaker 1: It was a brisk early four morning on September twenty sixth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and two when two men set out for
Speaker 1: a hike up Woyong Mountain in northeast Daegu. They took
Speaker 1: their time, enjoying the burnt reds oranges and yellows of
Speaker 1: the autumn leaves as they searched the ground looking for
Speaker 1: fallen acorns, a culinary delicacy for many Koreans. Up ahead,
Speaker 1: one of the men saw what seemed to be discarded
Speaker 1: clothing among a pile of rocks. He drew closer and
Speaker 1: recoiled suddenly when he saw something unexpected poking out from
Speaker 1: the tattered fabric, something that looked for all the world
Speaker 1: like a human bone.
Speaker 2: Then he saw another.
Speaker 1: It was a short time later when the two men arrived,
Speaker 1: shocked and breathless, at a nearby police station to report
Speaker 1: their grizzly find. Meanwhile, Professor che Chong Min was hard
Speaker 1: at work in his lab at Kyungpuk National University in Daegu,
Speaker 1: as one of only fifty pathologists in South Korea. Chong
Speaker 1: Minh was part of an elite group. Despite technical advancements
Speaker 1: in recent decades, working as a forensic pathologist has never
Speaker 1: been an easy job. Aspiring students have to spend six
Speaker 1: years at medical school, then undergo a further five years
Speaker 1: of extra training to become a forensic specialist. According to
Speaker 1: the National Police Agency, about twenty five thousand people die
Speaker 1: from unnatural causes in Korea every year, but only twenty
Speaker 1: percent to typically undergo an autopsy, an extremely low figure
Speaker 1: compared to a country like the US, for example, where
Speaker 1: forty percent of potentially suspicious deaths are sent for further examination.
Speaker 1: This is in part due to some persistent cultural norms,
Speaker 1: in particular the extensive belief among older Koreans that dissecting
Speaker 1: a corpse kills the person twice. In the United States
Speaker 1: and Europe, forensic doctors commonly accompany the police during their
Speaker 1: initial investigations of a suspicious death, but in South Korea,
Speaker 1: forensic scientists only conduct autopsies when specifically asked to. So
Speaker 1: when the phone rang in Professor Chai's lab late on
Speaker 1: that Somber September day, a call from the police urgently
Speaker 1: requesting his assistance on Woyong Mountain. He dropped everything and
Speaker 1: rushed to the scene. Many had forgotten the tragic tale
Speaker 1: of the missing frog Boys that had so gripped the
Speaker 1: nation eleven years before, but for anyone involved with law
Speaker 1: enforcement or forensic pathology, the suggest question that bones had
Speaker 1: been found on Woyang Mountain could mean only one thing.
Speaker 1: In the hours since the two hikers reported their discovery
Speaker 1: of possible human remains, the area was inundated with police, reporters,
Speaker 1: and locals. The police quickly established the bones were indeed human,
Speaker 1: with initial observations suggesting they constituted the remains of five
Speaker 1: separate individuals. Back in two thousand and two, South Korea
Speaker 1: had not yet established a system to ensure that only
Speaker 1: a forensic specialist could excavate dead bodies. The police weren't
Speaker 1: trained in the delicate skills of unearthing corpses that might
Speaker 1: have died in suspicious circumstances, so they hadn't followed structured procedure,
Speaker 1: either in their digging or inadequately securing the scene to
Speaker 1: preserve any forensic clues. On his own, rival, Professor Chai
Speaker 1: was shocked to find members of the public and the
Speaker 1: media trampling over the ground just a few feet away
Speaker 1: from where the bodies had been found. But what shocked
Speaker 1: him most was the way in which the bones and
Speaker 1: clothing were being treated. Rather than stopping to carefully document
Speaker 1: the scene one after another, the remains were just hauled out,
Speaker 1: with no attempt even to keep the bones from each
Speaker 1: apparent body separate. For some inexplicable reason, the skulls and
Speaker 1: any long bones had been lumped together and laid out
Speaker 1: on sheets of paper, and not even clean paper, but
Speaker 1: old newspapers. The remains, as someone later commented, had been
Speaker 1: set out as if they were produced on a cheap
Speaker 1: market store standing watch. Equally shocked by what they were
Speaker 1: witnessing were the parents of the missing boys. As news
Speaker 1: of the find had spread quickly through the local community,
Speaker 1: they were among the first to travel to the scene.
Speaker 1: One by one, the clothes each of their children had
Speaker 1: been wearing on the day they disappeared were dug out
Speaker 1: of the earth and brought over to them. Many didn't
Speaker 1: want to believe it at first, but in the end
Speaker 1: all were left to face the brutal truth their children
Speaker 1: were dead. What upset them as much as anything was
Speaker 1: just how close to home the boys had been all
Speaker 1: this time, How could they have been overlooked, they wondered,
Speaker 1: in an area that had been so thoroughly searched in
Speaker 1: the days and weeks after the initial disappearance, At some point,
Speaker 1: a school jacket was pulled out and taken over to
Speaker 1: the onlooking parents. Kim Juan Dou, the man whose haunting
Speaker 1: dream had presaged this very moment, recognized it as having
Speaker 1: belonged to his eleven year old son Young Jieu. Through
Speaker 1: floods of tears, he took the jacket into his arms
Speaker 1: to absolutely confirm it for himself and the police. He
Speaker 1: began to search for the school's badge that was sewn
Speaker 1: on the front of it. He noticed then that the
Speaker 1: sleeves of the jacket seemed to have been deliberately tied
Speaker 1: in a knot. When he untied them, he was astonished
Speaker 1: to see a number of empty cartridges and three unused
Speaker 1: bullets fall out from the garment onto the dirt. After
Speaker 1: Kim he Onundo's shocking discovery, it emerged that his son's
Speaker 1: trousers were found to have been removed from his body
Speaker 1: and placed over his head. More bullets were found among
Speaker 1: the clothing, including in one of the boy's underwear, as
Speaker 1: well as being scattered in the soil and on the
Speaker 1: ground around the boy's remains. For mister Kim, as soon
Speaker 1: as he saw the bullets immediately became convinced that his
Speaker 1: son had been shocked. News of the strange find soon
Speaker 1: spread among the other parents, onlookers, and reporters, who were
Speaker 1: quick to publish the findings, which made what the police
Speaker 1: did next or the more inexplicable. Less than twenty four
Speaker 1: hours after the remains were found, without the forensic examination
Speaker 1: having even begun, the local Dalso police chief called a
Speaker 1: press conference in front of the nation's media. The chief
Speaker 1: delivered his verdict because of the way their remains had
Speaker 1: been found huddled together, He and his team determined that
Speaker 1: the boys had simply died of hypothermia. The parents were stunned,
Speaker 1: and so was forensic's professor Chai Jong Min. Even without
Speaker 1: conducting an autopsy, he knew the.
Speaker 2: Police were wrong.
Speaker 1: In his experience, anyone who died of hypothermia tended to
Speaker 1: be found on top of the soil surface, perhaps covered
Speaker 1: with a light layer of fresh hummers and fallen leaves,
Speaker 1: but not buried underneath layers of soil to a depth
Speaker 1: of several feet, as most of the boy's bodies were
Speaker 1: another hypothermia expert Choi Won Souk, the rescue team director
Speaker 1: of the Korean Alpine Federation, heard the announcement in his
Speaker 1: car as he was traveling for work. He was so
Speaker 1: baffled by the police's assessment he contacted members of his
Speaker 1: team as soon as he got home and arranged to
Speaker 1: meet at Mount woyon the next day to have a
Speaker 1: look for themselves. Arriving at the scene, Choi and his
Speaker 1: team found that the spot where the boy's remains had
Speaker 1: been located was barely one hundred meters above the nearest
Speaker 1: city streets. According to weather data, Although there had been
Speaker 1: a little wind and rain the night the boys went missing,
Speaker 1: the lowest temperature recorded was three degrees celsius, hardly cold
Speaker 1: enough to cause the children to freeze to death, and
Speaker 1: in any case, as Choi thought, if they had become
Speaker 1: wet and cold, surely the boys would have just made
Speaker 1: the quick and easy journey back to their homes. It
Speaker 1: was only when Choi and his team asked to see
Speaker 1: maps of the area as it was at the time
Speaker 1: the boys went missing, that a whole other angle began
Speaker 1: to emerge. What Choi one Sercentis team discovered was that
Speaker 1: the boy's remains were found extremely close to the base
Speaker 1: of the Korean Army's fiftieth Division. But more than that,
Speaker 1: the precise spot was less than three hundred meters away
Speaker 1: from what at the time was the division shooting range.
Speaker 1: Was it possible, Choi wondered that one or more of
Speaker 1: the children had been shot by someone on the army's
Speaker 1: firing range. As this possibility found its way into media reports,
Speaker 1: the frog Boy's parents couldn't help but be reminded of
Speaker 1: that strange night several years earlier, when they'd been called
Speaker 1: onto the military base in the dead of night to
Speaker 1: speak with the medium. What on earth had that all
Speaker 1: been about, they wandered.
Speaker 2: And there was.
Speaker 1: Also the mysterious report from the boy called Ham, who'd
Speaker 1: reported hearing a series of unusual loud sounds followed by
Speaker 1: two blood curdling screams. Could those loud sounds have in
Speaker 1: fact been gunshots? Before long, many began to suspect that
Speaker 1: the Korean military were hiding something. In response, the fiftieth
Speaker 1: Division held a press conference. Incredibly, they confirmed that the
Speaker 1: bullets found with the frog boy's remains were indeed from
Speaker 1: their firing range, but they insisted they were stray bullets
Speaker 1: that had all come from a routine target practice and
Speaker 1: just happened to have become mixed up in the boy's clothing. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: they said the boys couldn't have been killed by an
Speaker 1: army shooter because the division soldiers had been given the
Speaker 1: day off for the national holiday. In any case, even
Speaker 1: if they had been on site, no one was allowed
Speaker 1: to shoot without a commissioned officer present. But there was
Speaker 1: one inconvenient detail to the military's dismissal. Commissioned officers themselves
Speaker 1: were entirely free to go out onto the firing range
Speaker 1: and shoot on their own any time they wanted. There
Speaker 1: was even an unconfirmed rumor that one such officer did
Speaker 1: fire his rifle that day, having told someone at the
Speaker 1: base that he had some rounds of ammunition to use up.
Speaker 1: The Army has never confirmed this, and the identity of
Speaker 1: who that officer might have been remains a mystery to
Speaker 1: this day. Under Professor Chai Chong Min's direction, it took
Speaker 1: the forensic team two full days to find all the
Speaker 1: boy's bones, which were taken back to his lab for analysis.
Speaker 1: On the second day, one of the skulls lifted from
Speaker 1: the ground was found to have been pierced by two
Speaker 1: holes on opposite sides, giving greater credence to the theory
Speaker 1: that the boys had been shot. However, when Professor Chai
Speaker 1: examined the injury closer in the lab, he found no
Speaker 1: evidence of the usual fractures around the cavities that a
Speaker 1: bullet would have made. But what Chai did discover, first
Speaker 1: on this skull then on the others, was even more chilling.
Speaker 1: That where a series of unusual, small cut marks all
Speaker 1: over the skull bone surfaces. The police suggested they had
Speaker 1: most likely been made some time after the boys had died,
Speaker 1: perhaps caused by so some one unwittingly working over the
Speaker 1: area with a farm tool, but Professor Chai didn't agree.
Speaker 1: He sent detailed photographs of the marks to an expert
Speaker 1: anthropologist in the US. She responded with complete conviction that
Speaker 1: the marks were definitely human made and were caused by
Speaker 1: a very narrow, sharply pointed implement. But most horrifically of all,
Speaker 1: there was no doubt in her mind that the injuries
Speaker 1: had been inflicted before death. Although the police were unwilling
Speaker 1: to countenance it. To Professor Chai, the boy's deaths were
Speaker 1: starting to look very much like the work of a psychopath. Certainly,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be the first time a psychopath had killed
Speaker 1: in South Korea, perhaps it's most notorious. Long before the
Speaker 1: Frog Boy case was a man called Kim Dai Do
Speaker 1: born in nineteen forty nine. He was the eldest of
Speaker 1: seven from a low income family in a southern rural province.
Speaker 1: Despite his parents high expectations, Kim failed academically and soon
Speaker 1: turned to petty crime. After being caught stealing and spending
Speaker 1: some time in prison, he was determined to try and
Speaker 1: turn his life around. On his release, he tried to
Speaker 1: earn an honest living as a factory worker, but his
Speaker 1: reputation as an ex convict always preceded him, and he
Speaker 1: soon became resentful toward society and how.
Speaker 2: It perceived him.
Speaker 1: In the summer of nineteen seventy five, Kim broke into
Speaker 1: the home of an elderly couple to burgle them, but
Speaker 1: when they disturbed him, he killed the man and seriously
Speaker 1: injured his wife instead. Shortly after that, he met a
Speaker 1: fellow ex con while on a train, and they banded
Speaker 1: together to carry out more robberies.
Speaker 2: The pair entered a.
Speaker 1: Shop in a town on Korea's southwest coast and killed
Speaker 1: the elderly couple running it, along with their seven year
Speaker 1: old grandson. After this, the two men headed to Seoul
Speaker 1: to carry on their murderous spree. Kim Dai Dou killed
Speaker 1: a total of seventeen people during a fifty five day
Speaker 1: period over the late summer and autumn of nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: Considered one of the worst and most prolific criminals in
Speaker 1: South Korea's history, he was caught, convicted, and executed for
Speaker 1: his crimes the following year. Kim Dai Dou died long
Speaker 1: before the five young boys from Daegu, but there were
Speaker 1: others who could well have been suspects. One well known
Speaker 1: serial killer active in South Korea at the time of
Speaker 1: the Frog Boy's disappearance was Leechun Jai born in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three. Between nineteen eighty six and nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: he committed numerous sexual assaults and murdered fifteen women and girls,
Speaker 1: mainly in the city of Hassiong on the northwest coast.
Speaker 1: The murders went unsold for thirty years before Lee was
Speaker 1: finally caught in twenty nineteen. In the end, Lee was
Speaker 1: sentenced to life imprisonment, but only for the killing of
Speaker 1: his sister in law in nineteen ninety four. Despite conclusive
Speaker 1: DNA evidence and Lee's confession to the other murders, he
Speaker 1: could not be prosecuted for the crimes because the fifteen
Speaker 1: year statute of limitations on cases of first degree murder,
Speaker 1: which South Korea had in place at the time, had expired.
Speaker 1: But the so called Hasseeong murderer's victims had all been
Speaker 1: female and in the far northwest of the country, nowhere
Speaker 1: near Daegu. Another man named Yu yong Chul killed as
Speaker 1: many as twenty people by bludgeoning them to death with
Speaker 1: a hammer. In an effort to confuse investigators, You attempted
Speaker 1: to make his crime scenes look like robberies that had
Speaker 1: turned violent, although, as it would turn out, nothing of
Speaker 1: any monetary value was ever taken. You first targeted only
Speaker 1: elderly people, then, when police investigations of the crimes started
Speaker 1: to intensify, he switched to targeting female massuses and sex workers.
Speaker 1: He dismembered and mutilated his victims to prevent their identification.
Speaker 1: And buried their remains in nearby mountains, but his crimes
Speaker 1: were not thought to have started until about the time
Speaker 1: when the remains of the boys were found, and he
Speaker 1: was not thought.
Speaker 2: To have ever attacked children.
Speaker 1: If a psychopathic serial killer was to blame for the
Speaker 1: boy's murders, in the experience of Professor Chai, they would
Speaker 1: almost certainly be other child victims killed in a similar way,
Speaker 1: but no such cases existed. As the parents continued to
Speaker 1: question how the boys could have lain so close to
Speaker 1: home all this time, it was suggested that maybe they'd
Speaker 1: been killed somewhere else before being moved back to the
Speaker 1: mountain once the police and public searches had stopped. Professor
Speaker 1: Chai's forensic investigations quickly disproved this theory, finding no evidence
Speaker 1: whatsoever that the bones had been moved. In addition, dead
Speaker 1: bodies released chemicals into the surrounding soil, including ammonia, hydrogen sulfite,
Speaker 1: as well as elements like iron, zinc, and calcium chiese.
Speaker 1: Analysis of soils taken from around the body suggested that
Speaker 1: they had all but certainly decayed in situ. With all
Speaker 1: the new evidence that had come to light, the DLSO
Speaker 1: police chief promised to reopen the case and conduct a
Speaker 1: new analysis, but by then there was very little time
Speaker 1: left before the fifteen year statute of limitations on first
Speaker 1: degree murder cases would expire. In the end, the police
Speaker 1: abandoned the reinvestigation, claiming it was impossible to achieve a
Speaker 1: result before the senseless deadline. On the twenty fourth of
Speaker 1: March two thousand, four, thirteen years after the so called
Speaker 1: Frog Boys went missing, their funerals were held at the
Speaker 1: Kioonpuk National University Hospital. As his tradition for Korean funerals,
Speaker 1: there were no eulogies. Instead, visitors bowed twice to an
Speaker 1: altar bearing images of the deceased, and then once to
Speaker 1: the next of kin before offering some words of condolence,
Speaker 1: and then the boys. His remains were placed in hearses,
Speaker 1: each covered in yellow and white chrysanthemums, and driven to
Speaker 1: the Daegu City Crematorium. From there they were taken to
Speaker 1: a bridge on the nearby Nakdong River, where their ashes
Speaker 1: were scattered into the water and floated out into the ocean.
Speaker 1: They were closer than brothers, one father said, through tears,
Speaker 1: like five musketeers. Angered by the bungled police investigation. The
Speaker 1: parents filed three separate lawsuits against them, but all failed. However,
Speaker 1: much has changed in South Korea over the last two decades.
Speaker 1: The boy's parents say that these days the police are
Speaker 1: much more sympathetic and inclined to listen to them and
Speaker 1: other parents of missing children than.
Speaker 2: They once were.
Speaker 1: This case was also a significant factor in convincing South
Speaker 1: Korea's lawmakers to abolished the senseless fifteen year statute of
Speaker 1: limitations on cases of first degree murder, a change which
Speaker 1: came into being in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: The same year, the Daegu.
Speaker 1: Police announced they were forming a new task force to
Speaker 1: review the boy's case from the beginning, promising to follow
Speaker 1: up on any new information they receive. So far, no
Speaker 1: one has ever been arrested in connection with the case.
Speaker 1: The landscape around Woyong Mountain has changed too. The city
Speaker 1: of Daegu installed the Frog Boy Memorial and Children's Safety
Speaker 1: Prayer Monument close to the mountain. It consists of a
Speaker 1: small sculpture featuring five flower shaped stones. The high school
Speaker 1: that the Frog Boys attended was relocated and renamed, while
Speaker 1: the fiftieth Army Division base was also moved away from
Speaker 1: the area, a landfill site can now be found where
Speaker 1: it used to be Today, many people believed that the
Speaker 1: unexplained deaths of thirteen year old Wu chield One, twelve
Speaker 1: year old Joho Yon, eleven year old Kim yong Ju,
Speaker 1: ten year old Park Chan Inn, and nine year old
Speaker 1: Kim Chong Sheikh involved some sort of conspiracy between the
Speaker 1: police and the military to cover up the true events.
Speaker 1: As the boys played on the mountain, did they stray
Speaker 1: too close.
Speaker 2: To the edge of a firing range?
Speaker 1: Was one of the boys accidentally shot by an officer
Speaker 1: who happened to have gone into the range that day
Speaker 1: to fire off some rounds. Did this man, hearing the
Speaker 1: screams of the boy he'd hit, find and kill the
Speaker 1: other boys to cover up his crime. In nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: South Korea was still very much ruled by the military
Speaker 1: dictatorship of President Roe Teyou, whose power was under ever
Speaker 1: increasing strain. Might the emergence of a story involving a
Speaker 1: member of the military killing five young boys be too
Speaker 1: much for the public to bear. Certainly, if the military
Speaker 1: were determined to hush up such an incident, it's unlikely
Speaker 1: that anyone, even the police would have had the power
Speaker 1: in that political climate to investigate the case thoroughly, or
Speaker 1: had the boys in fact been murdered by a random
Speaker 1: psychopath who may remain at large.
Speaker 2: To this day.
Speaker 1: For now, the truth of what exactly happened to the
Speaker 1: so called frog Boys of Daegu remains tragically unexplained. This
Speaker 1: episode was written by Diane Hope and produced by me
Speaker 1: Richard McLain smith. Diane is an audio producer and sound
Speaker 1: recordst in her own right. You can find out more
Speaker 1: about her work at Dianehope dot com and on Instagram
Speaker 1: at in the sound Field. Unexplained is an Avy Club
Speaker 1: Productions podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All other elements
Speaker 1: of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by
Speaker 1: me Richard McClain smith.
Speaker 2: Unexplained.
Speaker 1: The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
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