May 16, 2025 • 30 mins
Part two of Season 08 Episode 29: Go Tell Fire to the Mountain
It's 11 years since the so-called Frog Boys were last seen alive.
Two men out in the forest, hunting for acorns close to where the boys were last seen, make a grisly discovery.
Will the devastated parents finally get answers about what happened to their sons?
Written by Diane Hope and produced by Richard MacLean Smith
Find us at youtube.com/@unexplainedpod, tiktok.com/@unexplainedpodcast, twitter @unexplainedpod, facebook.com/unexplainedpodcast or www.unexplainedpodcast.com for more info. Thank you for listening.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to the second and final part of Unexplained,
Season eight, episode twenty nine, Go Tell Fire to the Mountain.
It was a brisk early four morning on September twenty sixth,
(00:23):
two thousand and two when two men set out for
a hike up Woyong Mountain in northeast Daegu. They took
their time, enjoying the burnt reds oranges and yellows of
the autumn leaves as they searched the ground looking for
fallen acorns, a culinary delicacy for many Koreans. Up ahead,
(00:43):
one of the men saw what seemed to be discarded
clothing among a pile of rocks. He drew closer and
recoiled suddenly when he saw something unexpected poking out from
the tattered fabric, something that looked for all the world
like a human bone.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Then he saw another.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
It was a short time later when the two men arrived,
shocked and breathless, at a nearby police station to report
their grizzly find. Meanwhile, Professor che Chong Min was hard
at work in his lab at Kyungpuk National University in Daegu,
as one of only fifty pathologists in South Korea. Chong
(01:24):
Minh was part of an elite group. Despite technical advancements
in recent decades, working as a forensic pathologist has never
been an easy job. Aspiring students have to spend six
years at medical school, then undergo a further five years
of extra training to become a forensic specialist. According to
(01:45):
the National Police Agency, about twenty five thousand people die
from unnatural causes in Korea every year, but only twenty
percent to typically undergo an autopsy, an extremely low figure
compared to a country like the US, for example, where
forty percent of potentially suspicious deaths are sent for further examination.
(02:07):
This is in part due to some persistent cultural norms,
in particular the extensive belief among older Koreans that dissecting
a corpse kills the person twice. In the United States
and Europe, forensic doctors commonly accompany the police during their
initial investigations of a suspicious death, but in South Korea,
(02:28):
forensic scientists only conduct autopsies when specifically asked to. So
when the phone rang in Professor Chai's lab late on
that Somber September day, a call from the police urgently
requesting his assistance on Woyong Mountain. He dropped everything and
rushed to the scene. Many had forgotten the tragic tale
(02:50):
of the missing frog Boys that had so gripped the
nation eleven years before, but for anyone involved with law
enforcement or forensic pathology, the suggest question that bones had
been found on Woyang Mountain could mean only one thing.
(03:11):
In the hours since the two hikers reported their discovery
of possible human remains, the area was inundated with police, reporters,
and locals. The police quickly established the bones were indeed human,
with initial observations suggesting they constituted the remains of five
separate individuals. Back in two thousand and two, South Korea
(03:35):
had not yet established a system to ensure that only
a forensic specialist could excavate dead bodies. The police weren't
trained in the delicate skills of unearthing corpses that might
have died in suspicious circumstances, so they hadn't followed structured procedure,
either in their digging or inadequately securing the scene to
(03:56):
preserve any forensic clues. On his own, rival, Professor Chai
was shocked to find members of the public and the
media trampling over the ground just a few feet away
from where the bodies had been found. But what shocked
him most was the way in which the bones and
clothing were being treated. Rather than stopping to carefully document
(04:18):
the scene one after another, the remains were just hauled out,
with no attempt even to keep the bones from each
apparent body separate. For some inexplicable reason, the skulls and
any long bones had been lumped together and laid out
on sheets of paper, and not even clean paper, but
old newspapers. The remains, as someone later commented, had been
(04:43):
set out as if they were produced on a cheap
market store standing watch. Equally shocked by what they were
witnessing were the parents of the missing boys. As news
of the find had spread quickly through the local community,
they were among the first to travel to the scene.
One by one, the clothes each of their children had
(05:05):
been wearing on the day they disappeared were dug out
of the earth and brought over to them. Many didn't
want to believe it at first, but in the end
all were left to face the brutal truth their children
were dead. What upset them as much as anything was
just how close to home the boys had been all
(05:26):
this time, How could they have been overlooked, they wondered,
in an area that had been so thoroughly searched in
the days and weeks after the initial disappearance, At some point,
a school jacket was pulled out and taken over to
the onlooking parents. Kim Juan Dou, the man whose haunting
(05:46):
dream had presaged this very moment, recognized it as having
belonged to his eleven year old son Young Jieu. Through
floods of tears, he took the jacket into his arms
to absolutely confirm it for himself and the police. He
began to search for the school's badge that was sewn
on the front of it. He noticed then that the
(06:10):
sleeves of the jacket seemed to have been deliberately tied
in a knot. When he untied them, he was astonished
to see a number of empty cartridges and three unused
bullets fall out from the garment onto the dirt. After
(06:36):
Kim he Onundo's shocking discovery, it emerged that his son's
trousers were found to have been removed from his body
and placed over his head. More bullets were found among
the clothing, including in one of the boy's underwear, as
well as being scattered in the soil and on the
ground around the boy's remains. For mister Kim, as soon
(06:58):
as he saw the bullets immediately became convinced that his
son had been shocked. News of the strange find soon
spread among the other parents, onlookers, and reporters, who were
quick to publish the findings, which made what the police
did next or the more inexplicable. Less than twenty four
(07:19):
hours after the remains were found, without the forensic examination
having even begun, the local Dalso police chief called a
press conference in front of the nation's media. The chief
delivered his verdict because of the way their remains had
been found huddled together, He and his team determined that
(07:40):
the boys had simply died of hypothermia. The parents were stunned,
and so was forensic's professor Chai Jong Min. Even without
conducting an autopsy, he knew the.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Police were wrong.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
In his experience, anyone who died of hypothermia tended to
be found on top of the soil surface, perhaps covered
with a light layer of fresh hummers and fallen leaves,
but not buried underneath layers of soil to a depth
of several feet, as most of the boy's bodies were
another hypothermia expert Choi Won Souk, the rescue team director
(08:20):
of the Korean Alpine Federation, heard the announcement in his
car as he was traveling for work. He was so
baffled by the police's assessment he contacted members of his
team as soon as he got home and arranged to
meet at Mount woyon the next day to have a
look for themselves. Arriving at the scene, Choi and his
(08:42):
team found that the spot where the boy's remains had
been located was barely one hundred meters above the nearest
city streets. According to weather data, Although there had been
a little wind and rain the night the boys went missing,
the lowest temperature recorded was three degrees celsius, hardly cold
(09:03):
enough to cause the children to freeze to death, and
in any case, as Choi thought, if they had become
wet and cold, surely the boys would have just made
the quick and easy journey back to their homes. It
was only when Choi and his team asked to see
maps of the area as it was at the time
the boys went missing, that a whole other angle began
(09:25):
to emerge. What Choi one Sercentis team discovered was that
the boy's remains were found extremely close to the base
of the Korean Army's fiftieth Division. But more than that,
the precise spot was less than three hundred meters away
(09:47):
from what at the time was the division shooting range.
Was it possible, Choi wondered that one or more of
the children had been shot by someone on the army's
firing range. As this possibility found its way into media reports,
the frog Boy's parents couldn't help but be reminded of
that strange night several years earlier, when they'd been called
(10:10):
onto the military base in the dead of night to
speak with the medium. What on earth had that all
been about, they wandered.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
And there was.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Also the mysterious report from the boy called Ham, who'd
reported hearing a series of unusual loud sounds followed by
two blood curdling screams. Could those loud sounds have in
fact been gunshots? Before long, many began to suspect that
the Korean military were hiding something. In response, the fiftieth
(10:43):
Division held a press conference. Incredibly, they confirmed that the
bullets found with the frog boy's remains were indeed from
their firing range, but they insisted they were stray bullets
that had all come from a routine target practice and
just happened to have become mixed up in the boy's clothing. Furthermore,
(11:04):
they said the boys couldn't have been killed by an
army shooter because the division soldiers had been given the
day off for the national holiday. In any case, even
if they had been on site, no one was allowed
to shoot without a commissioned officer present. But there was
one inconvenient detail to the military's dismissal. Commissioned officers themselves
(11:28):
were entirely free to go out onto the firing range
and shoot on their own any time they wanted. There
was even an unconfirmed rumor that one such officer did
fire his rifle that day, having told someone at the
base that he had some rounds of ammunition to use up.
The Army has never confirmed this, and the identity of
(11:51):
who that officer might have been remains a mystery to
this day. Under Professor Chai Chong Min's direction, it took
the forensic team two full days to find all the
boy's bones, which were taken back to his lab for analysis.
(12:13):
On the second day, one of the skulls lifted from
the ground was found to have been pierced by two
holes on opposite sides, giving greater credence to the theory
that the boys had been shot. However, when Professor Chai
examined the injury closer in the lab, he found no
evidence of the usual fractures around the cavities that a
(12:35):
bullet would have made. But what Chai did discover, first
on this skull then on the others, was even more chilling.
That where a series of unusual, small cut marks all
over the skull bone surfaces. The police suggested they had
most likely been made some time after the boys had died,
(12:58):
perhaps caused by so some one unwittingly working over the
area with a farm tool, but Professor Chai didn't agree.
He sent detailed photographs of the marks to an expert
anthropologist in the US. She responded with complete conviction that
the marks were definitely human made and were caused by
(13:20):
a very narrow, sharply pointed implement. But most horrifically of all,
there was no doubt in her mind that the injuries
had been inflicted before death. Although the police were unwilling
to countenance it. To Professor Chai, the boy's deaths were
starting to look very much like the work of a psychopath. Certainly,
(13:44):
it wouldn't be the first time a psychopath had killed
in South Korea, perhaps it's most notorious. Long before the
Frog Boy case was a man called Kim Dai Do
born in nineteen forty nine. He was the eldest of
seven from a low income family in a southern rural province.
(14:04):
Despite his parents high expectations, Kim failed academically and soon
turned to petty crime. After being caught stealing and spending
some time in prison, he was determined to try and
turn his life around. On his release, he tried to
earn an honest living as a factory worker, but his
reputation as an ex convict always preceded him, and he
(14:27):
soon became resentful toward society and how.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
It perceived him.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
In the summer of nineteen seventy five, Kim broke into
the home of an elderly couple to burgle them, but
when they disturbed him, he killed the man and seriously
injured his wife instead. Shortly after that, he met a
fellow ex con while on a train, and they banded
together to carry out more robberies.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
The pair entered a.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Shop in a town on Korea's southwest coast and killed
the elderly couple running it, along with their seven year
old grandson. After this, the two men headed to Seoul
to carry on their murderous spree. Kim Dai Dou killed
a total of seventeen people during a fifty five day
(15:15):
period over the late summer and autumn of nineteen seventy five.
Considered one of the worst and most prolific criminals in
South Korea's history, he was caught, convicted, and executed for
his crimes the following year. Kim Dai Dou died long
before the five young boys from Daegu, but there were
(15:37):
others who could well have been suspects. One well known
serial killer active in South Korea at the time of
the Frog Boy's disappearance was Leechun Jai born in nineteen
(15:59):
sixty three. Between nineteen eighty six and nineteen ninety four,
he committed numerous sexual assaults and murdered fifteen women and girls,
mainly in the city of Hassiong on the northwest coast.
The murders went unsold for thirty years before Lee was
finally caught in twenty nineteen. In the end, Lee was
(16:22):
sentenced to life imprisonment, but only for the killing of
his sister in law in nineteen ninety four. Despite conclusive
DNA evidence and Lee's confession to the other murders, he
could not be prosecuted for the crimes because the fifteen
year statute of limitations on cases of first degree murder,
(16:42):
which South Korea had in place at the time, had expired.
But the so called Hasseeong murderer's victims had all been
female and in the far northwest of the country, nowhere
near Daegu. Another man named Yu yong Chul killed as
many as twenty people by bludgeoning them to death with
(17:04):
a hammer. In an effort to confuse investigators, You attempted
to make his crime scenes look like robberies that had
turned violent, although, as it would turn out, nothing of
any monetary value was ever taken. You first targeted only
elderly people, then, when police investigations of the crimes started
(17:26):
to intensify, he switched to targeting female massuses and sex workers.
He dismembered and mutilated his victims to prevent their identification.
And buried their remains in nearby mountains, but his crimes
were not thought to have started until about the time
when the remains of the boys were found, and he
(17:48):
was not thought.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
To have ever attacked children.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
If a psychopathic serial killer was to blame for the
boy's murders, in the experience of Professor Chai, they would
almost certainly be other child victims killed in a similar way,
but no such cases existed. As the parents continued to
question how the boys could have lain so close to
home all this time, it was suggested that maybe they'd
(18:16):
been killed somewhere else before being moved back to the
mountain once the police and public searches had stopped. Professor
Chai's forensic investigations quickly disproved this theory, finding no evidence
whatsoever that the bones had been moved. In addition, dead
bodies released chemicals into the surrounding soil, including ammonia, hydrogen sulfite,
(18:41):
as well as elements like iron, zinc, and calcium chiese.
Analysis of soils taken from around the body suggested that
they had all but certainly decayed in situ. With all
the new evidence that had come to light, the DLSO
(19:04):
police chief promised to reopen the case and conduct a
new analysis, but by then there was very little time
left before the fifteen year statute of limitations on first
degree murder cases would expire. In the end, the police
abandoned the reinvestigation, claiming it was impossible to achieve a
(19:25):
result before the senseless deadline. On the twenty fourth of
March two thousand, four, thirteen years after the so called
Frog Boys went missing, their funerals were held at the
Kioonpuk National University Hospital. As his tradition for Korean funerals,
there were no eulogies. Instead, visitors bowed twice to an
(19:50):
altar bearing images of the deceased, and then once to
the next of kin before offering some words of condolence,
and then the boys. His remains were placed in hearses,
each covered in yellow and white chrysanthemums, and driven to
the Daegu City Crematorium. From there they were taken to
(20:11):
a bridge on the nearby Nakdong River, where their ashes
were scattered into the water and floated out into the ocean.
They were closer than brothers, one father said, through tears,
like five musketeers. Angered by the bungled police investigation. The
(20:33):
parents filed three separate lawsuits against them, but all failed. However,
much has changed in South Korea over the last two decades.
The boy's parents say that these days the police are
much more sympathetic and inclined to listen to them and
other parents of missing children than.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
They once were.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
This case was also a significant factor in convincing South
Korea's lawmakers to abolished the senseless fifteen year statute of
limitations on cases of first degree murder, a change which
came into being in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
The same year, the Daegu.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Police announced they were forming a new task force to
review the boy's case from the beginning, promising to follow
up on any new information they receive. So far, no
one has ever been arrested in connection with the case.
The landscape around Woyong Mountain has changed too. The city
(21:34):
of Daegu installed the Frog Boy Memorial and Children's Safety
Prayer Monument close to the mountain. It consists of a
small sculpture featuring five flower shaped stones. The high school
that the Frog Boys attended was relocated and renamed, while
the fiftieth Army Division base was also moved away from
(21:55):
the area, a landfill site can now be found where
it used to be Today, many people believed that the
unexplained deaths of thirteen year old Wu chield One, twelve
year old Joho Yon, eleven year old Kim yong Ju,
(22:20):
ten year old Park Chan Inn, and nine year old
Kim Chong Sheikh involved some sort of conspiracy between the
police and the military to cover up the true events.
As the boys played on the mountain, did they stray
too close.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
To the edge of a firing range?
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Was one of the boys accidentally shot by an officer
who happened to have gone into the range that day
to fire off some rounds. Did this man, hearing the
screams of the boy he'd hit, find and kill the
other boys to cover up his crime. In nineteen ninety one,
South Korea was still very much ruled by the military
(23:02):
dictatorship of President Roe Teyou, whose power was under ever
increasing strain. Might the emergence of a story involving a
member of the military killing five young boys be too
much for the public to bear. Certainly, if the military
were determined to hush up such an incident, it's unlikely
(23:25):
that anyone, even the police would have had the power
in that political climate to investigate the case thoroughly, or
had the boys in fact been murdered by a random
psychopath who may remain at large.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
To this day.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
For now, the truth of what exactly happened to the
so called frog Boys of Daegu remains tragically unexplained. This
(24:02):
episode was written by Diane Hope and produced by me
Richard McLain smith. Diane is an audio producer and sound
recordst in her own right. You can find out more
about her work at Dianehope dot com and on Instagram
at in the sound Field. Unexplained is an Avy Club
Productions podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All other elements
(24:27):
of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by
me Richard McClain smith.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Unexplained.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and
other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever
you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in
touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've
heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of
(24:55):
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Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast m S, s
Speaker 2 (30:02):
DA,
You're listening to the second and final part of Unexplained,
Season eight, episode twenty nine, Go Tell Fire to the Mountain.
It was a brisk early four morning on September twenty sixth,
(00:23):
two thousand and two when two men set out for
a hike up Woyong Mountain in northeast Daegu. They took
their time, enjoying the burnt reds oranges and yellows of
the autumn leaves as they searched the ground looking for
fallen acorns, a culinary delicacy for many Koreans. Up ahead,
(00:43):
one of the men saw what seemed to be discarded
clothing among a pile of rocks. He drew closer and
recoiled suddenly when he saw something unexpected poking out from
the tattered fabric, something that looked for all the world
like a human bone.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Then he saw another.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
It was a short time later when the two men arrived,
shocked and breathless, at a nearby police station to report
their grizzly find. Meanwhile, Professor che Chong Min was hard
at work in his lab at Kyungpuk National University in Daegu,
as one of only fifty pathologists in South Korea. Chong
(01:24):
Minh was part of an elite group. Despite technical advancements
in recent decades, working as a forensic pathologist has never
been an easy job. Aspiring students have to spend six
years at medical school, then undergo a further five years
of extra training to become a forensic specialist. According to
(01:45):
the National Police Agency, about twenty five thousand people die
from unnatural causes in Korea every year, but only twenty
percent to typically undergo an autopsy, an extremely low figure
compared to a country like the US, for example, where
forty percent of potentially suspicious deaths are sent for further examination.
(02:07):
This is in part due to some persistent cultural norms,
in particular the extensive belief among older Koreans that dissecting
a corpse kills the person twice. In the United States
and Europe, forensic doctors commonly accompany the police during their
initial investigations of a suspicious death, but in South Korea,
(02:28):
forensic scientists only conduct autopsies when specifically asked to. So
when the phone rang in Professor Chai's lab late on
that Somber September day, a call from the police urgently
requesting his assistance on Woyong Mountain. He dropped everything and
rushed to the scene. Many had forgotten the tragic tale
(02:50):
of the missing frog Boys that had so gripped the
nation eleven years before, but for anyone involved with law
enforcement or forensic pathology, the suggest question that bones had
been found on Woyang Mountain could mean only one thing.
(03:11):
In the hours since the two hikers reported their discovery
of possible human remains, the area was inundated with police, reporters,
and locals. The police quickly established the bones were indeed human,
with initial observations suggesting they constituted the remains of five
separate individuals. Back in two thousand and two, South Korea
(03:35):
had not yet established a system to ensure that only
a forensic specialist could excavate dead bodies. The police weren't
trained in the delicate skills of unearthing corpses that might
have died in suspicious circumstances, so they hadn't followed structured procedure,
either in their digging or inadequately securing the scene to
(03:56):
preserve any forensic clues. On his own, rival, Professor Chai
was shocked to find members of the public and the
media trampling over the ground just a few feet away
from where the bodies had been found. But what shocked
him most was the way in which the bones and
clothing were being treated. Rather than stopping to carefully document
(04:18):
the scene one after another, the remains were just hauled out,
with no attempt even to keep the bones from each
apparent body separate. For some inexplicable reason, the skulls and
any long bones had been lumped together and laid out
on sheets of paper, and not even clean paper, but
old newspapers. The remains, as someone later commented, had been
(04:43):
set out as if they were produced on a cheap
market store standing watch. Equally shocked by what they were
witnessing were the parents of the missing boys. As news
of the find had spread quickly through the local community,
they were among the first to travel to the scene.
One by one, the clothes each of their children had
(05:05):
been wearing on the day they disappeared were dug out
of the earth and brought over to them. Many didn't
want to believe it at first, but in the end
all were left to face the brutal truth their children
were dead. What upset them as much as anything was
just how close to home the boys had been all
(05:26):
this time, How could they have been overlooked, they wondered,
in an area that had been so thoroughly searched in
the days and weeks after the initial disappearance, At some point,
a school jacket was pulled out and taken over to
the onlooking parents. Kim Juan Dou, the man whose haunting
(05:46):
dream had presaged this very moment, recognized it as having
belonged to his eleven year old son Young Jieu. Through
floods of tears, he took the jacket into his arms
to absolutely confirm it for himself and the police. He
began to search for the school's badge that was sewn
on the front of it. He noticed then that the
(06:10):
sleeves of the jacket seemed to have been deliberately tied
in a knot. When he untied them, he was astonished
to see a number of empty cartridges and three unused
bullets fall out from the garment onto the dirt. After
(06:36):
Kim he Onundo's shocking discovery, it emerged that his son's
trousers were found to have been removed from his body
and placed over his head. More bullets were found among
the clothing, including in one of the boy's underwear, as
well as being scattered in the soil and on the
ground around the boy's remains. For mister Kim, as soon
(06:58):
as he saw the bullets immediately became convinced that his
son had been shocked. News of the strange find soon
spread among the other parents, onlookers, and reporters, who were
quick to publish the findings, which made what the police
did next or the more inexplicable. Less than twenty four
(07:19):
hours after the remains were found, without the forensic examination
having even begun, the local Dalso police chief called a
press conference in front of the nation's media. The chief
delivered his verdict because of the way their remains had
been found huddled together, He and his team determined that
(07:40):
the boys had simply died of hypothermia. The parents were stunned,
and so was forensic's professor Chai Jong Min. Even without
conducting an autopsy, he knew the.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Police were wrong.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
In his experience, anyone who died of hypothermia tended to
be found on top of the soil surface, perhaps covered
with a light layer of fresh hummers and fallen leaves,
but not buried underneath layers of soil to a depth
of several feet, as most of the boy's bodies were
another hypothermia expert Choi Won Souk, the rescue team director
(08:20):
of the Korean Alpine Federation, heard the announcement in his
car as he was traveling for work. He was so
baffled by the police's assessment he contacted members of his
team as soon as he got home and arranged to
meet at Mount woyon the next day to have a
look for themselves. Arriving at the scene, Choi and his
(08:42):
team found that the spot where the boy's remains had
been located was barely one hundred meters above the nearest
city streets. According to weather data, Although there had been
a little wind and rain the night the boys went missing,
the lowest temperature recorded was three degrees celsius, hardly cold
(09:03):
enough to cause the children to freeze to death, and
in any case, as Choi thought, if they had become
wet and cold, surely the boys would have just made
the quick and easy journey back to their homes. It
was only when Choi and his team asked to see
maps of the area as it was at the time
the boys went missing, that a whole other angle began
(09:25):
to emerge. What Choi one Sercentis team discovered was that
the boy's remains were found extremely close to the base
of the Korean Army's fiftieth Division. But more than that,
the precise spot was less than three hundred meters away
(09:47):
from what at the time was the division shooting range.
Was it possible, Choi wondered that one or more of
the children had been shot by someone on the army's
firing range. As this possibility found its way into media reports,
the frog Boy's parents couldn't help but be reminded of
that strange night several years earlier, when they'd been called
(10:10):
onto the military base in the dead of night to
speak with the medium. What on earth had that all
been about, they wandered.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
And there was.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Also the mysterious report from the boy called Ham, who'd
reported hearing a series of unusual loud sounds followed by
two blood curdling screams. Could those loud sounds have in
fact been gunshots? Before long, many began to suspect that
the Korean military were hiding something. In response, the fiftieth
(10:43):
Division held a press conference. Incredibly, they confirmed that the
bullets found with the frog boy's remains were indeed from
their firing range, but they insisted they were stray bullets
that had all come from a routine target practice and
just happened to have become mixed up in the boy's clothing. Furthermore,
(11:04):
they said the boys couldn't have been killed by an
army shooter because the division soldiers had been given the
day off for the national holiday. In any case, even
if they had been on site, no one was allowed
to shoot without a commissioned officer present. But there was
one inconvenient detail to the military's dismissal. Commissioned officers themselves
(11:28):
were entirely free to go out onto the firing range
and shoot on their own any time they wanted. There
was even an unconfirmed rumor that one such officer did
fire his rifle that day, having told someone at the
base that he had some rounds of ammunition to use up.
The Army has never confirmed this, and the identity of
(11:51):
who that officer might have been remains a mystery to
this day. Under Professor Chai Chong Min's direction, it took
the forensic team two full days to find all the
boy's bones, which were taken back to his lab for analysis.
(12:13):
On the second day, one of the skulls lifted from
the ground was found to have been pierced by two
holes on opposite sides, giving greater credence to the theory
that the boys had been shot. However, when Professor Chai
examined the injury closer in the lab, he found no
evidence of the usual fractures around the cavities that a
(12:35):
bullet would have made. But what Chai did discover, first
on this skull then on the others, was even more chilling.
That where a series of unusual, small cut marks all
over the skull bone surfaces. The police suggested they had
most likely been made some time after the boys had died,
(12:58):
perhaps caused by so some one unwittingly working over the
area with a farm tool, but Professor Chai didn't agree.
He sent detailed photographs of the marks to an expert
anthropologist in the US. She responded with complete conviction that
the marks were definitely human made and were caused by
(13:20):
a very narrow, sharply pointed implement. But most horrifically of all,
there was no doubt in her mind that the injuries
had been inflicted before death. Although the police were unwilling
to countenance it. To Professor Chai, the boy's deaths were
starting to look very much like the work of a psychopath. Certainly,
(13:44):
it wouldn't be the first time a psychopath had killed
in South Korea, perhaps it's most notorious. Long before the
Frog Boy case was a man called Kim Dai Do
born in nineteen forty nine. He was the eldest of
seven from a low income family in a southern rural province.
(14:04):
Despite his parents high expectations, Kim failed academically and soon
turned to petty crime. After being caught stealing and spending
some time in prison, he was determined to try and
turn his life around. On his release, he tried to
earn an honest living as a factory worker, but his
reputation as an ex convict always preceded him, and he
(14:27):
soon became resentful toward society and how.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
It perceived him.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
In the summer of nineteen seventy five, Kim broke into
the home of an elderly couple to burgle them, but
when they disturbed him, he killed the man and seriously
injured his wife instead. Shortly after that, he met a
fellow ex con while on a train, and they banded
together to carry out more robberies.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
The pair entered a.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Shop in a town on Korea's southwest coast and killed
the elderly couple running it, along with their seven year
old grandson. After this, the two men headed to Seoul
to carry on their murderous spree. Kim Dai Dou killed
a total of seventeen people during a fifty five day
(15:15):
period over the late summer and autumn of nineteen seventy five.
Considered one of the worst and most prolific criminals in
South Korea's history, he was caught, convicted, and executed for
his crimes the following year. Kim Dai Dou died long
before the five young boys from Daegu, but there were
(15:37):
others who could well have been suspects. One well known
serial killer active in South Korea at the time of
the Frog Boy's disappearance was Leechun Jai born in nineteen
(15:59):
sixty three. Between nineteen eighty six and nineteen ninety four,
he committed numerous sexual assaults and murdered fifteen women and girls,
mainly in the city of Hassiong on the northwest coast.
The murders went unsold for thirty years before Lee was
finally caught in twenty nineteen. In the end, Lee was
(16:22):
sentenced to life imprisonment, but only for the killing of
his sister in law in nineteen ninety four. Despite conclusive
DNA evidence and Lee's confession to the other murders, he
could not be prosecuted for the crimes because the fifteen
year statute of limitations on cases of first degree murder,
(16:42):
which South Korea had in place at the time, had expired.
But the so called Hasseeong murderer's victims had all been
female and in the far northwest of the country, nowhere
near Daegu. Another man named Yu yong Chul killed as
many as twenty people by bludgeoning them to death with
(17:04):
a hammer. In an effort to confuse investigators, You attempted
to make his crime scenes look like robberies that had
turned violent, although, as it would turn out, nothing of
any monetary value was ever taken. You first targeted only
elderly people, then, when police investigations of the crimes started
(17:26):
to intensify, he switched to targeting female massuses and sex workers.
He dismembered and mutilated his victims to prevent their identification.
And buried their remains in nearby mountains, but his crimes
were not thought to have started until about the time
when the remains of the boys were found, and he
(17:48):
was not thought.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
To have ever attacked children.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
If a psychopathic serial killer was to blame for the
boy's murders, in the experience of Professor Chai, they would
almost certainly be other child victims killed in a similar way,
but no such cases existed. As the parents continued to
question how the boys could have lain so close to
home all this time, it was suggested that maybe they'd
(18:16):
been killed somewhere else before being moved back to the
mountain once the police and public searches had stopped. Professor
Chai's forensic investigations quickly disproved this theory, finding no evidence
whatsoever that the bones had been moved. In addition, dead
bodies released chemicals into the surrounding soil, including ammonia, hydrogen sulfite,
(18:41):
as well as elements like iron, zinc, and calcium chiese.
Analysis of soils taken from around the body suggested that
they had all but certainly decayed in situ. With all
the new evidence that had come to light, the DLSO
(19:04):
police chief promised to reopen the case and conduct a
new analysis, but by then there was very little time
left before the fifteen year statute of limitations on first
degree murder cases would expire. In the end, the police
abandoned the reinvestigation, claiming it was impossible to achieve a
(19:25):
result before the senseless deadline. On the twenty fourth of
March two thousand, four, thirteen years after the so called
Frog Boys went missing, their funerals were held at the
Kioonpuk National University Hospital. As his tradition for Korean funerals,
there were no eulogies. Instead, visitors bowed twice to an
(19:50):
altar bearing images of the deceased, and then once to
the next of kin before offering some words of condolence,
and then the boys. His remains were placed in hearses,
each covered in yellow and white chrysanthemums, and driven to
the Daegu City Crematorium. From there they were taken to
(20:11):
a bridge on the nearby Nakdong River, where their ashes
were scattered into the water and floated out into the ocean.
They were closer than brothers, one father said, through tears,
like five musketeers. Angered by the bungled police investigation. The
(20:33):
parents filed three separate lawsuits against them, but all failed. However,
much has changed in South Korea over the last two decades.
The boy's parents say that these days the police are
much more sympathetic and inclined to listen to them and
other parents of missing children than.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
They once were.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
This case was also a significant factor in convincing South
Korea's lawmakers to abolished the senseless fifteen year statute of
limitations on cases of first degree murder, a change which
came into being in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
The same year, the Daegu.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Police announced they were forming a new task force to
review the boy's case from the beginning, promising to follow
up on any new information they receive. So far, no
one has ever been arrested in connection with the case.
The landscape around Woyong Mountain has changed too. The city
(21:34):
of Daegu installed the Frog Boy Memorial and Children's Safety
Prayer Monument close to the mountain. It consists of a
small sculpture featuring five flower shaped stones. The high school
that the Frog Boys attended was relocated and renamed, while
the fiftieth Army Division base was also moved away from
(21:55):
the area, a landfill site can now be found where
it used to be Today, many people believed that the
unexplained deaths of thirteen year old Wu chield One, twelve
year old Joho Yon, eleven year old Kim yong Ju,
(22:20):
ten year old Park Chan Inn, and nine year old
Kim Chong Sheikh involved some sort of conspiracy between the
police and the military to cover up the true events.
As the boys played on the mountain, did they stray
too close.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
To the edge of a firing range?
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Was one of the boys accidentally shot by an officer
who happened to have gone into the range that day
to fire off some rounds. Did this man, hearing the
screams of the boy he'd hit, find and kill the
other boys to cover up his crime. In nineteen ninety one,
South Korea was still very much ruled by the military
(23:02):
dictatorship of President Roe Teyou, whose power was under ever
increasing strain. Might the emergence of a story involving a
member of the military killing five young boys be too
much for the public to bear. Certainly, if the military
were determined to hush up such an incident, it's unlikely
(23:25):
that anyone, even the police would have had the power
in that political climate to investigate the case thoroughly, or
had the boys in fact been murdered by a random
psychopath who may remain at large.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
To this day.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
For now, the truth of what exactly happened to the
so called frog Boys of Daegu remains tragically unexplained. This
(24:02):
episode was written by Diane Hope and produced by me
Richard McLain smith. Diane is an audio producer and sound
recordst in her own right. You can find out more
about her work at Dianehope dot com and on Instagram
at in the sound Field. Unexplained is an Avy Club
Productions podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All other elements
(24:27):
of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by
me Richard McClain smith.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Unexplained.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and
other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever
you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in
touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've
heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of
(24:55):
your own you'd like to share. You can find out
more at Unexplained Podcasts dot com, and reach us online
through Twitter at Unexplained pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com,
Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast m S, s
Speaker 2 (30:02):
DA,
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