#381: 44 HS Boys FREED After Gang SA Of 14 Yr Old Girl - Now Korean YouTubers Are Doxxing Them

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Speaker 1 June 1st, 2024, a Korean YouTube channel by the name of Hell Storage. The title itself is already a bit strange.
It's someone's full name, Paki Bum. Did you think that I wouldn't find you?

Speaker 1 It's almost like those videos on social media where someone sends in a picture of them at a bar. And now this TikToker, this YouTuber.

Speaker 1 It's almost like those videos on social media where someone will send in a picture of themselves at a bar.

Speaker 1 And now this YouTuber, this TikToker will find their location based on the small details, based on the clues in the background of the photo. Have you seen those trends? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 It feels kind of like that at first glance, but it is nothing like that because Pucky Bum never wanted to be found ever. He wanted to live his life in peace with his family, but not anymore.

Speaker 1 There is no way he can do that, not with this video out. The video states, Puck, you worked at a restaurant called Redacted.

Speaker 1 They didn't redact her in the video, but which even Korea's Gordon Ramsey has once visited.

Speaker 1 You have been living a prosperous life, earning money and enjoying luxury while working at your aunt and uncle's restaurant. Look at this post of you and your daughter.

Speaker 1 The caption of that post reads, daughter, don't try to become anything in life. Just live healthily by my side forever.

Speaker 1 Spend the money that I earn for you, exercise, get beauty treatments, drain your dad's wallet. That's all I want.
I love you and I love you and I love you again.

Speaker 1 Live a life that shines brighter than jewels and is more valuable than luxury goods, my precious daughter. The picture shows for Pakibum's daughter's 100th day celebration.

Speaker 1 That's when she turns 100 days old, so she's a little infant. He has stacks of 50s on the table, which is like having stacks of hundreds for your 100-day-old child.

Speaker 1 Around the table, there's just a ton of luxury shopping bags from brands like Chanel, Dior, all scattered around.

Speaker 1 I mean, technically, the photo shows that this Pucky Bum character, this person, is trying to be a good father. I mean, albeit I don't know how you feel about luxury goods for children.

Speaker 2 It was for a hundred year olds? Yeah. Like Chanels and stuff for infant?

Speaker 1 Yes, so the biggest argument is,

Speaker 1 these rich people are doing too much, right? But the video continues. Now that you're married and you have a daughter, Puck, there are things that you want to protect, don't you?

Speaker 1 It seems that Pakibon doesn't even think about what he did in the past.

Speaker 1 And the YouTuber asked the audience the question, is it because the one who hits doesn't remember, but the one who gets hit does?

Speaker 1 After this short three-minute YouTube video goes up, instantly that photo of Pakibum's daughter, the 100-day celebration, is flooded with comments.

Speaker 1 People are commenting, I hope she gets taken away from you. I hope you can never see your own daughter again.
What is your daughter going to think of you?

Speaker 1 I can't wait till your daughter gets older and we all tell her what you did. Terrible father.
Scared at the idea of what kind of filth father you are to a daughter.

Speaker 1 And some of them are just uncalled for. I hope the same thing you did happens to your daughter.
I mean, what are these people talking about?

Speaker 1 Why does it seem like overnight all the Korean netizens have flocked to this random dad's Instagram page? He's not a celebrity. He's not famous.

Speaker 1 So why are people leaving these such harsh comments on this random person's picture?

Speaker 1 Because the now since taken down YouTube video said, Now Pakibum, who was known as the main culprit in the Miriang incident, he knocked the victim unconscious with an iron pipe and gang essayed her with 12 of his buddies.

Speaker 1 He filmed the incident to use as blackmail. This Pucky Bum is a truly despicable person.

Speaker 1 20 years ago, Puck was the ringleader for the Miryang 44 case, where 44 high school students blackmailed, tortured, and essayed a little middle school girl for over a year straight.

Speaker 1 All 44 perpetrators were not punished without even a note on their criminal record. They are currently currently in 2024, 20 years later, living anonymously as free men in this world.

Speaker 1 This YouTube video titled, Puck, Did You Think I Wouldn't Find You?, would be the start of a string of vigilante justice YouTubers slowly releasing the protected hidden identities of the essayers involved, leaving everyone in South Korea wondering, do I know one?

Speaker 1 We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center.

Speaker 1 They have assisted and supported SA violent survivors through various methods, including providing over 87,000 one-on-one counseling sessions, fighting for revisions of laws, and running educational programs.

Speaker 1 They also provide legal assistance and recovery programs for survivors. Most notably, the KSVRC has aided in the recovery for the Mir Young victims.

Speaker 1 This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mingo's growing team of dedicated translators and researchers. We would also like to thank you guys for your continued support.

Speaker 1 As always, full show notes are available at RottenMingopodcast.com. A few quick disclaimers on today's case.

Speaker 1 There are heavy mentions of CSA, CA, and just really strong language against those that have been victims of SA. I will say just overall, every detail of this case is extremely triggering.

Speaker 1 So please watch at your own discretion and remember to always take care of yourself. And with that being said, let's get into it.

Speaker 1 All everyone in Korea could talk about, and this is recent, the first video was uploaded June 1st, 2024.

Speaker 1 All everyone in Korea has been talking about the past, I don't know, two months is this Mir Yang 44 case.

Speaker 1 It seemed like the whole country had been collectively angry for the the past 20 years and all of that hatred and emotion is coming to this new bubbling point with this information coming out.

Speaker 1 Perpetrators names being released.

Speaker 1 I believe that up until this point for the past 20 years, people were kind of holding on to this hope that perhaps the perpetrators would already be arrested for other crimes.

Speaker 1 Maybe they'd be low lives, no future, no careers, no happiness, no families. But no, this is confirmation through YouTubers that they are living well and better than most citizens.

Speaker 1 Sarah, this is a fake name, Sarah was one of those people. Sarah's whole family took this news pretty hard.
They're watching it unfold on YouTube.

Speaker 1 They have nothing to do with the actual case, but Sarah's youngest sibling was a victim of sexual harassment and the perpetrator got off with no punishment.

Speaker 1 The whole family, they just have this bad taste in their mouths. We know Sarah's story because she posts it to an online forum like Reddit in South Korea.

Speaker 1 She writes, but my fiancé's whole reaction to the thing has been very strange.

Speaker 1 To give you some background, she met her fiancé four years ago while they were both volunteering at this organization for stray cats. They were in the process of planning their wedding.

Speaker 1 And one of the reasons that Sarah was so excited to marry this man is because he had always been so supportive of everything her family was going through, especially her younger sister.

Speaker 1 But when this Mir Young 44 news breaks, he's kind of agitated by the whole thing, almost condescendingly poking fun and dogging on her family, stating, oh, your parents are keeping up with the newest updates because they're retired, they have nothing better to do, they have no lives, they need to get a hobby.

Speaker 1 And your youngest sister, who was also a victim of a separate crime, if she had kids and she moved on with her life, she wouldn't be so fixated on some internet drama.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 Sarah writes on the online post, at first I questioned why he would say such things, but as his criticism intensified, I was shocked.

Speaker 1 I said, are you defending them because you're from the same hometown?

Speaker 1 I mean, maybe you have a lot of pride of being from that area area and not wanting that town to appear badly on a national, perhaps even international scale? Is that what it is?

Speaker 1 That's what she accuses him of. And he freaks out.
He throws the soda that he was drinking and just shows her a side of him that she had never seen in four years. That's what she says.

Speaker 1 He tried to punch and kick her that night. Sarah said she was pissed.
She started screaming at him. Oh yeah, you want to hit me? Go ahead, hit me.

Speaker 1 Her fiancé ran out in anger and Sarah was so flabbergasted, honestly, just no words. She calls her sister, tells her sister what's going on, and her sister thought, it is strange.

Speaker 1 He's from the same hometown and he's the same age. His reaction is odd.
What if, I don't know, I just, it's weird. And Myo Yang's not even a big city.
It's not like New York City.

Speaker 1 There were at one point like 100,000 residents. It's a small town.

Speaker 1 The two sisters decide to confront him the next day and Sarah's fiancé admits, fine, he wasn't one of the 44 that essayed the victim but he was part of the larger group that knew about it and he had seen videos of the essays he begs sarah but i'm not that type of person you know me better than anyone please come on you know my family we're all christians

Speaker 1 Sarah said she broke off the engagement and moved in with her sister. The whole weekend, he and his parents have been blowing up her phone, trying to get her to change her mind, and she's disgusted.

Speaker 1 She's writing this because judging by his reaction, he wants the whole world to know that he has no remorse. And these perpetrators that are being outed, they likely don't care either.

Speaker 1 They have no shame. They have no remorse, no guilt.
They're just pissed. She says perpetrators never change their minds or truly repent.

Speaker 1 Sure, he may have not been one of the 44 that are worded 14 year old Hannah, also a fake name, but he's still a monster without remorse. 14 year old Hannah was just discharged from the hospital.

Speaker 1 This is back in 2004.

Speaker 1 She still had bruises that were in the process of healing, scars all over the lower half of her body, and this whole laundry list of pills that she was supposed to take every single day.

Speaker 1 She's not feeling good. She needs rest.
She's in deep in sleep when she hears this. rustling next to her, shuffling.
She's groggy.

Speaker 1 She opens up her eyes and there is this middle-aged woman kneeling next to her, waiting for her to wake up. When Hannah makes eye contact with this woman, this woman starts sobbing.

Speaker 1 She has never seen this woman in her life. Who the hell is this woman? It's not her mom.
It's not her aunt. She doesn't know this person.
Hannah calls for her dad. Nobody comes in.

Speaker 1 This middle-aged woman is on her knees just crying, inching closer and closer. Hannah, don't you feel sorry for your opa?

Speaker 1 Opa means big brother in Korean, but it can be applied to anybody. So it doesn't have to be a relative.

Speaker 1 It could be applied to somebody who is a few months older or a few years older than you at the same school. Don't you feel bad for your opa?

Speaker 1 Even just that statement, your OPA is you're symbolizing a very close relationship.

Speaker 1 For being in detention, look, sign this petition to get him out sooner and Hannah, I'll let you marry him. We can arrange for it when he gets out.

Speaker 1 Hannah didn't know what to say. Because sitting in front of Hannah is the mother of a high school boy, the mother of one of Hannah's 44 R worders.

Speaker 1 She's offering Hannah the quote chance to marry her R worder.

Speaker 2 That is crazy, crazy request.

Speaker 1 A few months prior to that, Hannah was sitting in front of the police officer, watching him flick off another piece of ash from his cigarette onto the ashtray.

Speaker 1 The whole room practically felt thick with the smoke. Five packs of cigarettes in eight hours.
The smell, the smoke, the nauseating questions, it was a lot for Hannah.

Speaker 1 By the way, this is all from from Hannah's recent interviews that she did, where she is still anonymous.

Speaker 1 She said she had to put up with this for eight to 10 hours per day for the past eight days of nonstop questioning. She's 14.
Tell me again how it all happened exactly.

Speaker 1 Start from the top one more time.

Speaker 1 It started a year ago when she was 13. Hannah was about to slam the phone down.
She's at home on the phone. And she's about to turn it off when a voice on the other line is like, wait.

Speaker 1 Hannah's going through her prank call phase, which I feel is an obligation for most kids she was trying to call a friend of hers but she misdialed the phone number by just one number and this random guy picks up and he sounds about her age he has a very young voice wait and they try to make small talk and telling her your voice is pretty and he's a high schooler from miryang which is about an hour away.

Speaker 1 He sounds very normal. Honestly, nothing special or a standout.
But he asks her to hop onto the online chat room that he's in so that they can talk more and just hang out.

Speaker 1 It's not even a one-on-one online chat room. It's a big group chat where a bunch of random high schoolers from all these different towns gather together and they just hang out.

Speaker 1 They just talk about their day. They talk about what's going on in their town.
It's nothing spectacular.

Speaker 1 So for six months on and off, Hannah would just hop on, talk to this boy, and he's an 18-year-old named Pak.

Speaker 1 Pac Kibong.

Speaker 2 Real name.

Speaker 1 Yes. Now, the guys keep encouraging Hannah to come meet up at Miriang, or at least meet them once, right? And South Korea is pretty small.

Speaker 1 So if you live in a different city, it's not like the US where, oh, I meet an online friend. They're from Wisconsin.
They're from Denver, Colorado.

Speaker 1 It would have to take so much out of me to go meet them from the East Coast. South Korea, it's very casual to meet up with online friends.

Speaker 2 And then there's a lot of public transportation.

Speaker 1 Yes. And like, this is nothing new or crazy.
No one's running away to a different town to meet someone in private. You just hop on a bus and you go meet them after school.
Hannah says, we were young.

Speaker 1 We never met up with boys before. We had never been out of our town of Usan before.
so we were a little reluctant, but we decided, eh, let's just go see their faces, talk, maybe eat, and come back.

Speaker 1 Who is we? So Hannah has a little sister that's one year younger. She was also in the chat rooms.
I believe they were sharing one computer though.

Speaker 1 So I don't know if they had two different accounts or if they were just kind of all hanging out together.

Speaker 1 So the two of them, Hannah and her little sister, they take this bus to Midyang and they thought they would mainly be seeing Pac that day.

Speaker 1 But instead, they're greeted not just by Pac, but with a few of his friends too, just waiting.

Speaker 2 And this is six months into talking. Yes.

Speaker 1 Okay. So they know a lot about each other.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And also they're 18, they're about of age, they're, you know,

Speaker 2 definitely has a lot more influence on the girls.

Speaker 1 And truly, even when they get off the bus and they see Pac's friends, nothing about them give off any terrifying energy. They all just seem like regular high school guys.

Speaker 1 Just people you would see in the hallways, just older seniors, maybe. But the police, they're stuck on this one detail.

Speaker 1 They keep asking, so you went to go play with them the police are asking Hannah which this is a big part of the case later the word play gets brought up a lot in reference to Hannah just one time going out to meet and hang out with a guy the word play is gonna have a dramatic effect in the court proceedings Hannah explains

Speaker 1 I wouldn't say play. I just went to go hang out with them.
The connotation of the word play is a little bit strange. She's trying to clarify, no, I was just mainly hanging out with them.

Speaker 1 I guess you could say play, but I hung out with them. I mean, we had bonded for months online.
She went to Miriang and started hanging out, but then she got stranded that night.

Speaker 1 At the time, all buses leading out of Miriang ended at four o'clock. The girls, the sisters did not know this.
Nobody told them this, but now they're stranded in Miriang.

Speaker 1 The sisters didn't even know Miriang was that small of a town. At that point, it was pretty rural of an area.

Speaker 1 They just assumed, like Ursan, their hometown, the transportation is going to run all day and night. That's what they think.
One of the guys turns to the sisters.

Speaker 1 We could just pay for a room for you here. It's fine.
You can sleep here and go back tomorrow. I mean, what else could you do? It's not like we can drive you back home.

Speaker 2 How many people was there?

Speaker 1 There's a handful, but eventually that night there will be 12.

Speaker 1 The sisters are honestly pretty thankful. They thought the older brothers were acting like older brothers, being very nice and helpful.

Speaker 1 It would be in that motel that Hannah would be gang R-worded by 12 different high schoolers that night. She was slapped, beaten with wooden sticks, with iron pipes.

Speaker 1 It stated that the very first night, 12 of them came in and they recorded the whole thing. The footage would be held as blackmail to make Hannah do whatever they wanted from then on.

Speaker 1 At the end, all she had was $15 for the bus fare back and they stole that too. So they R-worded her, gang R-worded her all night.
And then at the very end, they stole $15 from her.

Speaker 2 What about the little sister?

Speaker 1 She She was actually not R-worded. So, in the initial reports given by police to the press, which is why for 20 years most people thought that her sister was also R-worded, she actually was not.

Speaker 1 And we're going to get into it. It's a whole thing.
Now, to go over all of this, to repeat all of this information to relive this trauma, was very overwhelming for Hannah.

Speaker 1 But to make matters worse, the police officer taking in this information is now typing it down into his reports. But he is doing this at snail speed.

Speaker 1 She would have to pause every two seconds so that he could catch up.

Speaker 1 She had to live through this trauma not just once, repeat it over and over to her aunt, to the officers, three separate times, to three separate male officers.

Speaker 1 And finally, the officer that's typing it into the reports, he would directly narrate the events again while typing.

Speaker 1 They took Hannah to the motel that night and 12 high school-aged guys, perpetrators, assaulted her with iron pipes.

Speaker 1 He just would slowly narrate everything over and over again.

Speaker 2 Now, this is shared by Hannah. Yes.
Hannah was expressing how traumatizing that whole experience was.

Speaker 1 I believe this part was shared by her sister. They were interviewed together, but her sister was also in the room when Hannah was giving her statements.

Speaker 1 And that was also a big misconception that practically everyone had about this case: the fact that Hannah's sister and cousin were also essayed by the perpetrators.

Speaker 1 That the perpetrators had forced Hannah to bring her sister and cousin to be victims as well, right?

Speaker 1 The reason that everyone, including myself, believed this was because the police told the media this.

Speaker 1 Initially, that's what they said, that all three girls were essayed, but it has since been disproven. Hannah's sister was beaten and robbed and never essayed.

Speaker 1 And the cousin was actually on the perpetrator's side. She was dating a perpetrator.

Speaker 1 So Hannah's little sister was with Hannah the whole time and she's testifying and giving her statement as a witness to these events now.

Speaker 1 And on one occasion, one of the defense attorneys for the perpetrators, who happens to be in the room while she's giving a statement, he turns to the little girl, the witness, and says, wait, why do you think you weren't essayed?

Speaker 1 Is it because you're fat?

Speaker 2 That's to the little sister? Yes.

Speaker 1 And the perpetrators, who also happened to be in the room. Tell me why, they couldn't hold it in.
And she said that they just started busting out, laughing and snickering at her.

Speaker 1 And she nodded because they had told her that.

Speaker 1 While her sister was getting gang essayed and she was trying to look for any ways to save her sister, they told her, you're not going to get essayed because you're too fat and we don't like the way you look.

Speaker 1 The police wanted to know why the torture and assaults lasted a full year. Why didn't you say anything? Did they hold you captive? Did they kidnap you for a year?

Speaker 1 Hannah tries to explain that they had videos of her that were

Speaker 1 You know, she's getting essayed and they're threatening to disperse it online if she didn't do exactly as what they said.

Speaker 1 The first time the perpetrators called her when she's home, they're like, we need to meet up. She told them, no, I don't want to.
But then our home phone started ringing while her dad was home.

Speaker 1 She picks it up. It's the perpetrators.
See how easy it is for me to tell your dad everything? You think I don't know the number for your school or for your friends? We have your home number.

Speaker 1 We have your address. We have these videos of you.
They had everything to ruin her life instantly unless she did exactly as she's told. She said, I was scared.

Speaker 1 I kept going to Mir Young because I was scared. People say, why did you go? Why didn't you report it?

Speaker 1 But if I had a phone and didn't answer, the perpetrators would call our house and my dad would answer. And then they would just hang up or they would say, this is so-and-so.
Is this Hannah's house?

Speaker 1 My dad would say, yes, who is this? And they would just hang up and my dad would get angry, screaming, what are you doing? Who are you hanging out with to receive calls like this?

Speaker 1 And then I would be the target of violence. My dad would beat me.

Speaker 1 If Hannah tries to call the perpetrators back, begging them to stop callings, please just stop. I'll do anything else.
They would just giggle and laugh. Then come to Miu Yang.

Speaker 1 Then I won't call and tell your dad. Other times, they were more aggressive, saying things like, you have a few hours to get to Miyoyang.

Speaker 1 Otherwise, we're going to post your videos all over your school bulletin boards. Everyone's going to know what you did.

Speaker 2 And this is all coming from PAC.

Speaker 1 And his friends. All of his friends get involved.
So she went.

Speaker 1 She didn't know that some of these videos had already been posted online on shady websites with views coming in from Japan, China, and the United States, as well as South Korea, obviously.

Speaker 1 Each time Hannah was forced to meet up with them, just groups of three to 24 high school guys would drag her to dark areas, motel rooms, tennis courts, abandoned attics, playgrounds.

Speaker 1 It stated that the perpetrators also used various objects to further humiliate and torture Hannah sexually, which would end up causing a lot of complications for Hannah in her reproductive regions.

Speaker 1 It stated that once Hannah argued, my aunt is going to take me to the hospital and they always do full checks even down there. So

Speaker 1 arguing they shouldn't R-word her, trying to give them a selfish reason on why they shouldn't hurt her right but instead they just shrugged let's try anyway they would push her forcibly onto the ground essay her they would hold up an iron pipe threatening to hit her with it and if she tried to fight back they would hit her they would threaten her to take off all her clothes sometimes a few guys would hold her down her arms and legs while their buddies take turns essaying her Other times she's punched repeatedly in the face.

Speaker 1 Other times she had brutal assaults at tennis courts where afterwards she would get up and start running away and they would scream after her you look like a little flea trying to buzz away they would force her into performing degrading sexual acts while they all watched and essayed her and every single time that she was forced to show up in miryang she had to bring her bus fare because how else are you supposed to go back home she does she lives an hour away these perpetrators would steal that too

Speaker 1 They would leave her completely stranded with nothing each time. If she had any jewelry on or just anything that they liked, they would get robbed of that.

Speaker 1 There are 44 main perpetrators, but the number of witnesses, bystanders, and those who knew what was happening was likely closer to 120.

Speaker 1 Now, the craziest part is, similar to the Junko case, the girlfriends of some of the perpetrators, they find out what's going on.

Speaker 1 Instead of immediately reporting their boyfriends, calling the police, being disgusted, breaking up with them, they would help record the assault while taunting Hannah.

Speaker 1 The police have been listening to Hannah and her sister telling them for 10 hours a day for the past 10 days the extent of trauma for the past year of Hannah's life.

Speaker 1 The fact that she's been talking for that long and that her statement is still ongoing is still just another indicator of how bad the abuse was.

Speaker 1 But the police, they finally look up from their computers and they ask, did you wag your tail first?

Speaker 1 Did you resist with all your might? Did you make it clear to the other person that you had no intention of sexual intercourse with them? Did you resist like a madman?

Speaker 1 I mean, it just doesn't make sense. If you didn't like it at all, why did you keep going back to Mir Young?

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 Hannah said for the longest time, she regretted letting her aunt get the police involved. So for the year that all of this had been happening, Hannah never told anyone.

Speaker 1 She didn't have anyone to tell except for her sister, and they both had nobody. A year before that, Before all of this abuse, Hannah's mom actually left the house.

Speaker 1 That would have been maybe the only person Hannah felt comfortable telling this to. And it's not like Hannah's mom wanted to leave.
She had to stay alive.

Speaker 1 Hannah's dad is an incredibly violent, alcoholic, abusive man. And somehow the courts awarded him full custody over their three children.

Speaker 1 So their mom wasn't even allowed to see them without his approval, which, I mean, you would imagine he's never going to give.

Speaker 1 Hannah says, at first my mom was beaten, but when she left, After that, I became the target and got beaten a lot from then on. I had no one to talk to.

Speaker 1 My dad was always drunk, and when he was sober, he was extremely sensitive.

Speaker 1 If I tried to talk to him, he would just start cursing my mom was someone i would meet occasionally and we just had nobody to lean on or talk to their father would even say when i don't drink i don't drink at all but when i do i keep drinking for a few days neighbors say that's not really accurate you just could not have a coherent conversation with that man like you just never knew what he was talking about he never knew what you were talking about he's abusive he's incapable of putting food on the table for his children he's just he's a horrible person so hannah's sole guardian is her dad and he just verbally and physically abuses her.

Speaker 1 She has nobody that she can trust. She's completely alone.
He didn't even care that his, she's getting beat with an iron pipe and wooden sticks.

Speaker 1 She's gonna have injuries when she comes home and he doesn't even care. I don't even know if he notices.

Speaker 1 It's not until about a year in that Hannah's mom sister, so her aunt from her mom's side comes to visit. And right off the bat, she's like, something's wrong with these girls.

Speaker 1 Something's wrong with my nieces. She sits down with Hannah.
It's okay. You need to just tell me honestly what's been going on.
Is it your dad? What's going on?

Speaker 1 She could already tell what was happening. I mean, to a small degree.
She just reassured Hannah, I can make an appointment and we can go to the hospital tomorrow.

Speaker 1 November 25th, 2004, after 11 months of torture, abuse, blackmail, essay, the police are finally called and the police reassure Hannah's aunt, trust us, the details aren't going to hit the media.

Speaker 1 It's not going to affect the girls at their schools. It's not like it's our first time investigating a crime like this.

Speaker 1 Just 12 days after that, the police release a quick press conference stating that 40-something high school male students had gang essayed three girls, including two middle school sisters, for a year straight.

Speaker 1 So this is where the decades-long misinformation that Hannah's little sister was also essayed starts.

Speaker 1 The initial press conference also stated that the two sisters were essayed by 41 different high school boys in one day.

Speaker 1 Like 41 had taken turns on both of them is pretty much how they phrase it, which is really vile. But that's not true either.

Speaker 1 Now, all the major news networks report on this because, I mean, that's what the police told them. Why would they think it's not true?

Speaker 1 But the biggest problem with the police press conferences, they release the victims' full names to the media, which honestly should have been redacted from the get-go.

Speaker 1 So, if we file an FOIA in the United States, if there's privileged information, it's all redacted. They're not going to give it to you and hope that you redact it.

Speaker 1 Most media outlets did redact it themselves, but some, in quote, a a rush to break the news, just published the personal information as is.

Speaker 1 Or they redacted it, but in a way that everybody in the town that knew the girls, they knew who they were. They gave out neighborhood, age, surname, and said two sisters in middle school.

Speaker 1 It's pretty obvious who the sisters are. Hannah says, my surname isn't very common.

Speaker 1 People around me instantly knew it was me because our neighborhood isn't as big as Seoul. When we went to school, the kids around me started looking at me as if they knew something had happened.

Speaker 1 And when I quietly went to the teacher's office, the teacher just said, I know.

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Speaker 1 All the police cared about was appearing like they were the ones that cracked this massive case. They wanted the world to know the police had arrested 44 perpetrators.

Speaker 1 They had rounded them up in a police bus and caught them immediately. The police also made it appear by blatantly stating that the 44 youths were part of an organized youth gang called Mir Yang Union.

Speaker 1 They said it's comprised of middle schoolers, high schoolers, and this amateur organized crime, which sure, they might be, but not the way that the police are presenting.

Speaker 1 The police are presenting them as if they're part of this massive organized crime syndicate that the police just took down. Hannah even said, They're honestly more like school bullies.

Speaker 1 They're violent, they're terrifying, capable of dangerous things. They beat up other students, rob them for no reason, but they're not, they're not like

Speaker 1 an organiz, they're not the mafia,

Speaker 1 but that doesn't sound as good, right? Taking down 44 school bullies, taking down 44 gang members. That's good.

Speaker 1 Later, when criticized about letting the victims' information out so easily, one former police official working the case said, we didn't know at the time how big this case was going to be.

Speaker 1 We just thought, well, the reporters will handle it properly. To be honest, we thought if it's such a big case, the reporters will change the names.
Reporters always change the names, don't they?

Speaker 1 The police honestly just did not care. They wanted to be applauded for their tremendous arrest.
It also came out that the investigating officers were up for a promotion.

Speaker 1 They just needed a big case, a big pat on the back to make it happen. This is their big case.
They don't care about the victims. They just want everyone to applaud them for arresting 44 gang members.

Speaker 1 Hannah said she thought, why did we report this to the police for no reason and make our lives so difficult?

Speaker 1 Hannah's aunt would later be interviewed and she screams, how could they do this to our kids? They're killing our kids twice. They might as well have told the girls to just leave Korea altogether.

Speaker 1 Soon after the headlines of the Mir Young cases posted, all everyone can write about, talk about online is the Mir Young case. Everybody knows about it.

Speaker 1 An online forum post starts making its rounds around that time.

Speaker 1 It's written by a hostess from a hostess club who witnessed something so alarming, vile, disgusting that she can't even cape it in anymore. She wants to throw up.

Speaker 1 It's not like she can go to the police with this information. So she's coming online.
She said she was working at the hostess bar one night. She passed by this table.

Speaker 1 She recognized the police officer as the ones that were working the Median case because their faces and names are everywhere right now. And this is all anyone can talk about.

Speaker 1 She was pausing and doing some work at that table and she watches one of the detectives put his hand on the thigh of the hostess that he's sitting next to.

Speaker 1 So right now it's very morally morally gray, right? But not that alarming. But he leans in and he tells this hostess, you look like Hannah, the victim of the case we're working on.

Speaker 1 With his hand on her thigh,

Speaker 1 it gets worse. The hostess said she froze.
She didn't even know how to react. She couldn't believe her ears in that moment.
She said, what do you mean?

Speaker 1 Another detective sits next to him and looks disgusted. So she's thinking, good, he's going to say something and shut down this detective, shut his colleague up.

Speaker 1 But he turns his head and says don't bring hannah up disgusting you're gonna ruin my appetite

Speaker 1 he's not saying hey you are disgusting for bringing hannah up right now he's saying the mention of hannah's name is disgusting and i'm trying to enjoy myself he says you're ruining my appetite the further implication being he's disgusted not by what happened to her but by her

Speaker 1 this is crazy the further implication being he's disgusted that a a little 14-year-old girl had been essayed by 44 different people. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And then the first one was sexualizing the victim, basically.

Speaker 1 The victim.

Speaker 2 Yes. A 14-year-old girl that has been like, this is crazy.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So she posts this and this has been proven to be true.

Speaker 1 These detectives were eventually replaced by another investigative team, but really nothing gets better.

Speaker 1 Even when Hannah is forced to come to the police station to give yet another statement where the police just blow cigarette smoke into her face for hours at a time, forcing her to repeat the same traumatizing statements and then asking her if she wagged her tail first.

Speaker 1 These are just a few things that went wrong during the investigation. Just a few violations of human rights.

Speaker 1 Hannah would come and all the perpetrators' parents would be waiting outside the police station for her, grabbing at her shirt while she's trying to get inside, screaming at her that she's ruining their son's lives.

Speaker 1 Parents are tracking down Hannah to her house, her relatives' house afterwards, accusing her of lying, accusing her of wanting wanting to take down their precious babies.

Speaker 1 This little 14-year-old girl, they would look her dead in the eye and tell her, you will never live well. Let's see how you survive after ruining my son's life.
We will never leave you alone.

Speaker 1 One of the perpetrators' mothers even came and called Hannah a gold digger.

Speaker 1 Additionally, when victims have to do a police lineup, there's usually a room with a one-way glass window.

Speaker 1 We've seen it in all the documentaries, the movies, the TV shows, where the victim can see all the people lined up, but they cannot see the victim through the glass.

Speaker 1 The police station Hannah went to had one of those rooms. They called it the crime identification room, but it could only fit eight perpetrators at once.
So they opted to just not use it at all.

Speaker 1 They just rounded up all the accused perpetrators in the police station out in the open, dragged Hannah in front of them all at once and made her ID the perpetrators.

Speaker 1 The police would just yell at her, who did the beating? Just point out which one did the beating. Okay, and who did this part right here where you said that they touched this area?

Speaker 1 Who did this very graphic detail you told us? Who can who watched? Who touched?

Speaker 1 Come on, hurry point them out

Speaker 1 they would force her to point at the perpetrator in question and then the perpetrators would essentially try to lunge at her screaming when the fuck did i ever do that the perpetrators are just straight up cursing her out at the police station and the police are doing nothing to stop it i mean they're giving the half-assed calm down sit down honestly these like someone needs to leave these police officers named they are getting leaked

Speaker 1 But they don't care.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That is crazy.

Speaker 1 They still have their jobs. They don't care, they're retired.

Speaker 1 The perpetrators would even find Hannah's aunt's house, show up at the door screaming, Do you know who I am? I'm a gang member, I'm gonna gouge your eyes out.

Speaker 1 Whenever Hannah got scared and she hesitated, the authorities would get impatient with her. Come on, quickly, just say it.
But at the same time, she's being rushed.

Speaker 1 She knows that if she makes even the smallest mistake or says something incorrectly because she's being rushed, they would accuse her of lying about the whole thing.

Speaker 1 Additionally, the police's way of getting the victim justice was to force all 44 perpetrators on their knees in the police station and force them to apologize to Hannah, which that's more terrifying and traumatizing than it is cathartic.

Speaker 1 Like that's not even a real apology, first of all.

Speaker 1 I think the terror of just seeing them all collectively in one big group forced to do something that they clearly don't want to do and the fear of their retaliation is likely overpowering.

Speaker 1 And I also don't think that their half-assed forced sorry is doing anything. This is something I think Korean parents make you do if you accidentally call someone an ugly duckling.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 Like, this is so bizarre. This is not

Speaker 2 that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 We want to see some real like consequences.

Speaker 1 They're treating it as if it's a playground dispute. Exactly.
The perpetrators even accused the police of targeting them just because they have tattoos.

Speaker 1 They stated that they were being discriminated against. Who is? The perpetrators.

Speaker 1 The

Speaker 1 tattoos. Yeah.
They're like, you just are accusing me of being a gang member because I I have a tattoo.

Speaker 1 This is discrimination and I won't stand for it.

Speaker 1 For some of the perpetrators, the police even asked the victim to sit down in front of them and go through her story again of what happened as if they're trying to get both sides, both stories at the same time.

Speaker 1 The police also made the whole case about gangs. They kept arguing about the perpetrators, which gangs they're a part of, or which district the gangs formed in.

Speaker 1 At one point, this case became more so of, are the guys in a gang or not, not, rather than the actual crime.

Speaker 1 The sister's aunt demanded female investigators to handle the case or at least be the ones to take the girl's statements, but the police did not care and rejected her request.

Speaker 1 In fact, at one point, so much media attention had been gathering outside of the police station because the police leaked the whole case, the authorities wanted Hannah and her sister to be questioned inside of a motel room.

Speaker 1 A motel room, like where the assaults first started. Even if it didn't start in a motel room, that is crazy.
The aunt fought back. She's screaming at the officers.

Speaker 1 How can you even interview minors at a motel? Eventually, they would be interviewed at the aunt's house, but that suggestion itself is out of this world.

Speaker 1 One officer even looked at Hannah and her sister and said,

Speaker 1 you're muddying the waters of Midiang, you know that? I'm from Midyang. Why are you doing this? Why are you giving my town a bad name? You're not even from here.
So why'd you even go to Midyang?

Speaker 1 Why'd you even meet up with them? I bet you were flirting with them online anyway.

Speaker 1 After all of this, Hannah is hospitalized for a full month for extensive physical injuries as well as psychological.

Speaker 1 During her hospital stay, she mentioned to her psychologist that every single time she's at a subway station, she just wants to jump. She, it's an overwhelming feeling.

Speaker 1 She can't even look at a train without every voice in her head telling her to do it. She has PTSD, panic disorders, an eating disorder, severe depression.

Speaker 1 She's so confused on how something like this could happen that her brain is trying to rationalize it by convincing herself that she must have done something wrong in the process.

Speaker 1 Because things like this just shouldn't happen. So she should be at fault is what her brain is trying to convince her.

Speaker 1 The doctor also reports that Hannah just talked a lot about not wanting to be here. She was constantly crying and spoke heavily about wanting to do dangerous things.

Speaker 1 And eventually, after a month, her dad comes in to pick her up. Her dad and her other aunt, so not the one that called the police.
That's her mom's sister. This is her dad's sister.

Speaker 1 She and her dad show up at the hospital and they're trying to take Tanna home. They're rubbing her shoulders, telling the doctors that they're going to take care of her.

Speaker 1 If anyone can help her heal, it's going to be them. She needs to be at home to recover.
Hannah's mom's fighting to keep her daughters, but technically she's not their legal guardian.

Speaker 1 She could not stop their father from taking them. The moment that Hannah gets in that car, her dad is shoving a pen in her hand.
Just sign it.

Speaker 1 Sign what? She reads this paper. The statement reads, I, the victim, first met insert name of Arwerder and the other Opas in Miryang.

Speaker 1 While it is true that he inflicted harm on me, the victim, I have been sufficiently compensated mentally and materially for the harm inflicted by the perpetrator.

Speaker 1 The I, the victim, do not wish for the perpetrators to be punished, and I request the judges' leniency for the perpetrators to be released as soon as possible.

Speaker 1 The statement also reads that Hannah has a crush on the perpetrator in question, and quote, I'm worried about him and I miss him and I would like to see him soon.

Speaker 2 You're shitting me. Did that literally sold her out?

Speaker 1 While she was in the hospital for a month, the perpetrator's parents came to the dad and he was arranging deals.

Speaker 1 This is insane. He said, you give me cash and I'll have my daughter write a letter of leniency.

Speaker 1 One of the other reasons that her dad could convince her to sign the document, other than the fact that he has literally been physically violent with her for most of her life and she's terrified and she's in a weakened psychological state, is the fact that he's her guardian.

Speaker 1 I mean, technically, he could basically sign it for her.

Speaker 1 But he tries to convince her, listen, they really are remorseful.

Speaker 1 While you were in the hospital, they have been crying non-stop, just apologizing, and he convinces Hannah to sign for some of the perpetrators because those are the ones that paid him.

Speaker 1 Now, when these guys, these perpetrators, the ones that she signed the letter of leniency for, they come to apologize, Hannah said it's not what she expected.

Speaker 1 She genuinely thought that they felt remorse and they realized their actions were bad, but no, they were smirking, they were laughing, and she said, quote, I was really dumbfounded and shocked.

Speaker 1 Even after all of this, her dad forced her to go see one of the perpetrators at the detention center. She had no idea where she was being taken.

Speaker 1 The adults just told her to get in the car and that's it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So the dad just kind of kidnapped her

Speaker 2 to see one of the guys. Yes.
For what reasons?

Speaker 1 So that she could write another letter and his attorney was there and they were dictating what letter to write. So she just was forced to write whatever they were barking at her.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 And I think they wanted the proof that she went to go visit him.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, 44 of them were, I don't want to say taken to trial because it's not necessarily a trial, but 44 of them were arrested for the Mir Young case.

Speaker 1 And the way that the whole justice system plays out with the 44 is out of this world. First of all, there were like three presiding judges that were handling this case.

Speaker 1 One of the judges had this age-old argument, which is, well, you can't thread a moving needle.

Speaker 1 That was a quote that he says often, which means if a victim of essay is moving too much and is running away with all her might you can't thread a moving needle

Speaker 1 like you cannot get essayed yeah if you're moving and fighting back

Speaker 1 so the the judge is saying that she it's her fault that she wanted this to happen yes like it's not essay because you can't thread a moving needle there's no such thing as essay then

Speaker 1 this is a judge Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, in the investigative reports that were handed over to the judge to read, a lot of the times when referring to the victim and her story, you read phrases like she came to play.

Speaker 1 The victims were playing with the accused while playing. Now the word play sounds really in English sounds like something that you would only apply to children, right?

Speaker 1 You know, while the children were playing, ABC happened. But in Korean, it's a bit complicated.
So let's say I'm going to hang out with my friends. I would say,

Speaker 1 which means I'm going to go play with the kids. It's like, that's the direct translation, but it basically means I'm going to go hang out with my friends.

Speaker 1 But you almost say it in an innocent way because the word play in this connotation of like, umma, I'm gonna go play with my friends is almost like we're just literally gonna giggle gaggle around.

Speaker 1 It's not like I'm gonna go to the movies, I'm going on a trip. It's like we're just gonna like mess around.
We're just gonna hang out, right?

Speaker 1 But play can also be used very negatively when it's referring to other children or in situations of like you might have fuckboys being like, durja, which is like, come on, let's play, let's play.

Speaker 1 Right? So it can be used in different connotations. Also, there is something called donen eder, which is a very bad word.

Speaker 1 It's not a curse word, but it's what parents will say about other people's children, which means kids who only play.

Speaker 1 And in that connotation, the word play is not just like kids who like their friends too much. It's kids who are drunk at PC bung, smoking cigarettes that are basically gangsters.

Speaker 1 So there's a lot of different connotations you use, but the only time it's really positive is honestly when it's between mom and children or like dad and children, like ediang durgorke,

Speaker 1 like I'm gonna go play and hang out and I'll be back.

Speaker 1 But when you use it for other people, it can be considered a negative connotation. Yeah.
But it's non-stop. The victim came to play with the accused.

Speaker 1 While playing, the victim wanted to play with the accused. She came to Miriang to play.
A lot of Koreans have pointed out how damaging that is to have an investigative report about SA.

Speaker 1 The victim also expressed that the connotation behind the word just felt wrong. She said it felt like they're implying some sort of hidden meaning behind it.

Speaker 1 For example, the victim told authorities, the perpetrators filmed a video and threatened me over the phone saying if I didn't come down to Miriang right now, they'll upload the video online.

Speaker 1 In the court documents, it reads, the victim came to play in Midiang.

Speaker 1 In addition to the weird meaning of play here, the omitting of the circumstances and fear of the situation is so bizarre.

Speaker 1 The documents also include the words sexual intercourse frequently when it should be essay.

Speaker 1 And just everything. The victim is really only brought up in the context of the crime.

Speaker 1 There's no mention of how this is going to impact her future or what her life is going to be like now, now that she's become a victim of a prolonged, violent, traumatic crime.

Speaker 1 But in reference to the perpetrators, they are often spoken about with their futures connected in the same sentence, such as the perpetrators are about to enter college.

Speaker 1 The perpetrator is about to get a job. The perpetrator is doing A, B, and C for their future.

Speaker 1 The perpetrator's futures are heavily weighed and the victim just went to play. Like, that's what it feels like.

Speaker 1 Initially, the police sent 44 perpetrators to the prosecution for charges of gang essay, assault, and threats, which would be categorized in South Korea as SA with special conditions, which is threat and assault.

Speaker 1 But 34 of the 44 were not prosecuted. The prosecutors get it and they're like, let's throw out 34 of these cases.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 1 Okay, so 20 of those 34 were released because either their parents had paid Hannah's dad blood money or they were found to not have used force to essay Hannah, meaning they essayed Hannah, but they weren't holding an iron pipe.

Speaker 1 They essayed Hannah, but they didn't beat her.

Speaker 1 They deemed it would not be considered special conditions, so they were just let go. That part is crazy.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, it's already crazy that they were let go for no special conditions, but also the part is even more frustrating.

Speaker 1 Yep, maybe they themselves weren't holding a pipe, forcibly beating Hannah, but their best friend was in the room holding a pipe, or their best friend was right outside the room holding a pipe.

Speaker 1 The implication being, it doesn't matter if Hannah says no, if she tries to fight back hard enough, she's going to get hit with the pipe.

Speaker 1 For those reasons, about 20 perpetrators are just sent home with a firm warning. Some of them got community service, but nothing to report back on.
That leaves 14.

Speaker 1 Now, 13 of them are not tried because in South Korea back then, the crime of essay was considered a civil matter.

Speaker 1 Meaning, the victim had to press charges for someone to be taken to court for essay. But that means the burden of proof, everything relies heavily on the victim.

Speaker 1 And that's already so bad, but it gets worse. Hannah had said about some perpetrators, she used the language, quote, blank so-and-so harmed me at this time.

Speaker 1 the police stated that is a statement of fact not an accusation meaning she does not want to press charges on this person

Speaker 2 what

Speaker 2 see i don't understand like anybody who hears this they see how up this is why is everyone arguing against her From the judge to the police to everyone.

Speaker 2 You think it because they have power, they have influence or

Speaker 1 Yes, so some it's I think it's a combination of everything And that's what a lot of netizens think. Some of the perpetrators' parents were wealthy.

Speaker 1 Now, to disrupt 44 families in a small town, and these perpetrators' parents are nasty. They're vile.
I haven't seen a single one that's like, you know what?

Speaker 1 I fucked up raising my kid and I am going to hell for it. And I will repay the victim back with my life and I will try so hard.
Not a single one.

Speaker 1 So I think they were putting a lot of pressure on the police. Midang, the city of Midang also kind of wanted it to quiet down.
They wanted that instant boost of like, we arrested so many people.

Speaker 1 And then afterwards they're like, okay, this is making our town look bad. We got to shut this down.

Speaker 1 And I also think that a lot of these people are just old men who truly believe that women deserve to be SA'd. I don't know what else to say.

Speaker 1 Like I don't even know how to rationalize their thought process.

Speaker 1 And I think that they just care so much about these losers' futures. I mean, they have no future.
It's crazy. But they care so much about their futures.

Speaker 2 Right, right. I see.
So it's another one of those cases. How could you let one girl ruin all these young boys' future? Yeah.

Speaker 1 When it's like, okay, we can already point out everything wrong with that, but people clearly think like that. These people do.

Speaker 1 And another thing that netizens, Korean netizens have been pointing out is this is just the same thing over and over again. Korea is a great land for perpetrators.

Speaker 1 They care too much about the rehabilitation, the future of perpetrators. It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 Now, Hannah had used the language, blank harmed me at that time. The police and prosecutors argued that it's a statement of fact, not an accusation.

Speaker 1 So they believe that Hannah did not want to press charges. They stated that she should have said, I want them to be punished for this.

Speaker 1 Or I really, really didn't like that. Like they wanted her to vocalize word for word verbatim.
She wanted to press charges. So for that reason, 13 cases are thrown out because her wording.

Speaker 1 They stipulated that the victim did not directly express to press charges against those perpetrators when discussing what they did.

Speaker 1 This has changed since then. Now SA is a criminal case, but

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 Now the last one is not prosecuted because he committed a crime in a different region. He was going to be punished there for that specific crime.
This is crazy.

Speaker 1 So does that mean if you run a red light in one county and commit murder in the other, you don't get charged for murder? You just have to go get your punishment for running that red light? What?

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're just like, well, he's already going for a different case so it's fine that doesn't even make sense like what is this a buy one get one for crime what do you mean

Speaker 1 the other 10 that are sent to juvenile court they don't receive any punishment they just get sent to juvenile court and they just get slaps on the wrists they get community service they don't do anything essentially so they didn't go to prison No, they were held in, a few of them were held in detention for a little while, awaiting the court dates, but that's it.

Speaker 2 and then what that's it yeah were they all underage or what what was it some of them were not underage so 18 17

Speaker 1 16 15 yeah so a lot of them were not underage too

Speaker 1 now the attorney for a few of the perpetrators even argued the decision to even refer the boys to a juvenile detention center is excessive why do they have to be detained while they're waiting

Speaker 1 The attorney is asked, excessive? Yes, if the victim was really R-worded, would she have kept coming back to Mediang for a year?

Speaker 1 A lot of legal experts said, this is just not normal. I mean, even for how messed up the justice system can be, this is abnormal.
The words that the judges even use are just extremely unusual.

Speaker 1 The fact that the perpetrators were not charged with any sort of CP-related crime is also mind-boggling, considering even the production of consensual adult explicit videos in South Korea is illegal.

Speaker 1 But instead, the judge working on the case said, the boys are addicted to watching violent, explicit videos online. That's the problem.
The problem does not lie within the boys.

Speaker 1 It lies within the fact that these videos are available to be seen. That's why Korea has banned these videos.
That's why they committed these crimes.

Speaker 1 They were inspired and decided to act upon the videos they saw, stating that they are just immature minors with the possibility of rehabilitation.

Speaker 1 Additionally, on the court documents, the judge stated that they were going to be lenient on the perpetrators considering that they have futures to consider and the victim has since recovered from the shock and is doing well and living a peaceful life at school.

Speaker 1 Interestingly, the judge does not state where they learned this information. There is no source for such statements because the victim is not doing well.

Speaker 1 Anyone who knows the victim would agree, they are not doing well. Who said that? Where did the judge get that information? Did the judge just make it up out of thin air?

Speaker 1 And does it even matter considering how vile and dangerous the perpetrators are?

Speaker 1 There was a question of, truly, who claimed the victim was doing well?

Speaker 1 There would have been no one, not the counseling centers that assisted the victim, not the medical staff, not the doctors, not the mother.

Speaker 1 Nobody would have said the victim is doing well, not a single person. Hannah even testified in court against the perpetrators briefly.

Speaker 1 She was made to state what she already stated to the police and dozens of times to different investigators. And it would be very clear in that moment that she is not okay.
She is not doing well.

Speaker 1 But the judges use this to let all 44 boys go with no punishment.

Speaker 1 Later, Hannah's dad was interviewed about his decision to settle with some of the perpetrators because it is believed that that also had an impact on the judge's decision.

Speaker 1 Basically saying, yeah, okay, she doesn't forgive all 44, but she forgives some of them.

Speaker 1 He's asked, but as the victim's father, shouldn't you be unable to forgive the perpetrators? What did you even use the settlement money for? The total amount I received was $35,000.

Speaker 1 Which is nothing. Okay, first of all.
I used about $18,000 to lease a house.

Speaker 1 $4,000 I loaned to my brother-in-law. I gave about $12,000 to my younger sister and about $1,000 to help get a room for my brother-in-law.
So he blew it all on nothing, really.

Speaker 1 And Hannah didn't get a cent, not a single penny. Do you regret settling? I do regret it a bit, yeah.

Speaker 1 In what way do you regret it? Well, people around me criticize me because I accepted so little money.

Speaker 2 What

Speaker 2 his only regret is he didn't ask for more? Yeah.

Speaker 1 At this point, after all 44 get out with no punishment, they're free to be. Hannah has to move out of her hometown.

Speaker 1 She moves to Seoul with her mom and her sister, and she's looking for a new school to take her. None of the schools want her.

Speaker 1 That just gives you an idea how victims of SA were treated back in 2004, which honestly, that's very recent. Nobody wanted her.
They just didn't want that attention.

Speaker 1 Schools are very different from the United States. In South Korea, a school's reputation is very important.
It's almost like a private school.

Speaker 1 Every public school kind of behaves like a private school. They don't want problematic news.
They don't want any attention surrounding their school that is not about their academic forwardness.

Speaker 1 And so nobody was accepting her to the point where she had an activist attorney who was taking on the case pro bono. He had to go into schools and fight them.
He'd be like, are you crazy?

Speaker 1 Like this girl needs teachers. What are you doing?

Speaker 1 Hannah said, I used to be class president at my school, which in Korea, you have to be like at the top of your class in terms of grades to be class president. It's not just the popular vote.

Speaker 1 She said, I used to be class president at school. And I, even afterwards, I just really wanted to work really hard, but it didn't end up working out.

Speaker 1 She finally gets transferred into a new school in Seoul, but because one of the perpetrators' mom shows up at this new school, chasing her around the hallways of this school, shoving a paper in her face, trying to get her to sign another leniency paper.

Speaker 1 So this is, I guess, before the perpetrators got off with no punishment.

Speaker 1 Hannah was so scared, she ran directly to the bathroom, locked herself in the stall, and the mom was just following her, banging on the door, demanding she sign this letter.

Speaker 1 And from that point forward, everybody knew who she was.

Speaker 1 Hannah said she couldn't focus in school. I mean, after that, in less than a week, she stopped going to school and she dropped out.

Speaker 1 One of Hannah's teachers wrote on an online forum later, We had a new transfer student in the middle school that I worked for. The transfer student was the Miriang case victim.

Speaker 1 I heard the victim's mother crying in the administrator's rooms about how she has no education, no money, and she just needs her daughter to be okay.

Speaker 1 I felt so sorry for the child when I heard her mother cry.

Speaker 1 She had to settle with the perpetrators in shame because they needed money and even though it must have been even more humiliating and painful.

Speaker 1 I taught her for a little bit of the semester and I talked to her. There were conversations I saw online, nasty rumors that she had seduced the boys first, and I can assure you, she did not.

Speaker 1 I never even got to see her smile once. She just always had this very dark look on her face and her mother was constantly shaking and sobbing every time I saw her.

Speaker 1 If watching her makes me this angry, How must they feel? It just really hurts my heart. Those who essay minors should never be be forgiven.

Speaker 1 Hannah and her family were able to sue the police department and the government for violation of her human rights. The trial for that lasted four years, further traumatizing the victims.

Speaker 1 They were ultimately awarded $40,000 in the end, which is nothing.

Speaker 1 But it would be the first ever time the courts would recognize a violation of human rights by public authority against an SA victim.

Speaker 1 So I guess the silver lining is it really did open the door for for more people to hold authority to a standard.

Speaker 2 Can you say that one more time? It was the first what?

Speaker 1 It was the first time ever the courts recognized a violation of human rights by public authority. So by the government, by police officials.

Speaker 2 This is the first time they say, oh, police can fuck up too. Yes.
Like the first time they admit fault.

Speaker 1 And can violate human rights against an SA victim.

Speaker 1 So they paid the family $40,000. And I would say the only silver lining to that really is that it did open the door, they say.

Speaker 1 A lot of legal professionals said it was a landmark case in terms of at least opening the door to that because it's the first time is always the hardest time. But still, it's just crazy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's it's ridiculous. Now, in 2014, a movie titled Han Gong Ju is released in South Korea.

Speaker 1 Now, interestingly enough, it's an independent film with a very low budget, no famous directors, no famous actors involved, without much marketing, and the movie manages to screen in over 200 theaters nationwide, which is a big deal.

Speaker 1 It went on to become one of the most successful independent films, which is very difficult.

Speaker 1 The film itself has a very tragic ending, but everyone walks out of that theater in 2014, almost comforting themselves.

Speaker 2 It was based on this case?

Speaker 1 I mean, they're comforting themselves. Well, I'm sure in the real life case, she's doing okay, right? And we haven't heard any news that she passed, right?

Speaker 1 There would be news if she passed in real life. So I'm sure she's fine.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Initially, everyone went to this movie to get closure on this case that had the whole nation angry for the past decade and riled up. But in the end, the closure was depressing.

Speaker 1 The movie's end is just depressing. So everyone would post online, I'm sure the real victim is healed and is moving on, right? That's all we can hope for and pray for.
That's not what was happening.

Speaker 1 Hannah says she has not lived a day without medication because it is impossible. She and her sister were unable to graduate high school.
They have been through psychiatric treatment since 2004.

Speaker 1 For the past 20 years, they cannot stop medicating. Hannah says she feels, quote, I still feel like my life has stopped in 2004.

Speaker 1 Hannah used to be class president, but now she has been diagnosed with an intellectual disability in 2019 from the excessive trauma. The diagnosis is considered, quote, severe disability levels.

Speaker 1 She hasn't been able to hold down a job. She really only is able to get part-time jobs doing manual labor here and there.
Unlike Hannah, though, the perpetrators are living well.

Speaker 1 People who know the perpetrators personally would post online and there would be another rounds. Like randomly, there would be rounds online of people saying, I saw the perpetrators.
I'm from Midiang.

Speaker 1 I know these perpetrators. One post said that they're still hanging out from time to time in Midyang.
They all gather in their hometown.

Speaker 1 Now, obviously, not all 44 of them, but there's still of them that are still friends.

Speaker 1 They hang out and they talk about what happened to Hannah as if it's a memory, as if it's like wild fraternity hazing days. Like remember when we were kids and we were wild back then?

Speaker 1 Oh, now we're not as wild because we got families.

Speaker 1 Then June 2nd, 2024, Hannah's younger brother is spending time with his older sister. So they do have a younger brother, but he was living with their dad at one point.
And he mentions

Speaker 1 hesitantly, YouTube is in chaos right now.

Speaker 1 What? YouTube? YouTube is in chaos right now.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 1 Personal information of the perpetrators is being disclosed, including their faces. They're uh being exposed.

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Speaker 1 It all starts June 1st, 2024, when a YouTuber by the name of Nadak Pogonso, or Health Storage, uploads a video that I was talking about. Pakibam, did you think that I wouldn't find you?

Speaker 1 The YouTuber exposes one of the main 44 in the Median case.

Speaker 1 Now, side note, the original poster even asks a question of, all the perpetrators say, if you show me leniency, judge, I will live my life volunteering and helping those in need.

Speaker 1 The judge has showed leniency and it's been 20 years. So let's see.
Did the perpetrators spend their lives volunteering, reflecting, and helping those in need? Let's show the proof.

Speaker 1 Side note, and even more unbelievable, up until recently, Hannah and her sister had been avoiding all media about their case, and they thought that most of the perpetrators were at least punished to some degree.

Speaker 1 They read on the case files that they were referred to the juvenile division, which meant they were taken to juvenile court.

Speaker 1 But it says juvenile department, which they thought meant juvenile detention.

Speaker 2 Like prison.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they didn't know that all of them walked free. Not a single one of them received a criminal record.
They didn't know. Nobody told them.
The police didn't tell them. The judges didn't tell them.

Speaker 2 So they didn't know anything

Speaker 2 about what happened to them.

Speaker 1 They just did not want to look at anything about this case.

Speaker 2 And they found out through recent YouTube.

Speaker 1 All of this coming back out again.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 The victim said, I thought referral to juvenile department meant detention in juvenile center. And I thought at least they could be punished for their crimes in that way.

Speaker 1 Now they are going through some of the court documents again and they read these words non-stop. No right of prosecution, lack of victim testimony.

Speaker 1 So the no right of prosecution means that she did not actively want to press charges, basically. And the lack of victim testimony, they don't understand what that means.

Speaker 1 She was forced to testify over and over and over and over again. Hannah says after 20 years, she just wants to know the truth now.
What does that mean?

Speaker 1 She wants to know the truth about the investigation, the trial process. She said that nobody explained any of this to her back back then.

Speaker 1 She said she was 15 back then and didn't understand, but now she wants to understand.

Speaker 1 She went and requested the documents and information from the courts of the case that she is the victim of, and they refused to give her the documents stating privacy reasons.

Speaker 1 They stated they can only give her the portions she already told the police. Basically, just a recap of her statements.
What?

Speaker 1 Nothing about the perpetrators or even what the judges and prosecutors had said.

Speaker 1 She said, when I tried to obtain the case-related documents, they told me i need to get consent from all 44 perpetrators

Speaker 1 imagine getting consent

Speaker 1 it's like nothing has changed from 20 years ago they're still playing the same game and like imagine looking a victim in the eye and saying you need to get consent from all 44 perpetrators to obtain court documents in which you are the victim

Speaker 1 she says i don't understand why I can't see them. I still wonder, and I'm curious about why I don't have the right to know.

Speaker 1 After the first initial YouTube video goes up, it kickstarts a wave of perpetrators being exposed by a string of YouTubers. It's not just one, it's like multiple.

Speaker 1 So, let's run through the list of exposed, shall we?

Speaker 1 Here's a legal disclaimer: these are all internet allegations, and unless there is some transparency and justice achieved legally, we can only state that these are speculations.

Speaker 1 Some of the accused have come forward themselves to confirm that they are connected to the case, while others have come forward to deny that they are part of the case and accuse people of defamation.

Speaker 1 So with that being said, all of this is alleged moving forward. Park from the beginning of the episode is working at his aunt's restaurant, which is a famous matib.
Matib in Korean is...

Speaker 1 It's like a really good title. It's like a restaurant known for their unique and delicious food, which means it's bustling.
A lot of business.

Speaker 1 He has a wife and daughter that he spoils with designer goods.

Speaker 1 And then we have Shin, also part of the main 44. He was working at a Volvo dealership.
He has since been fired after being exposed.

Speaker 1 But prior to that, he owned two expensive foreign cars and played golf on the weekends, which those two things are status symbols in Korea. And this made Netizen so infuriated.

Speaker 2 Just two cars?

Speaker 1 Yeah, and they're not Korean-made cars. So the average Korean, yeah, drives a Kia or like a Hyundai because they're the most affordable, right?

Speaker 1 But he drives foreign cars, which the import tax, it's always more expensive. And golf on the weekends, those are status symbols in Korea.
That's like you made it in Korea. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He allegedly posted online to air out his frustrations. I received hundreds of calls and unknown people contacting my company to protest, which led to me having to leave the company.

Speaker 1 I'm overwhelmed with emotions. I don't understand and I don't know where to start or what to do.
The people around me are suffering too much because of me.

Speaker 1 And the important thing is, I did not commit essay. I'm only thinking about whether this incident being brought to light again has hurt the victim's feelings more.

Speaker 1 He's basically saying, guys, bringing this up, you're only hurting the victim.

Speaker 2 But he didn't deny, or he kind of denied. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And he's like, all I can think about is, are we just harming the victim even more by bringing this up again?

Speaker 2 It doesn't even make sense, whatever he's saying.

Speaker 1 For three days, I haven't even been able to swallow even a sip of water, and I feel like I'm having cardiac arrests every day. If the victim agrees, I'm willing to undergo a reinvestigation.

Speaker 1 This seems to be a growing trend that whenever people are exposed in Korea of doing bad things, they want you to know that they have not not eaten. And many Korean netizens have commented,

Speaker 1 which roughly translates to, and what do you want me to do about it? Like it's such, I don't know what to do with this information. What do you want me to do about it? I don't care.

Speaker 1 Third offender, Go. He works at LGU plus headquarters, corporate office supplying devices to agencies and retailers.
After being exposed, he has temporarily been reassigned to a different apartment.

Speaker 2 What does that mean?

Speaker 1 That means he's not fired.

Speaker 2 Like they hide him to somewhere else. Yeah.
What?

Speaker 1 He is married with a wife and a daughter. Fourth offender, Kim.
He works at the park sports team of the Mediang Facility Management Corporation.

Speaker 1 He has since come forward to state, at the time of the incident, I was forced to participate due to threats from seniors, not because I wanted to. Sure, Jan.

Speaker 1 He continues, I reached a settlement with the victim, but I will definitely sue those parties involved for the witch hunt and defamation. Don't harass someone who's trying to live earnestly.

Speaker 1 He also misspells defamation.

Speaker 1 Fifth offender is Joe. It's said that he is currently wanted by authorities for a separate crime.

Speaker 1 Prior to that, though, he really liked to post quotes on social media that read, no mercy is needed for those who aren't human. Life is one mountain after another.

Speaker 1 The video states, the 39 who haven't been revealed yet should live with an uneasy heart, atoning for their actions as they're carrying a ticking time bomb that could go off at any moment.

Speaker 2 Oh, this is one of the YouTuber who's exposing these people. They're saying, you guys better watch out.

Speaker 1 Because we're coming for you.

Speaker 1 Next, we have police officer Song, one of the team leaders investigating the Median case.

Speaker 1 He received brief disciplinary action for violating human rights for this case, but he continued to live his life as a police inspector until his retirement in 2016.

Speaker 1 Then he went on to serve as the president of a local kickboxing association, ran a gym.

Speaker 1 He taught kickboxing to, quote, juvenile delinquents to help them on the right path, even providing scholarships.

Speaker 1 The YouTuber argued, had Investigator Song investigated properly and the victim had been properly protected, there would be no need for me to disclose the perpetrator's personal information on YouTube like this now, 20 years later.

Speaker 1 It said the police officer that scolded Hannah for muddying Midiang's waters is Officer Kim Tae-hyun. He only received one month of disciplinary suspension.

Speaker 1 For being like, you're ruining our good town's name.

Speaker 2 So this is a separate one from Song. Yeah.
And he only got one one month, so he still had his job. Oh, yeah.
And today he's doing what?

Speaker 1 He's either still an officer or retired. Or a lot of these people have gone into private practice.
So they work for companies or like a security agency.

Speaker 1 Officer Chou Wen Guan, he was the sergeant at the time. He was one of the two at the hostess bar that made fun of the victims.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's unclear what he's doing now, but he only received a light disciplinary action of a pay cut for the hostess bar incident. Detective Zheng was also there at the hostess bar encounter.

Speaker 1 Allegedly, he was also overheard getting drunk with colleagues talking about how they're all going to get promoted soon because of this huge Midiang case.

Speaker 1 Then we have Hyo, a perpetrator who now runs a chicken restaurant in Midiang. He allegedly told the victim's family things like, let's see how well you live after reporting this.

Speaker 1 You better watch your back.

Speaker 1 Perpetrator Shin, who apparently just has a dirty look on his face all the time. He had beaten up kids all throughout high school.
It is unknown what he's up to now.

Speaker 1 Perpetrator Lee was a fighter in high school. Unknown what he's up to now.
Perpetrator Jun was described as a psycho in high school. Those who knew him said, yeah, he was beyond crazy and beyond help.

Speaker 1 He was going to go on to like kill someone or something. He's that crazy.
Unknown what he's up to now. Perpetrator Kim bullied kids for no reason at high school for no reason at all.

Speaker 1 Now he provides private loans as an adult, illegal, charging over 800% in annual interest. He's...
He's a loan shark. Yeah, he's a predatory loan shark.

Speaker 1 And I'm sure if you don't pay him back, he's not going to be not non-violent. He even has the audacity to appear on people's live streams.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he had a roommate that was a live streamer and he would just hop on with no shame, no fear. He was not hiding.

Speaker 1 The live streamer had to apologize because he's like, I had no idea that this random roommate was part of the Medium 44. Like, how would I have known?

Speaker 1 But the fact that he has no fear and is willing to be that public is crazy. Another perpetrator, Joe, one of the most demonic guys in high school is how he is described.
Unknown what he is doing now.

Speaker 1 Next is Park, who used to run Burning Muktung Restaurant.

Speaker 2 What's that?

Speaker 1 It's a burning pig intestine barbecue restaurant. And after being exposed, his restaurant was quietly and quickly shut down.
The next exposed alleged perpetrator is Ju.

Speaker 1 It said that after being exposed, he feels very wronged because he never essayed anyone. He also makes a note that he did not want to essay that victim.

Speaker 1 Almost as if it's like, if it were anyone else, maybe.

Speaker 2 Wait, so this person came out with a statement?

Speaker 1 Yeah, and he said, I feel wronged because I never essayed her. And he has this whole story about how he just didn't want to essay her.

Speaker 1 He doesn't say anything about her looks or anything, but it's almost the implication of like, had it been someone else, maybe things would have been different. Maybe he would have essayed her.

Speaker 1 It's just really bizarre. He expresses frustration, stating that none of this would have even happened had the victim not even come to Miriang in the first place.

Speaker 1 Basically asking, what was she even doing in Miriang?

Speaker 2 He's still saying that today? Yeah.

Speaker 1 He writes, I know this incident is wrong. At my age, though, it's a time when we should have been meeting girls and having fun.
So I'm angry and frustrated to be involved in such a bad incident.

Speaker 1 I didn't meet the victim many times and I didn't have sexual relations with her.

Speaker 1 He does admit that he was one of the perpetrators present at the tennis court when she was essayed, but he claims he did not hold her arms and legs down while punching her to essay her.

Speaker 1 which is oddly specific. He continues, the victim kept saying we had sexual relations, so I unfairly went to a juvenile detention center for a little bit.

Speaker 1 He states that at most he should be charged for is a tempted R-word. He says the victim is also a problematic child.
The way she was threatened to come to Midiang, that's not true.

Speaker 1 It should have been fine if the victim didn't contact us first, but she called our friends here and there and saying she's in Midiang, let's meet up. And we ended up drinking.
Are you kidding me?

Speaker 1 And we're also guys. So out of curiosity, the incident occurred.

Speaker 2 Wait, this is happening right now.

Speaker 1 In 2024, he's basically stating that this whole gang essay for a prolonged period of time happened out of curiosity. We're also guys, so out of curiosity, the incident happened.

Speaker 1 I'm just sorry for causing national shame and making such a bad incident appear in the media because of my Midiang friends. And I don't believe that she ever tried to self-exit.

Speaker 1 If you look at the situations where we met with the victims, she's not the kind of girl to try to self-exit. She came to Midang on her own.
I don't treat women badly like this.

Speaker 1 It seems like netizens are viewing us negatively just because we are men.

Speaker 2 Wait, do we do we know what he looks like? Yeah.

Speaker 2 There's a face video or face.

Speaker 2 Holy, I cannot believe this.

Speaker 1 In a case like this, he has the audacity to say, it seems like netizens are viewing us too negatively just because we are men.

Speaker 1 No, you got off with no punishment because you are men.

Speaker 1 What do you mean? The next perpetrator is Beck, married and with a son.

Speaker 1 He is said to have been running a honey online shop with his wife, selling honey, literally honey that has now gone private it seems that his wife had no idea and it's alleged that his mother-in-law collapsed when she found out the news comments read this bastard who's worse than the devil and his offspring are trying to sell honey living sweetly by sucking honey and selling honey enjoying a sweet life as a R-worder

Speaker 1 the next perpetrator is Seul and it's said that he's lurking around in online chat rooms like the one that the victim met the perpetrator on.

Speaker 1 He claims he's just an innocent person that's also just watching all of this unfold on the internet. He has nothing to do with it.
He doesn't know how he got roped into it.

Speaker 1 He says, I'll say this for the last time if you don't have any brains or eyes. I'm sorry, but I'm just also another person spectating online.

Speaker 1 Are you a fucking prosecutor? Ha ha ha ha ha. What qualifications do these YouTubers have? Are you immersed in some sort of drama in your mind? This is hilarious.

Speaker 1 Catching an innocent person and acting like they're something? Ha ha ha. Do you live in some fantasy world?

Speaker 1 I mean, that

Speaker 1 response is like a confession.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this is these people are like straight out of

Speaker 1 villain movies.

Speaker 2 Yeah, villain K-drama, like those, those creepy K-dramas. Like, this is not real.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Perpetrator M, he works as a salesperson at BMW. He has since posted a statement that reads along the lines of, I'm wronged.
You ruined my family. Daily lives.

Speaker 1 I'll take legal action against baseless rumors and malicious comments.

Speaker 1 He posted a criminal investigation records check reply to show that he has no criminal record.

Speaker 1 But that's the whole point that people are outraged over that none of them have a criminal record, but he's using it to be like, see, nothing's on my record. You got the wrong guy.

Speaker 1 So everyone's like, what?

Speaker 1 That doesn't even make sense. He says, when I go home and see my two daughters running and crying to me saying, dad, I just keep crying.

Speaker 1 I resent myself for causing such great pain to my family because of this. Every time my family, friends, seniors, and juniors have all been a great support to me.

Speaker 1 And even the police officer in charge of checking my criminal investigation records patted me on the back and told me to stay strong.

Speaker 1 I thank these people for their encouragements. I was able to gather my thoughts and write this statement.

Speaker 1 For the return of normalcy for me and my family, I will take legal action against baseless rumors and malicious comments, also hoping no more innocent victims like me will occur.

Speaker 1 I will donate any fines exceeding the attorney's fees to the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center. Im has since been fired from his position at BMW.

Speaker 1 Another perpetrator named Joe has stated that he is not involved in the case. He states he's accused of being one of the perpetrators that settled with the victim.

Speaker 1 His argument is quote, I've never reached an agreement. Any SA crimes are subject to complaint under the SA Violence Punishment Act.

Speaker 1 So I would be punished even if I reached an agreement with the victim.

Speaker 1 Again, the reason that people are mad at this case to begin with is that nobody is punished regardless of anything, regardless of agreement or not. So what kind of argument even is that?

Speaker 1 Also, that specific revision to the SA Violence Punishment Act didn't even come into effect until 2013, which is after the crime. So again, are they just hoping that netizens are dumb?

Speaker 1 Because netizens are not dumb. Now, side note, I do want to mention, I do think it is dangerous.

Speaker 1 I think most people in Korea are very conflicted about what's going on on YouTube right now.

Speaker 1 To a degree, it's like, yes, this is the only way to get some sort of justice because these people feel like they're untouchable. They can do whatever they want.

Speaker 1 And now they're being outed by these vigilante justice YouTubers, right?

Speaker 1 So it is, it's sowing some level of fear, I hope, to some perpetrators but the whole point is they shouldn't be doing this anyway because the justice system should have handled it right that's the feeling but the secondary feeling is it is dangerous because you just don't know if you get the wrong person what happens then right now i will say the above statements of these people saying that you got the wrong guy I think the statement itself shows that they don't got the wrong guy.

Speaker 1 Because I imagine if you are accused of a crime that you really have no relation to,

Speaker 1 you would have a completely different statement. You would try to show proof of like, wait, guys, I don't know these people involved.

Speaker 1 Here's evidence that I was actually attending this school at that time. And then you would try to bring up, like, maybe get statements from friends of like, no, trust me, like this person does it.

Speaker 1 But these reactions of like, I am wronged.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I'm also feel, I also feel like,

Speaker 2 you know, like there you say there were like 44 of them and then there's like a hundred people who's somewhat involved

Speaker 2 for a small town like miron like these people are probably all publicly publicly known for the whole town like everybody probably can pinpoint who's who like they're all from the same area so that's another point that a lot of netizens have pointed out is that

Speaker 1 There have been some mistakes of people being associated with perpetrators. Like, oh, this is a girlfriend of the perpetrator.
And then she would just get dogpiled on.

Speaker 1 And then it turns out she's not dating a perpetrator, right? So those incidents have happened and it's really dangerous and so bad. I do not condone that, right?

Speaker 1 But with these main perpetrators that have been exposed so far, a lot of netizens are saying that these people's identities weren't necessarily hidden, hidden.

Speaker 1 Like everyone in Midian that went to that school knew what was going on, like knew these names, knew they were involved.

Speaker 1 And had they really pinpointed a wrong person, they would have come forward to help exonerate their name.

Speaker 1 So that's their argument. I don't know.
Let me know in the comments what you think.

Speaker 1 But going down, there is another perpetrator, Joe, who was exposed to have changed his name and gotten facial plastic surgery. He has been suing netizens who leave malicious comments exposing him.

Speaker 1 But get this, the lawyer that is representing him is the former presiding judge over the Midiang case.

Speaker 1 Judge Huang Qinhyeo, retired as a judge, has gone into private practice where he is now representing accused criminals and he is is now helping one of the media accused perpetrators to sue for defamation.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 Allegedly.

Speaker 2 But you say this guy had plastic surgery, name change.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That is, that says a lot.

Speaker 1 So also another thing that's allegedly happening is that behind the scenes, a lot of the perpetrators are going to YouTubers and saying, hey, if you don't out me, I'll give you a list of 10 names of perpetrators.

Speaker 1 Oh. Like they're all trying to out each other first.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 and another side note joe and another perpetrator they're suing people for defamation together right now their friendship went south because joe would just take all the money i think he made like a hundred thousand dollars in defamation lawsuits what wait the perpetrators are two perpetrators are suing youtubers yeah youtubers and netizens because you can actually sue like netizen comments in korea so they're taking all these people to court oh you have to also have to explain how defamation law works in korea yes okay.

Speaker 1 So here's the thing with defamation in the United States and South Korea. And we've had problems with this because we've had Korean perpetrators be like, we're going to sue you for defamation.

Speaker 1 And I said, okay, yeah, the laws are different in the U.S. Come meet me in the U.S.
So basically, in the United States, defamation is

Speaker 1 someone would have to knowingly post false information about a public figure. Or if they're not a public figure, it would just have to be false information about somebody, right?

Speaker 1 Let's say journalist is writing about a senator who has been embezzling funds. That senator can sue the journalist for defamation.

Speaker 1 In the United States, all the journalist has to do is show proof that the senator has been doing this. The senator has to show proof that they had not been doing this.
They have the burden of proof.

Speaker 1 They have to show that this is a lie. You are lying, journalist.
And on top of that, the senator has to prove that the journalist knew that they're lying, but still posted that article.

Speaker 1 It's very difficult to prove. So the difference mainly for defamation laws in South Korea and the United States, and we were talking to our Korean researchers about this, Koreans hate it.

Speaker 1 In Korea, you can't post the truth. You can get sued for posting the truth as defamation.

Speaker 1 So if I find out that somebody was in a DUI, I'm like, this name has been hidden from the courts, but I know that person personally. So I go online and I say, hey guys, remember that person?

Speaker 1 Oh yeah, it's this guy right here. I could get sued for defamation, even though it is true.
It's not proprietary information. It's not confidential information.
I didn't sign an NDA.

Speaker 1 Besides, that wouldn't work because it's illegal for that one. But like, you get it? It just, even if you...

Speaker 2 I think they say like anything that hurts their reputation, they can sue you. Is that how it works?

Speaker 1 Anything that hurts their reputation, they can sue you for defamation, even if what they did is true. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Even if their right to their reputation being damaged is true.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's just the weirdest law. So our researcher was telling us that it might be, they don't agree with this law, but they're saying it might be because Korea is a very small nation.

Speaker 1 And so even if they post the truth, it could ruin your whole career forever and you would not have the chance to rebuild a life.

Speaker 1 So most of this would cover things like allegations of cheating on your partner and stuff like that, but it doesn't make sense. Nobody likes this.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, who are we really protecting here? Now, Joe also states, the fact that I received no punishment means that I have not done anything wrong. I am innocent.

Speaker 1 That also is the dumbest statement I've ever heard because that's the reason that people are mad is that nobody received punishment. He's saying, I'm I'm innocent because I didn't get punished.

Speaker 1 And he also ends the statement with, I will sue all of you.

Speaker 1 It's speculated that he has sued over 200 people and another perpetrator named Park, his dad was a city council member at the time of the crime in Midyang, which begs the question, are we sure that they did not influence the investigation at all?

Speaker 1 Park is currently working as a manager in a massive global corporation. Then we have Kang and his mom.

Speaker 1 Kang is now a homeowner and his mom posts about how happy she is after COVID lockdowns to be back with her friends and she feels so quote alive and I'm so happy.

Speaker 1 She's also the one that called Hannah a gold digger.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Lawyer M has been exposed as being the one that repeatedly asked Hannah's little sister if she wasn't assaulted because of her weight.

Speaker 1 It's said he now runs his own private practice in the victim's hometown. So that's great.

Speaker 1 He's a criminal defense attorney that reps clients who have been accused and charged with home invasions, aggravated assaults, SA, and drug charges.

Speaker 1 The YouTubers allege that he is not a lawyer for victims, but clearly one in the business of protecting perpetrators. Then there's perpetrator Lee.

Speaker 1 He has actually posted a full-on quote public apology, if you can call it that.

Speaker 1 He says that he is posting this video to apologize to the victim, that he's extremely sorry and has been sorry since 2014. He said it took a ton of courage for him to film this apology video.

Speaker 1 And yes, his wrongdoings are hard to forgive, but once again, he apologizes. The apology was not well received.

Speaker 1 Most netizens commented along the lines of, honestly, he would have been better off just looking up the standard apology template.

Speaker 1 If someone didn't even know what he was talking about, they would have no idea what he's talking about or who he's apologizing to or for what.

Speaker 1 He just refers to his crimes as the incident from 20 years ago. Side note, the standard apology template in South Korea goes like this.
Content you should mention. Who are you?

Speaker 1 When, where, and what you did and how? Who did you harm? Are there any facts that have been reported differently than the actual situation? How are you planning to reflect?

Speaker 1 How do you plan to take responsibility for the matter moving forward? Content that should not be included. There's literally a rulebook online for this for apologies.
Content you should not include.

Speaker 1 The words and phrases unintentionally, this is all a misunderstanding. I will be more careful in the future.
I feel wronged. I am not the only one at fault.

Speaker 2 I mean, this is like.

Speaker 1 Like you learned this in fifth grade.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I'm sure nobody feels this way, but just in case somebody does, to be fair, right? At least he apologized.

Speaker 1 And like the others, no, allegedly another expose YouTuber received information about his wife's expensive apartment that his wife's family owns and the stores that they run.

Speaker 1 So in an attempt to not have that information published, he promised the YouTuber, I will formally apologize to the victim.

Speaker 2 Right, so he didn't want to apologize. No.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Then perpetrator Kim is exposed.
He is currently working as a traveling air conditioner installer, which is terrifying to think. He's led into people's homes and he travels for work

Speaker 1 perpetrator yoon chin teng is exposed and makes an apology video saying standard apology but worse he beat hannah with a belt and an iron pipe while assaulting her so i'm not sure how you this person exposed his own face as well yes now he was exposed for beating her with an iron pipe While assaulting her.

Speaker 1 Yes, so I don't really know how you can even pretend to be remorseful for that. So his apology video just doesn't really go over well.
Like, oops, sorry, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, he does try to make himself look good by saying that he never stole from the victim, though, like, never stole her money.

Speaker 1 Lastly, there is the cousin. She was originally thought to be a victim in this case because that's what the police initially released to the press.

Speaker 1 However, it is being cleared up that she was never a victim. She was actually part of the perpetrators.

Speaker 1 She dated one of the perpetrators and completely turned a blind eye to her own cousin Hannah being tortured and essayed for a year. She also begged on her knees for leniency for her boyfriend.

Speaker 1 Not for forgiveness, allegedly, yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, one of the more startling revelations through all of this is a girl named Huang.

Speaker 1 She is being exposed as allegedly being a girlfriend to one of the perpetrators during the crime.

Speaker 1 It's alleged that not only did she know that her boyfriend was doing this to the victim, but she allegedly helped record it and even called Hannah ugly and taunted her as she was being essayed.

Speaker 1 There is an old post that was dug up from when the perpetrators were all released with a slap on their wrist. She writes to another friend, did it all get sorted out okay?

Speaker 1 I've heard that apart from three people, everyone else has come out of detention fine. Those girls were so ugly anyway.
Anyway, everyone, good work.

Speaker 1 Now, it's been alleged that she has now grown up and become a police officer.

Speaker 1 Netizens even dug up her alleged application to become a police officer and she wrote, allegedly, I'm a very honest and diligent person. I think about crimes from the viewpoint of criminals too.

Speaker 1 In the case of SA, I am able to consider both victim as well as criminal's position and whether the victim did not walk around in a manner encouraging to be assaulted.

Speaker 1 I can also do some martial arts as well.

Speaker 1 The fact that somebody saw that application and said, this is the one that's going to be a cop is mind-boggling.

Speaker 1 Huang has since then apologized, if you can call it that, saying, I posted that without knowing, but I deeply regret my actions that broke the victim's heart. I sincerely bow down with my head.

Speaker 1 Netizens have commented, is her application a comedic piece? They are not police. They are gangsters.
She's friends with offenders for crying out loud. What kind of person like this becomes a cop?

Speaker 1 That's why we have crazy crimes in this nation. She's apologizing.
Last time I checked, she's still Facebook friends with offenders.

Speaker 1 Huang is so very sorry that she has now waged a lawsuit against the netizens that have exposed her.

Speaker 1 Side note, a lot of the investigators working this case, before and after some of them were exposed, they're all avoiding interviews.

Speaker 1 They get agitated when reporters show up to even ask them a question about the case, which if you didn't do anything wrong, you have nothing to hide.

Speaker 1 One police official did state about the officer scolding Hannah for muddying the waters of Midiang, because that was a big deal.

Speaker 1 He said, that person was from Midang, you know, he probably felt like the community was one big family, so our staff scolded her. He shouldn't have done that.

Speaker 1 You know, from the female student's perspective, that must have been difficult, right?

Speaker 2 This is is crazy

Speaker 1 in total only eight of the officers that violated hannah's human rights received any disciplinary actions and even the ones that did i mean could they really be considered disciplinary actions so far a total of 29 identities have been revealed on youtube so far they're not all the 29 of the 44 some of them are officers judges lawyers Many are in the 44, but others are also friends of the perpetrators that said heinous things like that girlfriend that became a police officer.

Speaker 1 So there's just a lot. Now, some of the perpetrators are actually trying to reach out to the victim, demanding that she help make all this go away.
Which, why does that happen so frequently?

Speaker 1 Why does the responsibility get put on the victims again? As if she's responsible for any of this, making her feel like if she doesn't help the perpetrators, something bad will happen.

Speaker 1 One of them sent Hannah a message. This situation has gotten so big that some of these guys are out here losing their jobs and you're just staying quiet.

Speaker 1 Some of the perpetrators didn't even directly participate in the essay. You should at least confirm that and do something.
Why are you staying quiet?

Speaker 2 Who is this?

Speaker 1 One of the perpetrators. Undisclosed, yeah.

Speaker 2 Whoa.

Speaker 1 That kind of request should honestly, if I ran my own country,

Speaker 1 I was going to say death, but it should result in solitary confinement right off the bat. Like, you want to be dumb? Be dumb by yourself.
We don't have to witness that.

Speaker 1 Where you can't, you cannot be hurt. Sure, you can write a letter to the victim.
Trash. Just write all day until your hand gets bloody.
I don't care. That's crazy.

Speaker 1 Some of them are just saying stuff out of their buttholes that happen to be located on their face. All I did was give her bus money and buy her food.
I feel so wronged for being accused.

Speaker 1 But what's even crazier is, how can we assume that the perpetrators actually feel any remorse? I mean, look at the way their parents acted when they were caught committing the crimes.

Speaker 1 And even now, one of the perpetrators' parents were interviewed later on and she screamed, it's been so long since the incident ended. We settled everything back then and the kids went through a lot.

Speaker 1 They're living well now. So why keep bringing this up? There are so many people living quietly now in this country who have committed even worse crimes.
At the time, these kids were high schoolers.

Speaker 1 They made a momentary mistake. So what do you want us to do about it now?

Speaker 1 Another mom was questioned and she said, no, my son didn't even touch that girl. There is evidence he filmed videos of it.
He didn't do that. He ended up just like this for being present at the scene.

Speaker 1 The lack of neurons firing in these parents' brains needs to be studied.

Speaker 1 One of the family members even just states, I feel like what's known to the world and what actually happened are very different.

Speaker 1 Another mom protecting her precious little boy, her son, the most important human to exist, states, why do I have to feel sorry for the victim's family? Why? It's not like we haven't suffered.

Speaker 1 Do they not think about the damage we suffered? If you're gonna have a daughter, you better raise them right. You have to raise them right so these types of incidents don't happen.

Speaker 1 Those kinds of girls, they come to the boys and wag their tails. Do you think any guy isn't gonna fall for it and be tempted?

Speaker 1 Honestly, do you think that we're not talking because we don't have mouths? Okay, so that's a Korean phrase, which basically translates to,

Speaker 1 Do you think some people don't talk because they don't have a mouth? And it means, like, do you really think we have nothing to say?

Speaker 1 Almost implying, like, we're just not saying it because we're above it, or we have something that would hurt the victim more. Like, we have so much to say,

Speaker 1 it's very bizarre and unhinged.

Speaker 2 Like, they are

Speaker 2 just as nasty as these guys because that's exactly how they turn out this way. It's it's exactly you see the you see what who raised these boys, you know

Speaker 1 Midiang, the city itself is getting canceled right now with tourism boycotts, products from Midiang, as well as food and any agriculture being boycotted by many civilians.

Speaker 1 The local government with about 80 officials from Midiang had to bow and issue a public apology.

Speaker 1 The mayor bowed deeply and said, I once again apologize to the victim and their families who suffered unspeakable pain from this incident and to all citizens.

Speaker 2 He only apologized because they're getting canceled. Yeah.
Like they didn't do anything for decades.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's the point, right?

Speaker 1 I don't think anyone would have boycotted a whole town just because a heinous crime happened there, but just the horrific police procedure that followed, it's just, it's, yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm not endorsing that message. I'm just explaining there's a lot of conversations about it.
And a lot of conversations of she was essayed in playgrounds, tennis courts, motels.

Speaker 1 I mean, this is a small town we're talking about.

Speaker 1 The YouTubers are getting sued by the perpetrators.

Speaker 1 Most of the YouTubers are faceless and use a voice distortion software to make sure that they can't be found, but some of them have been and are being sued.

Speaker 1 Like I said, in South Korea, unauthorized personal information disclosure is considered defamation.

Speaker 1 Yeah, which is, again, very crazy. To complicate things even further, HellStorage is not actually a picture-perfect vigilante justice warrior either.

Speaker 1 He's the first one that posted the first video that kicked off this whole thing.

Speaker 1 He's no longer posting, I believe, but he made a public statement soon after releasing the first video that said, I have directly communicated via email with the victim's family and they have agreed to disclose all 44 names.

Speaker 1 Hannah and her family never consented to this. In fact, that statement alone made them very scared.

Speaker 1 Basically, it's one thing to expose perpetrators' names by yourself as a vigilante justice warrior because the perpetrator's anger is now directed at these YouTubers.

Speaker 1 Like, what the fork is going on, right?

Speaker 1 Sure, there's implications and moral debates on these vigilante YouTubers, but it's another thing to state that the victim wants you to do this because now the anger from the perpetrators could be easily directed to the victim.

Speaker 1 Hannah and her family said they were terrified that the perpetrators would hear this and try to retaliate in some manner. So HellStorage has since then apologized for lying about the situation.

Speaker 1 He claims that he he was briefly in contact with the victim's younger brother and took that as consent, which I don't know, okay, if that's even true.

Speaker 1 But by this point, other YouTubers have come up and started revealing more information about the perpetrators. They do not claim to be working with the victim at all.

Speaker 1 They state that they are just finding information and exposing perpetrators through tips.

Speaker 1 So you have some people arguing, yes, the justice system is messed up and that needs to be fixed. But is the fix to do this? Is it to create so much outrage that the justice system has to do this?

Speaker 1 Or is it something else?

Speaker 1 Some people argue this is more of a witch hunt than anything, that yes, you could expose real perpetrators, but there's also a chance that innocent people are named.

Speaker 1 How can they prove their innocence in a situation like this?

Speaker 1 But others argue, I mean, when the law can't do it, someone has to, right? You can't just sit here and pray for a better justice system because look where that's gotten people.

Speaker 1 It hasn't gotten people anywhere. And some people hope that this causes such a slap in the face to the justice system that they feel mocked, that they will slowly start to change how they do things.

Speaker 1 Most netizens feel that private revenge is only happening because the justice system failed. Why would anyone do this

Speaker 1 if it was okay the first time?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But some netizen comments read, The perpetrators are bad, but the victim is also problematic. To be honest, I can't help but think she deserved it.
Like, why did she keep quiet for a year?

Speaker 1 It's just all weird.

Speaker 1 One comment comment was talking about how after all this time, like let them move on. They have families.
You're impacting families regarding the perpetrators.

Speaker 1 But another comment hits back, some say, why now after all this time? Is that even something a human would utter? For a victim, even though time is past, the pain feels like it happened yesterday.

Speaker 1 I want to use curse words at these people, but I will stop here. Parents who sheltered their perpetrator children, you are the ones that turned your kids into monsters.

Speaker 1 Another reads, the male teenagers have become monsters, the families that raised them to be monsters, the parents, the local communities they belong to. Is this all really a human society?

Speaker 1 Is this not just barbarianism?

Speaker 1 With the newfound attention to the case, the victims have been doing more interviews with the press, completely anonymous, faces blared, voices altered with fake names. They were asked, why now?

Speaker 1 And they said,

Speaker 1 We looked at each other, the two sisters, and they said, let's stop avoiding it and face reality for once. Back then, we were young.
We didn't know how the case would unfold.

Speaker 1 We thought all the perpetrators would be punished just based on their statements. We are no longer the young sisters we were back then.

Speaker 1 If we feel we are being victimized, we are prepared to step forward now. We want to say that we're not young girls anymore.

Speaker 1 They're in their mid-30s now. So after the renewed attention on the case, there have been a lot of donations, including Rotten Mingo, thanks to you guys and the support of our partners.

Speaker 1 There have been a lot of donations pouring in for Hannah and the sexual violence center that she was working with from the entirety since the incident happened.

Speaker 1 and she said thank you to the many people who have donated through sexual violence counseling centers i will truly never forget this and live remembering it for the rest of my life even after 20 years have passed i would like to express my gratitude to many people who have remembered us friends sisters and neighbors who have been close to us thank you to all of you who have given us strength we were able to speak our hearts for the first time i've decided to use the donations for a deposit for public housing and i'll be moving soon and use the rest for treatments and things that i couldn't have done before.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much. She said, I have never once forgotten the face of the perpetrators.
Not once, all 44 of them.

Speaker 1 And the violence center that she works for has made a statement on her behalf stating that they are not attached to any vigilante YouTuber. Like they're not talking to any of these people.

Speaker 1 The one thing that she does request from the public is she just hopes they don't forget.

Speaker 1 And it seems like she hasn't either.

Speaker 1 And we shouldn't either, until something changes.

Speaker 1 And that is the case right now of the Midang 44 that has come up again.

Speaker 1 What are your thoughts on this case? I mean, it's crazy.

Speaker 1 Everything that we thought we knew also turned out to be false information leaks from the police. I don't even understand the purpose of those false information leaks.

Speaker 1 Like why group the sister, why group the cousin? It's just so bizarre to me the way that everyone, every step of the way, handled it. The defense attorneys,

Speaker 1 the judges, the investigators is so mind-boggling.

Speaker 1 What are your thoughts? Please stay safe and I will see you in the next one.

Speaker 2 Bye.

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