2006 Cheongju Curling Iron Case - Real Story Behind "The Glory"

[Music] we're going to be talking about a lot of different victims today and a lot of them wanted to remain anonymous in some sources you can actually find either their last name their surname or you can find their full name but just to make it a little bit better we're going to call them student number one it's just going to be easier to follow because there's a lot of stories to get through today student number one made maybe only one mistake and that mistake was picking up a phone call I mean it's not even really a mistake by most people's books people pick up their phone calls all the time that's the purpose of a phone but to these five insecure power tripping bullies it was the biggest mistake that she could have made in her entire life June 2017 student one gets a phone call from a girl in her class's boyfriend so some random dude in her class called sir and I'm not even sure why he called student one either it was random maybe he had to ask her a question maybe he wanted to talk to her or maybe the girlfriend told him to call I really don't know if it was a setup but he calls student one she picks up and that's it there's no cheating there's no Affair there's no flirting nothing student one simply picked up an incoming call and that is why five girls in her grade decided to beat her an inch of her life the very first time they forced student one out of her house hit her with flip-flops demanding to know why she would even dare pick up this guy's phone call like what's wrong with you are you a [ __ ] they forced her to come to um this karaoke bar they call it lurebangs in Korea and it's a little bit different from the Western karaoke bars you can actually rent private rooms you have this big screen in your private room and these microphones it's so loud so they turn up the music in that nurabang they start hitting her with the microphone over and over on the head they're punching her they beat her until she was covered with her own blood thankfully student one was alive she did the right thing the thing that everybody tells you to do if you've been a victim of a violent crime or if you've been bullied she went straight to the police the police did not hold up their end of the social contract they didn't do their jobs the police did nothing the police found out that she had gone to the police and they decided they were going to teach her a lesson they felt like they had to put her through something torturous this time so she wouldn't even think to ever report them ever again they said to her do you think that we wouldn't notice that you went to the cops do you think we're dumb you'll be dead the next time we catch you they wanted to keep their word two months later September 1st of 2017 student one was invited by one of her close friends to go grab burgers and then go to the movies okay look she really needed this like she needed this night out with a friend to de-stress to eat some burgers and not worry about these five bullies that were harassing her every single day in school so she gets ready and she shows up at this restaurant early she sits down she's got her Burger ordered and she's just sitting there waiting anxiously waiting for her friend to get there I mean maybe she's staring at the restaurant door just thinking about the movie that they're gonna watch maybe they're gonna go grab food afterwards maybe they're gonna eat ramen at a convenience store when suddenly the door to the restaurant swings open and her bullies Rush In five girls they walk straight up to her and they say get up follow us you don't want to make a scene do you I think the most devastating part about this is the bullies had gotten student one's friend and forced her to set her up so you know how her friend was like come meet me for burgers the bullies were like text your friend right now text student one right now her friend was never coming to get burgers she was never gonna go to the movies with her she knew what the bullies had in store for her there is CCTV footage of student one walking out of the restaurant with the five bullies so what happens is At first she walks out and she's willingly leaving the restaurant and I'm saying willingly in the sense that it wasn't forcible like they're not dragging her out of the restaurant probably she was scared to say no and uh scared of making a scene but it seems like when they instruct her to go into the alleyway next to the restaurant she steps away and tries to leave so one of the bullies grabs her by the hair and drags her into the alleyway and almost immediately after I'm sure while they're still in view of the main road because the alleyway it's not like it's just there's a turn immediately like you've seen an Alleyway from the main road you can see straight down it right afterwards a police car is seen driving past the alleyway wow the police fail her a second time they keep driving whether they saw her or not is unclear but the result was nothing and nobody was stopped instead the bullies the five bullies they drag her to a quiet place and they start punching her the crazy thing is it's secluded but it's not isolated like this is a busy part of South Korea so a few passerbys they see student one being punched and nobody tries to stop them nobody tries to call the police but it freaked out the bullies enough that they dragged her to a nearby Factory instead that was closed and they started assaulting her with anything that they could grab their could get their hands on out of the five bullies it was mainly two girls doing the doing most of the physical abuse but there were still three girls just standing there yelling threatening the victim watching as their friends assaulted her with iron pipes glass Soju bottles bricks chairs they used a knife to cut her skin and they burned her with cigarettes and they found this vitamin 500 glass bottle it's like these uh vitamin supplements in South Korea and they're in these tiny glass bottles and it's the glass is thick it's probably thicker than a beer gloss and they start hitting student one with it and they're screaming and laughing how come this bottle won't break let's just hit her till the bottle breaks they were laughing as they said this they also laughed as they said I like the smell of her blood let's keep going shall we the victim was suffering from serious injuries to her jaw the back of her head she was bleeding everywhere and they complained God why is she bleeding so much her blood is dirty at one point student one passes out loses Consciousness and the bullies say let's beat her up more since we're already guilty of attempted murder might as well they tortured her for nearly two hours and they did all of this thinking that they were going to get away with it thinking that they taught her a lesson they had no idea that they were recorded by the CCTV near the factory the whole two hours of the assault was recorded which I don't even know if they care I don't even know if they care because they were caught on camera and I'm going to show you this footage forcing student one onto her knees like the begging post like pleading for her life and taking pictures of her with the flash on I don't know as some sort of sick evidence of their torture like a trophy yeah I mean I guess they wanted to show it to others of like this look what we did to her look what will happen if you go to the police and tell on us they would later share this picture the kneeling photo or oh my gosh so the CCTV is in black and white but every inch of this student one's body was covered in blood like I'm talking her hair is caked in blood every part of her arm and legs are covered in her own blood they took this picture with the flash on and one of the bullies would actually send this to a senior upperclassman and in South Korea the social hierarchy of age is very intense I'm sure you guys are familiar with this by now but if you're a junior in high school the sophomores in high school are usually bowing 90 degrees to you when they see you in the hallways like it's not even an upperclassman underclassman type of ordeal like it's very serious there's even a term you call someone like aniyong Duna right and she sends the bully sends it to an unni so this is um older than her and someone that she actually is somewhat scared of maybe the bully's bully I have no idea but she sends this picture and the only texted back what did you do I hit a kid they'll say it's attempted murder do you think I went overboard you did that did you do it alone you're real psycho LOL did you and your friend do it together answer me she doesn't respond so the only text back answer me you bet are you really sending this to me right now asking if it's okay I'm getting really tired of you now you need to control yourself better that conversation is the most chilling weird and normal natural conversation I ever heard like what is going on that's why a lot of people had a problem with this conversation once it started getting public because that's not how you react to a picture like this you don't just say I'm getting sick of you you've been acting up these days yeah do a picture like this but thankfully the Ani does do something about it she kind of sleeps on it but she ends up bringing this picture to the police and the four the five teenagers would be taken in by authorities and only two would be charged as the main perpetrators the only reason that they were caught is because this Ani sent the picture into the police when the bullies found out that the Ani had reported them they discurried to turn themselves into the police not because they felt remorse not because they wanted to serve their time for their heinous crime but they heard that judges are easier on them if they turn themselves in first when they were questioned on why they did this they said the victim was being rude to an ani which means you know an upperclassman which is a straight up lie they did this because her boyfriend called student one and student one being a normal human being picked up a phone call yeah there's a picture of the floor of the factory where there's just blood staining the entire place where she was kneeled and then these are her injuries and that is her shoe covered goodness that is her yeah these bullies would actually only pay for their Crimes by spending a few years in prison the main bullies received two years in juvenile detention centers another bully received just a few months and all of South Korea was pretty outraged I think the feeling of Injustice practically ran through the whole nation the judge tried to argue miners are physically and mentally impulsive and they don't have the same ability to perceive as adults do the Court's not going to try these teens under the same standard as adults the girls the bullies the girls they show guilt and reflection we must acknowledge that there's room for change with educational rehabilitation okay fine maybe with Rehabilitation there will be no such thing as bullying anymore but that clearly wasn't the case in fact more extreme cases of bullying started to pop up all across South Korea after this viral case some even inspired the popular Netflix drama the glory these are the real life stories that inspired that drama foreign [Music] as always full show notes are available at rottenminglepodcast.com as well as resources if you're being bullied or if you've been having darker thoughts please seek out help I'm going to leave a few links and hotlines in the description but with that being said there's also going to be a Content warning for intense bullying School violence and taking of one's life and just know that if you're feeling bullied or feeling alone you're not alone there are people out there that can help you that you can talk to and I know it feels hard so please just check the resources and another thing this isn't necessarily in the show notes but the glory on Netflix is a 16 episode Korean drama that's been widely talked about I actually made like three videos on it okay we've covered the whole series on our other podcast Channel um Miss mango butter baking a mystery baking a murder where we cover like fictional Thriller shows movies and books I can leave a link to those but honestly the glory itself the kdrama on Netflix has been really good and it's been touted as a prime example of the saying art imitates life so the glory follows the story of a woman named mundolen who's on this path of just pure revenge like she's been plotting this revenge for nearly 20 years of her life The Story Goes she was bullied in high school by a group of rich kids and this is no like normal bullying not that there is any but she was permanently disfigured the bullies had held her down while they burned her arms and legs with a curling iron they beat her they sexually assaulted her and they all got away with it back in high school Tongan had tried to tell the school officials she tried to tell the police about the bullying they all refused to take action because the rich kids had powerful parents that these administrators that these police officers wanted to be on their Good Side High School Tongan she couldn't handle the mental and physical torture so multiple times she contemplates and almost goes through with taking her own life and in the end I guess something in her just snaps she decides I'm not gonna end my life I'm gonna get revenge and she feels like her life is over already why die and then what these bullies are going to go on living their best lives bullying more people so she sets off on this 20 year old journey to commit the perfect Revenge to make sure that the bullies get what's coming to them so the drama follows Tongan and the bullies that are now in their late 30s and I think what makes a show different from all the other Korean dramas in the past that I've just shown aspects of high school bullying is which side note Korean dramas do have a lot of depictions of school bullying I remember being shocked watching Boys Over Flowers and there's so many Clips where the main character gets bullied by having Rich students throw eggs at her she walks into the school they're throwing eggs at her and pouring bags of flour onto her I remember showing my mom and being like that's that's crazy and she's like yeah Korean bullying is that crazy it was the weirdest thing but the glory is even more intense than that but I think what makes it stand out is it's a pretty close and honest depiction of bullying in South Korea like maybe not the Revenge but the bullying aspect like just how deep the layers of school bullying are the police corrupt corruption the school administrators negligence their motives to make this school seem like the perfect School intimidation of victims parents using their money to get away with things letting their kids get away with things like it makes sense especially in a country like South Korea that this kdrama became one of the most anticipated releases in a while which side note this is so pertinent to the story later but all the actors and actresses were screened for past school bullying records because the directors and producers wanted to make sure nobody in the drama was later exposed for being a bully in real life can you imagine that exactly imagine one of the bullies on the drama is like a real life bully so uh keep this in mind that I wonder like hey let me just talk to all your classmates and yeah I wonder if they go back to your school records but none of these stay on the school records exactly do they get a pi yeah yeah or do they do the most basic search and even today like people are getting exposed day by day right okay so the bullying thing in Korea has become such a [ __ ] show a lot of K-pop idols and actors and actresses just anyone in mainstream Korean news is constantly being accused of bullying some of them are true bullies but recently we've seen a trend of false allegations of bullying and it's completely ruined multiple people's careers yeah because you know I think that's the problem with being a true victim and these false allegations is that it happened so long ago that there might not be enough evidence and so it's just it's a really tricky situation yeah very tricky yeah I'm not exactly sure how they would screen for something like that but um keep this in mind because because maybe they didn't screen everyone okay just keep that in mind so the glory it might seem like this really well-written show and it is but in the art imitates life kind of way people start immediately drawing connections between the show and real-life bullying cases that were well known in South Korea like many years ago and the show is not just a genius Netflix idea it was based off these true stories and there's three Central themes that the glory explores and all these themes have real life cases that they were inspired by the three elements the three themes are bullying suicide and revenge those are like the key themes in this whole kdrama so let's explore the real life cases the most standout aspect of the bullying in the show is that the Bullies Are Burning the the protagonist with a curling iron they're literally holding her down taunting her telling her that they're gonna use her skin as a way to check the temperature of the curling iron to see if it's hot enough for their hair in 2006 a middle schooler again I don't want to use her full name I believe you can find it but let's call her student too for privacy reasons student two was hospitalized for two months she had traumatic injuries all over her body her parents doctors even the police were called to the hospital when she was brought in because I mean they were alerted they were alarmed they were confused on how she got these injuries to begin with they were concerned for her current health State her mental state it's almost like she didn't even realize that she was in pain though the whole time she's just begging her parents you have to let me transfer to a different school you have to let me transfer to a different School it's a bit of an odd reaction the parents are more concerned about like what happened to you who did this to you what do you care about transferring to a new school right now but she just kept repeating you have to let me transfer to a different school please like I'm I'm scared of my friends finally with enough begging student two tells everyone what happened to her and it's a story that I don't think most of South Koreans have ever forgotten according to student two her hell on Earth started 20 days ago it lasted a full 20 days May 2nd she was on her way home from school and she always takes the same route she always does she listens to the music she um kind of just stares at the ground and she's daydreaming when she sees several pairs of feet just right in front of her blocking her way she looks up she sees a group of female students from her class let's call them A B and C so three girls they're known to be bullies like that's what they're known for in their class so student two I mean she always made sure to stay out of their way kind of she never really even existed in the same circle of friends they're just the type of girls that she would avoid in the classroom she wouldn't even make eye contact with them so it's strange that they would just approach her out of nowhere it's very random either way they ask her a question and maybe she was so scared maybe she didn't know what answer would be appropriate but she didn't respond she just kind of stood there with her Hedgehog and immediately smack right away she was physically assaulted for not answering the question she said I didn't do anything wrong I didn't make a mistake in particular that I could think of I think that they were just angry that I didn't respond quickly enough to their question but from that day I became their new Target the bully started demanding that students who give up all of her allowance to them and when they burned through her allowance so let's say she gets twenty dollars a week they would force student two to beg her parents for more money should beg her parents and when she tried to tell the police my family doesn't have that much to spare please like we don't have that much money I don't have anything more to give you they would start physically assaulting her they would jump her and that was just the beginning like just the punches and slaps and the kicks that was the beginning eventually they felt like that wasn't getting the point across so they sadistically pulled out one of their curling irons plugged it in two of the girls held her down by her arms and the third bully started burning her holding the hot curling iron to her bare skin literally just like the drama because the drama is technically based off of this case or at least this aspect she said that you could hear her skin sizzling off her body and when they removed it she's left with these um these big giant red welts on her body and that's not even the worst part as as it heals you know how it fills with pus and then eventually it scabs over student two said it was so painful I felt like I was gonna die I couldn't even move or resist I just wanted to run they told me if I screamed from the pain that they would kill me but that's not all once the wound started to finally heal and scab over the bullies the three girls they would Corner her after school and they would demand to see her wound and while laughing amongst each other they would rip the scabs off her body sometimes they would want her to be traumatized more and they would force her to rip her own scabs off her body she was also beaten with a baseball bat she suffered from a protruding tailbone which is a result of the abuse and as student who is talking about what happened to her she seems to kind of hesitate as if there's more to the story so the journalist everyone's pushing her to open up that she's safe now she doesn't have to be scared of these bullies anymore and she tells everyone that there's more scars on her chest the bullies that try to permanently disfigure her chest there are streak marks all around it looked like someone had taken um like a clothespin a safety pin and just started digging into her skin to make red slash marks everywhere and it looked like it happened over the period of the 20 days some wounds were healing some looked more fresh than others her father was um show these are not public but her father showed the reporter's pictures for evidence to show them yes this indeed did happen and it was like this gut-wrenching moment for the father he works as a chef and he said that every day during those 20 days he came home and he did notice things he didn't think it was a big deal but always in the middle of the night for the past month he would wake up to screams coming from his daughter's room you'd wake up check the time and the next morning when he asked she was just having nightmares so when it happened again he's like oh was she just having nightmares which she was but it was happening a lot during the time that she was getting tortured he regrets not asking her or demanding to know what was going on or even trying to wake her up on top of that around the same time his daughter was begging to be transferred to a different school and he didn't take it seriously he thought that maybe she was trying to switch schools because it was less academically Intense or maybe a close friend of hers was going to a different school he thought it was something like that you know one of those like kid excuses that's kind of what he chalked it up to he thought he was making the right move as a parent by making her stick it out at the school once he found out the truth now he couldn't sleep at night he was just seething with anger he demanded answers from the school on how they could even let this happen he begged his daughter to give up the names of the bullies and she was so hesitant she's like I can't tell you I can't tell you and she said that they were gonna kill her if she ever named them as the bullies finally with enough prodding student two tells her parents and the school who did this and everyone's kind of shocked the girl she named are not the type of girls that would be bullies they're not the type of girls that would bully anybody and I know I know like these girls can be perceived a certain way but actually be completely evil that wasn't the case here these three girls genuinely did not bully student too what do you mean students who confessed that she was bullied into Lying by the three real bullies so she just named three strangers three random girls in the school that the bullies wanted her to name wow so okay well in the end um they did get down to the bottom of it and found out the identity of the actual beliefs the three girls and the schools said they were going to investigate after their investigation they came out with a statement where they said we've conducted an internal investigation God I love internal investing and we've closed the case because student two and the three girls stories aren't matching up yeah what if that's not the most obvious thing in the world of course it's not matching up but the school continues for us it's becoming a case of she said they said the only thing we can confirm at this time is that she student two had fallen off of a bike at one point and that could be a result that could result in some of her injuries insinuating that potentially a lot of her injuries could have happened when she accidentally fell off a bike which other classmates did witness this bike fall which I don't know how in the world that would be feasible to get like third degree burn marks from falling off a bike her father said I mean I just can't believe how a school can be this lukewarm about a cruel case like this a lot of netizens agreed they posted about this case they accused the school administrators of being corrupt and they wrote did the school get bribed by the perpetrators parents their response makes this whole situation worse I mean just look at the pictures of her arms if someone did this in the army or in the street the police would have a field day they wouldn't just ignore it so why are the police ignoring it when it happens in a middle school Middle School yeah most of the stories we're talking about are Middle School so that's what 13 12 13 14. does the school really believe this is a case of two sides having different perspectives so the sentiment became okay fine the school and the police won't do anything about it let the netizens do it let's expose these girls but once news started spreading about this case the police were forced to investigate and this is when the main bully they call her Kim Kim confesses to the police for her crimes and again she didn't do this because she felt remorseful it's you know if you're a minor you confess to a crime it's kind of well known that you get a higher chance of getting probation so even the way she confessed showed that she had zero remorse for what she did she straight up said yeah I burned her about nine times with a curling iron I hit her around the head a couple of times legs and arms maybe about like seven times this lasted for 20 days and it's because student two promised me something and she didn't keep her promise she also stated that she didn't turn herself in sooner because the whole situation was quote getting out of hand she was promptly arrested which is rare because Korea's law for minors is incredibly generous like if you're under the age of 14 and you commit a heinous crime such as rape you still get probation you get to go home it's not even going to be on your record and then the names Nobody Knows the names nobody knows nobody will know what you did at 13 years old and I'm sure that will only escalate when you're 23 33 the judge said I arrested this girl because I wanted to set a precedent for how serious school bullying is in South Korea Kim was arrested and sentenced but I don't know what kind of precedent this judge was really trying to set out other than maybe trying to look good for a second there in the Press because at the time nobody knew the extent of her sentencing he was like this is private confidential information in the eyes of the law we can't let it be known so people move on and we don't know if we're looking at Juvenile Detention Center we don't know if we're looking at probation two days community service the teachers involved in the case were also investigated and had administrative punishment which is unknown again what the extent was that because the school refused to tell reporters but I imagine a week paid time off which is not a real punishment meanwhile student too has to live with the emotional the mental scars of this for the rest of her life after two months in inpatient care two months she had to go to a psychiatric hospital and this is in 2006 right so this all passes over and then with the glory trending recently A lot of people are revisiting this case and netizens are still Furious and there was an interesting question that was brought up like do you think that these bullies grew up and regret what they did do you think that they live with shame and hate there was so much Newfound interest in this case and interest in what happened to that evil middle schooler like what did you grow up to be now obviously we can't hunt this girl down but huge news networks were able to dig into our sentencing in 2006 when the judge was like I want to set a precedent for how we're going to take bullying seriously Kim the main perpetrator was sentenced to probation meaning she was basically arrested for show and went straight back home to her family that night the only punishment if you can even call it that was that an officer might stop by her house once in a while to make sure she's following the laws and not bullying people this is probably the lightest punishment that she could have ever received this is also not going to stay on her permanent record meaning she could go into any career field after torturing a middle schooler to the point of scarring her for life she could go on to be a police officer we don't know what she is right now she could be a police officer yes a nurse truly whatever she wants and maybe she did become a health care worker like can you imagine that not knowing that the doctor that you're supposed to trust with your life and health permanently scarred someone for the fun of it because that's exactly what happened to student number three student three um Park sungmin so she is in a whole News Network recently she has fully released her identity but we're gonna call her student three she's 31 years old right now and her two bullies had burned her arms in middle school with a hair straightener they had literally clamped her arm into a hair straightener the two bullies would go on to become a nurse and a social worker at 31 years old student 3 was trying to move on with her life I mean as best as she could right she still couldn't wear short sleeves during the summers in Korea which if you know it's scorching hot every time she wore short sleeves she said that she would catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror and she would just burst into tears but sometimes she would try to be strong she'd be like you know what I'm gonna wear this short sleeve I'm gonna who cares right and then she would walk out of her room and she would see her parents eyes fall to her arms and she would just see their whole energy their mood shift they would get emotional they would get angry and she just she didn't want to dig up these complicated buried memories again for everyone so she never really wore short sleeves she also really couldn't go out to the hair salon without feeling anxious and all of this has to do with the fact that in second year of middle school so like the seventh grade bullies had forced her down grabbed a hair straightener clamped it on her arm for five minutes yeah five minutes leaving her with a permanent scar for the rest of her life it didn't start like that though the bullying escalated over the course of a year till it got so bad finally someone noticed and it didn't start with a hair straightener it actually started with a dollar student three said that she was minding her own business and kind of similar to the last story but two of the girls in her grade came up to her and asked to borrow a dollar she's like okay these were random girls asking me for a dollar I'm just gonna give it to them the next day they asked for another dollar maybe they're hungry they forgot their lunch or something she gives them another dollar and soon they're not borrowing dollars they're demanding money they would walk over and instead of hey can I borrow a dollar it's like hey give me a dollar and it wasn't just a dollar anymore it was suddenly ten dollars thirty dollars fifty dollars a hundred dollars when she asked them wait why do I need to give you this money like I'm so confused you haven't paid me back what are you even using this money for like why do you why are you taking my money they would say because your existence is an inconvenience to me so pay up and maybe if it had stopped there at the financial building maybe the trauma wouldn't be as life-altering but eventually she ran out of allowance money to give them they start becoming physical with her they start slapping her and beating her they would drag her to one of the girls houses so bully A's house and they would use her as a punching bag for hours they would just make her sit in the corner of the room and these bullies would sit and giggle Gaggle gossip and then the minute that they felt a little bit of anger rise in their system they would walk over and just torture her for the fun of it later in interviews people were confused about this you know they asked her why did you go to the girls houses couldn't you have just called for help or left I mean surely they didn't drag you all the way like someone would have noticed if they're dragging you by the hair right they also asked how the bully's parents never realized that they were keeping a girl in the room just to bully her sometimes the bullying was for days the bullies were very resourceful they threatened student three that if she didn't follow them back to grolay's house they would go and find her little brother and physically assault him instead this was the threat that they constantly hung over her head that's also why she never told the authorities School administrators or even her parents she knew that the bullies would probably get off light anyway and her brother would be their new Target so I think this is where the system is wrong you know I think if you're in a situation like that you can tell the administrators and something does take action to the point where they cannot hurt you or your loved ones then of course people are gonna say something as for girl the bully A's parents she lied to them she's like Amma this is my friend and she just ran away from home her mom is super abusive and she's even contemplating suicide I just want to be there for her as a friend is it okay if she sleeps over for a few days the mom would be like wow daughter you're such a good friend and since bully A's parents would both work really long hours they would all be at bully A's house and using student three as a punching bag the abuse went from punching and slapping to grabbing a fork and stabbing it all over her body like head to toe the two bullies would grab Whatever item was nearby and they would throw it at her face one time they threw a plastic pipe at her face and it permanently damaged her cornea and she has slight vision problems ever since the longest time she's ever stayed at her bully's house was for three days and they basically starved her the entire time during this interview student three was asked why didn't you try to leave at one point you know especially when your eye is damaged you didn't try to ever run away from the house and she said there was no point one time she did they knew where she lived they would either get to her brother or once they came over and they trashed her entire house making it difficult for her family they would flip Furniture ransack the whole place all because she refused to come to corolla's house like there was no part of student three that was safe she was constantly covered in bruises and welts and just desperately trying to hide this from the adults for six months while the abuse lasted she couldn't even fall asleep just like student two every time she closed her eyes she would have these intense nightmares so for six months she felt like a Sleepless zombie just going through the motions of life and abuse she tried Gathering as many sleeping pills as she could and tried to take them in hopes of getting a dreamless sleep but it just wasn't working she even in a desperate attempt told her mom well I just want to go to sleep I just want to sleep I want to sleep so bad I want to die like what do I do she said that she would zone out and stare out of her window of the their apartment on the third floor and wonder if I fell out of the window what are the chances of me surviving if she went to her friend's apartments and they had balconies on higher floors she always wondered if maybe this would be the place that she would come and jump if she had to take her own life she said she constantly looked down at the ground and wondered would I die would I live would I die and then one spring day student three was wearing a long sleeve white shirt because she can't wear short sleeves but the wound on her arm wasn't healing properly and it had this like giant bubble of pus like it was filled with liquid and it was bulging out of her shirt and her teacher noticed it and brought her in to be examined but the pus made the shirt stick to her arm they had to cut the shirt off of her to examine her her parents were informed and that's how the bullying came to light one of the most heartbreaking parts of the story is that she was asked on the show what she would like to say about her bullying and how it was handled and she talked about how during the time there were a lot of adults in her life that asked her what did you do like not saying it's your fault but you must have done something to make the girls react like this wow she said if there's one thing she would like to say she would tell these adults that she did nothing wrong the bullies were forced to apologize for what they did to her and it wasn't a real or true apology one of them was straight up laughing while she apologized and you guessed it zero consequences the main bully was given 40 hour community service and a one-week school suspension she wasn't even like she wasn't even expended I feel like these bullies they should at least get exactly what they did to the victims yes yeah you get you burn some you scar someone for Life yeah you get the same scar at least yeah at least at least right because it was your first choice to even give us and also the fact that you did even if the bully gets the scar it still doesn't take away the trauma the victim's gonna live with for the rest of their lives I just don't see how they think just apology will do it reminds me of how a lot of countries including the us treat like sexual assault cases yes there's so much concern about the perpetrator's future like we can't let this mistake ruin their future what's worse is that she and the main bully ended up at the same College and they bumped into each other so this is after middle middle school is when the abuse took place After High School in college they bumped into each other and maybe you would think that this bully has some sort of remorse no she smirked walked up to student three with all of her friends and said I know this girl what major are you student three said that she was shaking the whole time she was so angry so scared she couldn't even respond like it was like her trauma was flooding back to her thankfully they didn't have any more run-ins after that and student three had friends that stuck by her in college and it wasn't easy making friends she said after her abuse she was just having such a hard time trusting anyone that wanted to befriend her she felt like they were gonna there were wolves in sheep's clothing a lot of friends stuck by even when she was not trusting of them and now she has stopped taking sleep medications she's been able to find some happiness and move on and even though she's moved on there's really no justice in this story either she has to apologize to every hair stylist and hairdresser to not use a hot tool in her hair because the minute that they pick up a hot iron she starts to panic and to make matters worse the last time she checked on the two bullies one of them was a nurse and the other one was in social work they both constantly post about doing charitable work she said that she was speechless that the audacity of these people I mean she was angered by their choice of profession and once the show The Glory came out her friends were texting her asking if she was okay because the show reminded them so much of what happened to her student three says she cannot bring herself to watch the kdrama and more recently there was a case that also reminded people of the glory and this one I don't think inspired the glory because it was so recent but this just goes to show like nothing has really changed July 15 2020 let's call him student four a young man 22 years old July 15th was his birthday he didn't really have any special plans so a group of acquaintances had texted him hey let's go celebrate for your birthday he took them up on it I mean it's kind of sweet of them to remember his birthday even right the acquaintances they don't even think that I don't even think they can be categorized as human beings they met up with student four dragged him which I'm sorry are these classmates or are these colleagues yeah oh in college so they dragged him to a nearby vacant lot like a parking lot for his birthday right and they're like acquaintances so just like random classmates not necessarily friends right but they're in school yeah so you wouldn't think that these are bad people it's not like strangers that you meet online you know them from class to bring a chair to the Park they tie him up to the chair cover his face with the hood and they tell him that they had like prepared a special birthday candle present for him birthday candle they tie him to the chair yeah like his ankles his arms Behind the Chair everything put a hood over his head and they get close to him and they say so let's celebrate your birthday they spray gasoline all over his body and they put one firework on each knee and they light the firework they're trying to kill them slowly going down they're trying to kill him basically like sadistically kill him when the fireworks exploded the fire caught onto student for his whole body he said it was so hot and painful I fell over they saw me in pain and they just kept telling me keep rolling to put out the fire that's what they said they saw a little human being on fire and they said keep rolling I thought I was gonna die like this when I begged them to call 119 Emergency Services they said this place is a little isolated so it might take too long for the ambulances to come student 4 has third degree burns on 40 of his entire body that's not even the part that'll get your blood boiling the perpetrators got away with probation meanwhile student four is not only left with irreparable damage of what they did mentally physically but he's also been left with an 80 000 medical bill he has to get a skin transplant surgery as well as reconstructive treatment which yes the perpetrators did settle monetarily for what they did which the amount was decided by prosecutors and not really agreed upon by the parties involved the families only paid forty thousand dollars student for his family demanded the police pay the rest and they all said well what do you want us to do we don't have money there is a current civil suit against the bullies but I mean the fact that we're even here is wild student Four's family is filing a lawsuit because the justice system couldn't get them Justice the first time around so how is the case being handled like this originally in 2020 I think that this received a lot of attention but with the glory being a big conversation it's become a there's a Resurgence on this topic the case has gotten a lot more attention in the public eye and people are so unhappy like the parallels between the drama the corruption from the legal system side netizens wrote is the prosecutor on this case they lit someone on fire and they're getting probation to all the prosecutors in this country how exactly are you calculating these crimes how do attempted murders end up with probation does the victim need to die for perpetrators to be punished a person was almost burned to death and probation you guys are crazy people are you joking someone commented what a lot of us are probably thinking right now throw them all in Jones set them on fire student for his mom said it doesn't matter what we wanted the prosecutors didn't care the prosecutors didn't care what we had to say they just gave them probation when I asked for medical fees to be covered everyone just shrugs and say they don't have money so what can we do and maybe these feel like extreme cases which they are but it doesn't change the fact that school bullying and primarily School violence is a huge problem fun I I think that's maybe another reason probably why people continues to bully because of the consequences nobody's scared nobody's terrified of the consequences it's like laughable the consequences people get I think you would get heavy punishment for Cheating in South Korean schools versus physically assaulting someone like for cheating getting caught cheating unless you're the kid of a rich parent yeah you might be expelled I think also there's so many elements that have to do with school violence in South Korea and I just want to put a disclaimer I think school violence is prevalent everywhere I think just in different forms so in the US we're pretty familiar with how School violence takes place in South Korea there's so many different elements of why it happens like this there's the seniority complex between how even when you're 15 you have to bow down and properly greet people that are 16. I'm not talking adults not the elderly not your parents not your parents friends you have to talk to them with a completely different vernacular it's called it's to show respect there's all of these things and it's just there's so many elements to it also the teachers and school administrators in these schools are so focused on their careers and they're so focused on making sure that they look good and when you're a school administrator and there's bullying in your school you look bad because you can't even handle kids yeah so there's so many problems with this again corruption in schools corruption in the government there was a there was a man appointed um as the chief of the national office of Investigations here's a point this is like a heavy title huge political office okay one of his job duties was to investigate extreme cases of school violence in in schools in Korea right he had to resign after one day in office and I'll tell you why it was revealed that the first day in office he used his position to help his son avoid punishment for bullying and school violence wow this is the man that was supposed to be in charge for getting Justice for the victims his son was a bully and he helped cover it up and his son goes to the Harvard of South Korea like where are the consequences for any of these people just like in the glory it's like it's like literally K drama this is like even in K drama you're like Ugh it can't be real exactly in K drama you're like oh this is so far-fetched nobody really does that like that's so an abusive power how do you get away with it I think another huge incentive for authorities is that the law is so lenient to minors it's almost seen as not really worth the work to investigate school bullying because you're going to investigate spend all these resources and then what the 14 year old is gonna get probation anyway there needs to be something change about the law yes so a lot of South Koreans have been arguing for lowering the age of the like responsibility and right now it's 14 they want to keep lowering it I think recently it was lowered to 13 there should be like a whole different set of laws for school violence I think side note the government does try to make it seem like they're doing a lot to stop violence like installing more CCTV cameras near schools but it's not really helping the there's about 20 000 CCTV cameras nearby schools around 93 of them are said to be so low in resolution it can't even identify who the bully is like potato it's so grainy you can't tell which student is who you can't tell which student is being beat and which student is beating so I don't know why they're trying to Pat themselves on the back for this and again I'm not trying to say South Korea is the only one that's bad I mean again look at what's going on in schools all around the world it's horrible but nearly 1 in 10 students in Korean Schools elementary through high school one in ten have suffered from school violence not just bullying not verbal bullying not being an outcast not being a social Pariah I'm talking violence one in ten that's 10 out of every 100 students that is physically assaulted in school we've talked about student one two three and four out of The 100 let's talk about student five this case caused International outrage in 2021 a Mongolian student living in South Korea was tortured for six hours by school police six hours they recorded the assault they tried to sell it to other classmates for five dollars the video that's so freaking crazy like all these cases they record it all these bullying they take pictures they record it they brag about it they send it to their friends and classmates it's like a sick thing they do I see a lot of people liking it to gang activity so um in gang activity you almost flaunt your crimes as a threat to others like you see what I'm willing to do right you see what I've done I'm not even scared I guess it's supposed to establish some sort of Street Credit I mean they do get away with it so like I don't even I can't even call them stupid because the law is stupid and they get away with it so student five the Mongolian student had moved to South Korea about 10 years ago so she's 14 she's basically been born and raised in South Korea like not really but she came here when she's four it's as much her home as it is to anybody else's but there are four excuses of a human being that did not think so they basically kidnap student five um kidnap her around midnight July 3rd of 2021 they hold her for six hours beat her they humiliate her by placing her underwear on her head taking videos of that they wrote racist slurs on her forehead they tied her up they punched her over and over in the face they were so proud of themselves like I said they try to sell this footage to their fellow classmates eventually they were taken in by authorities two were sentenced to a juvenile center but two of them since they were younger than 14 they couldn't even be held criminally responsible and it's not just the older kids student six was nine years old when her nightmare started like these kids that we've been talking about so far have been 14 15 and that's so young that's so young but student six was nine years old this is a very recent case in the winter of 2022 so just a couple months ago a 12 year old boy had called up student six a nine-year-old girl that he went to the same school as she's in third grade and he's like hey come on to the rooftop of the apartment that we live in and let's hang out I want to play fun games with you and he's like forcing her to come to the rooftop to play with him he had made a surprise for her to play on it's the winter so it's snowing a lot in South Korea this is in school or what no after school they go to the same school oh okay what is that he said it's a snow bed uh-huh he told her to lie down she was sexually assaulted by the 12 year old boy after that he convinced her to send pictures of herself to him and threatened to make her a Wonka in school meaning a complete loner in school if she did not she was too scared to say anything and the only reason he was caught was because the school teacher happened upon the messages by chance what's crazy is the school did not take action he graduated soon after the incident out of elementary school no criminal record nothing because he's 12. the victim and her parents they didn't even get any sense of justice in fact they're trying to save up to move out of this apartment building because their daughter nine-year-old daughter is too scared to even take the elevator like she's so traumatized there's nothing they can do about it legally because he's 12 he's not going to have a criminal record if he's punished he's going to get probation or he's going to be sent to like a correctional home for a few days that's not so it's not really shocking that in the past 10 years South Korea's suicide rates and youths has jumped nearly 50 percent about 25 percent of Korean youths have thought about taking their own lives and about 25 of that number said they wanted to end their lives due to school violence you're saying 25 out of everyone want to take their own yes have thought about it at one point a quarter of all Korean youths Korea is one of the worst rates in the developed world and then 25 of that School violence so we've covered bullying and one of the last Central themes in the glory was Revenge right and it said that that element in the whole show was inspired by a Japanese case the case of student nine student nine plotted 12 years to murder the classmates that bullied him he waited over a decade to try and enact his revenge so there's not too many details on his um School violence or his bullying experience but student nine never really had friends like he just he didn't expect to get bullied but he was kind of introverted he was a bit shy he never get along with too many people but soon after Elementary School in Middle School these kids started coming up to him and started beating him up they would hit him with wooden chairs they would mock him pour things over his head lock him in the Supply Closet that was just the start eventually they start tearing off his clothes to humiliate him they would force him to strip naked in front of girls student 9 tried to report The Bullying to teachers and parents but they did absolutely nothing instead they asked him what he did to piss them off they told him toxically be a man stand up for yourself then it didn't get any better during high school but I think his whole mindset shifted he went from being this depressed middle schooler to being angry he wrote in his diary today was my 18th birthday I'll let those stupid guys who made me suffer die with me this is the only reason I'm alive now he shifted his whole life plan to enact Revenge he studied hard during high school he got into college and he started majoring in chemistry and it was all part of the Revenge plan he wanted to gain knowledge and access to the resources he needed to follow through with a mass murder he wanted to kill 45 people and himself so for the 40th he said he would devote his 20s to learn how to make a homemade bomb with his chemistry knowledge and find out the best way to kill them all he wrote in his diary I've been thinking about all the ways to kill them but in the end using chemical toxin seems to be the best I even majored in it during college because this is my life goal and when he turned 27 it had been nearly 12 years he gathered all 40 of his classmates five teachers and asked them when they would be available for a class reunion that he was organizing also from that same exact class yeah he told them he would have drinks and food all there and he had no regrets on what he was about to do even though only a few of his classmates were the actual physical abusers he felt like they all deserved to die he wrote in his diary I finished the experiment it's been so painful for me to stay alive this is all gonna end soon all those who have treated me like a bug are about to get what they deserve he filled the beer bottles with arsenic he made homemade bombs to kill all 46 people in attendance and for backup he brought a remodeled gun he thought if the bomb failed he would kill them all one by one but he did not take his mom into consideration days leading up to it he was so dead set on his revenge plan he was so distracted he didn't realize that he had left his diary out for his mom to read she had been worried about recent behavior and she read it realized what he was planning what he had planned for 12 years of his life she reported him to the police he was promptly arrested the beer was confiscated the bombs the guns they were all retrieved and after the arrest student nine said I just wanted the world to know what I went through what I felt growing up he was charged with six years in prison for the attempted murder of 45 of his classmates and teachers it is said that student 9 story heavily inspired the decades-long Revenge plot in the glory the drama so that's one through nine of the 10 out of 100 students who are physically abused in school and student 10 was kind of an unexpected one just before the glory part 2 was released literally hours before part two was released student 10 came out to accuse the producer of the glory for bullying what unkeed whole is a producer on the show The Glory and it's said that a former classmate from the Philippines because producer on studied abroad student 10 said yeah he himself was a freaking bully in 1996 he was in Middle School student 10 was in Middle School producer on was in high school but he was dating a middle school girlfriend right and student 10 and his friends had tea had teased the producer's girlfriends you know like just very Middle School play bickering joking around but student 10 was suddenly summoned to be brought in front of the producer and his friends like they were some sort of panel judges and from there student 10 was jumped by the producer and his friends the assault lasted for nearly two hours he said he was threatened by the producer and his friends and he was yelling at him I'll bring a knife and I'll stab you student 10 wrote I just found it absurd and unforgivable that he was directing a TV show about bringing Justice to school violence when he literally assaulted me I was so upset I wanted to go public with what happened the producer immediately responded publicly by saying it is true I went to school in the Philippines in 1996 but I never was violent with anyone I don't recall ever ganging up on someone assaulting them but as quickly as he tried to shut down the claims his former girlfriend a middle school girlfriend at the time remember she came forward and said I do remember a student 10 being abused and he all he did was tease me and honestly if I had known that producer on was gonna beat him I wouldn't have told him it was just very normal bickering amongst high school or middle school friends so now the producer could not deny it anymore he has since publicly responded with an apology a representative said the producer deeply asks for forgiveness from the bottom of his heart from those who have been hurt by this incident he wants to express that if given the chance he would like to apologize in person or via call is the irony huh yeah the fact that they screened all the actors and actresses but not the producers or the directors or the writers is kind of Beyond me I hope this is bringing a lot of lights to this school bullying situation no yes it is and it's you know I I think the deeper okay so that's how I felt when I was first looking into it right and I'm like okay this is really good but then I also saw some very like really deep Rabbit Hole stuff where recently a couple of K-pop Idols have been accused of bullying and then it came out that they were not bullies and it completely ruined their lives so it's getting very strange yeah but but I would say overall yes this is a huge plus but I don't know if it's um the government's gonna do anything I'm assuming I don't know actually because there have been so many cases where the public is outraged and outraged and we try to sign all these petitions and we do everything we can and then um nothing happens but it is a global problem like violence in school seems to be just prevalent everywhere and yeah you can say in Korea it's only 10 of students that experience violence at the hands of bullies but 10 is a lot and these are just some of the stories of the 10 let me know your thoughts did you know that the glory was inspired by real cases and how did the girl make you feel let me know and I will see you guys on Wednesday for the main episode bye

Channel: Rotten Mango

Views: 3,209,713

Keywords: Stephanie Soo, MissMangoButt, Stephanie Soo Storytime, Stephanie Soo Story, Stephanie Soo Podcast, Rotten Mango, Rotten mango Podcast, Storytime, Story, Mystery, Mystery Storytime, Scary Story, Internet Mystery, Urban Legend, Mysterious, Bailey Sarian, Dark History, That Chapter, Mr. Ballen, Strange & Mysterious, Morbid, Ashley Flowers, The Deck, AudioChuck, Kendall Rae, Mile Higher, Eleanor Neale, Danielle Kirsty, The Glory, Documentary, Explained, Netflix, Thriller, Revenge

Id: 30dKS39GnXg

Length: 58min 35sec (3515 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 02 2023