Viral Video Exposed the DARKEST organization in South Korea- true story behind “Taxi Driver”

there was a South Korean Tech startup that went viral recently well okay not recently a couple years ago but in order to understand it we need to get into the tech startup world I imagine it's very similar to the ones here in the US the CEO likes to be perceived as chill as one of the relatable workers as one of the the nine of fivers at this tech company we disc it's very similar the CEO Yang jino would ride around the office in his electric scooter probably wearing his little Patagonia vest he would ride around all the little cubicles to make sure everyone's having a good time at work then he would ride into the little conference room okay so the meeting rooms the conference rooms in this office very pertinent to the story they're encased in glass so think of your very modern office building you've got all these employees on these rows and rows of desks just sitting right next to each other it's an open format it's an open floor plan and then in the middle of the office building you have these glass conference rooms so technically everyone can see everyone there is no privacy you don't even have a cubicle with tall little borders nothing just completely open it's that cool modern open workspace Vibe other than that other than the floor plan of this company we disc was not like the other startups widisc was a whole different animal the CEO and founder made tens of millions of dollars a year and right now all of the employees could see him through the glass conference room with four of the high up executives so think about like the top five people in your company in a glass meeting room and they are actively jumping an innocent man beating up like assault physical assault physical assault okay chairman Yang believed that this man a professor at a local University was sleeping with his wife so he summoned this professor who has no affiliation with his company into his office took four of his VPS and is now jumping the guy is beating him up the professor is trying to clear the air like it's all a big misunderstanding I would never sleep with your wife I don't know what you're talking about please you have to just hear me out they beat him in that glass conference room in front of all tens if not hundreds of employees for three hours straight they held his arms down they beat his face they tied his hands behind his back and then stomped on his fingers crushing them oh my God they would mock him hey if you hit your head really really hard on this desk you might just die and if you die we don't have to torture you anymore so what do you say you want to do it they went through his phone they took pictures of his credit card his ID the contacts on his phone list they gathered all the numbers and addresses of all of his loved ones they threatened to hurt them the executives laughed they mocked at his injuries and they grabbed the back of his head with his hair shoved his face to the ground look at you lick it he was forced to lick the CEO's shoes but even that wasn't enough they all took turns spitting on his face and forced him to lick up all the saliva that they had just spent this is a respected University Professor there are dozens if not a hundred employees outside watching this happen letting it happen nobody is coming in to stop the executives nobody is coming in to call the cops for three hours the professor actively feared for his life and in the end the CEO Mr Yang the CEO of a multi-million dollar Tech startup laughed at him and threw two thousand dollars on the ground this should be enough for Hospital fees hey by the way you can call the cops if you want but I'm worth 200 million dollars and Money Talks so who do you think they're going to listen to and with that he and the executives walked out of the meeting room the professor knew that this was the truth I mean the police are not going to listen to him I think in any country money talks and you are talking about a very powerful influential wealthy man with probably prosecutors police politicians in his pocket the professor stood up and he looks out the conference room and he just sees the most bizarre scene I think you can ever imagine rows and rows of employees that saw him too that's all him get beat up and they all have almost Skittle colored hair each one of them is like a giant Skittle on their head so they have brightly red colored hair like the full head of hair is red not streaks not Accent Hair not highlights than the one next to them has blue hair and it's like fluorescent blue the next one is sky blue then you've got like this neon green colored hair and then pink now in South Korea this is kind of wild that level of dyed hair each one had like a new neon dyed hair color and it was just very strange to see them sit in a row with all their backs erect just so straight like the good little employees that they are and they're all staring at their computer screens and he walks by and he looks at all the computer screens and each single one of them is playing non-stop X-rated videos all the employees are sitting in rows watching explicit films what what the hell is going on at we disc who is CEO Yang how does he even run a tech startup like this what even is their business model how does he end up in jail let's get into it [Music] as always full show notes are available at rottenminglepodcast.com we are talking about a case that was massive in Korea a few years ago and with a new K drama that has come out this case says I guess had a comeback I don't know if I can say it like that but remember the K drama case that we talked about the glory where there is this Revenge drama and they were inspired by true real life stories of school bullying what's fascinating is a lot of people don't know that the hit K drama taxi driver was inspired by a ton of true stories so if you guys haven't seen Taxi Driver the premise is you call this taxi company and when you look at like their business logs they look like a regular schmeckler taxi company but it's actually vigilante justice pursuers so you call them if you've got a case where the police cannot help you the government cannot help you you call them and they will take care of it whether it's a school bully or in this situation the most insane boss of all time they will take care of it if you watch these scenes about this real life case in the taxi driver they're pretty similar to what happened in the real world but it looks so bizarre and outlandish that you would never believe that it's true I mean I don't see a lot of people in the US talking about it because I genuinely don't think that anyone would even think oh I bet that's inspired off of a true story it's that crazy like if I told you that at a massive company retreat employees were all handed a giant sword and the boss said okay here's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna throw a live chicken at you and I want you to slice it midair to kill it so we can cook it play Fruit Ninja with the chicken that's alive do it would you not be like this is literally so bizarre that It's gotta be fake if I read this in a book I'd be like I hate how unrealistic this is would you not think that yeah it's insane and this man is literally insane he was able to get his hands on insane amounts of money and power resulting in I don't even know how to describe this case but as always with International cases we did get someone that is a native Korean speaker to help with the research we had our Korean researcher work on this and let us know in the comments what you think about this case have you heard of it are there any other cases you want us to cover and uh with that being said a shocking video went viral in South Korea 2018. from Context we can gather an ex-employee of a massive company had gone online to anonymously Trash Talk the company the company CEO as well as a couple other high-up executives I mean it seems normal somehow the company CEO is able to track down which employee it was forces them to come into the office and apologize they keep dming them like you better come in I'm so upset with you I knew that you wrote this post so you better come in and apologize the video will most likely be taken down if I post it on here uh if you want to see the uncensored version you can go to Rotten mango video on Spotify to see it I'm gonna describe it though okay you will see the ex-employee a man walk into the office filled with workers there's just rows of office workers sitting at their desk staring at their computers again no cubicles it's open air you can see everything going on the ex-employee comes in wearing all black the CEO of the company demands oh you're saying ex-employee like he was working here he doesn't even work there anymore so he quit his job and then anonymously posted anonymously posted on the internet on like a forum and was like Hey this company sucks and he did make fun of the CEO we're gonna get into all of it later but he was forced to come in even though he's not an employee anymore okay the CEO of this multi-million dollar company demands the employee apologize for his online post he forces the ex-employee to get on his knees and beg for forgiveness he continues to slap him across the face over and over and when he's on his knees he slaps him on the back of the head because he's got his head bowed down and these are not little slaps these are loud echoing off the walls aggressive painful scar leaving slaps he continues to slap this ex-employee while asking him what kind of human are you how trash must you be to talk your former bosses on social media you don't have respect he berates the ex-employee for not apologizing correctly he is forced to get on his knees twice in front of all of his former colleagues all of his former managers and in front of the CEO to beg for forgiveness but the CEO doesn't stop he continues to curse at him calling him all sorts of degrading names piece of [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] at one point the CEO of the company even threatens to end the ex-employ's life if he doesn't apologize correctly yeah he literally says if you want to live learn to apologize better after all of that abuse which the ex-employee never fights back never incites any further violence it's actually really heartbreaking to watch him he looks terrified just the way that he's on his knees with his head tucked trying to stay safe it's it's pretty sad the CEO gets in his face and said are you [ __ ] crying Are you seriously [ __ ] crying you little [ __ ] this video proceeds to go viral on social media and mainstream news because I mean just how shocking the situation is I think the video is visceral it elicits a reaction from people it's very hard to watch it and just go oh that's crazy like you get angry a few things stood out that really felt unsettling for netizens one was the sheer violence enacted on an ex-employee who genuinely does not fight back the CEO is fighting someone that's not fighting him back two the rest of the employees in this office can clearly see what's going on and not a single person steps in to stop the CEO to put their foot down and say hey maybe we shouldn't try doing this third this is not a random small company that has three or four employees this is not a random mom and pop business with a tyrant that's running it not to say that that's acceptable but it's just more shocking when massive corporations get away with such abuse for so long I mean how many people were impacted how many people didn't report the abuse the CEO of this company is probably worth around 200 million dollars how is he getting away with this and lastly whoever recorded this was not the victim the victim was not the one who released this video to the public so who was even allowed to record it it's very interesting so the CEO is clearly not a reasonable man I imagine if you were recording him committing a crime to use it as blackmail against him later he would probably slap you too he would probably break your phone but someone is getting a very good clear angle of this there is no way he didn't see that person recording and this video was taken three years ago it went viral in 2018 but it was actually taken in 2015. so now the netizens they got a lot of questions they start digging into who the CEO is and what company he runs let's talk about we disc we disc would be a company that has some of the most outrageous behavior I've ever heard of the head of the company the CEO with the red palm in the video was young jinho he was born August 12 1972 making him like 51 52 and I couldn't find much verifiable information about his upbringing or his parents or even his schooling all we have is like this stereotypical CEO Story the rags to riches story The Story Goes Like This average guy probably Rich parents but he does not say that average guy was just out there hustling selling green juice machines Green Juice is healthy for you served by this machine and you can make fresh green juice every single morning save yourself a hundred dollars over time and then 2003 he had a dream for something more he took a risk he quit his job sold everything and became the massive founder of a massive multi-million dollar business called we disc and that would result in trauma and death have you ever been on a corporate retreat so you and your colleagues will take a weekend off your fun life to be surrounded by each other once again it's like you don't see each other for 40 hours a week but this time instead of being at the office stuck in your cubicle you are stuck in the woods in a cabin with your amazing co-workers so now instead of listening to them chew with their mouth open for lunch you can hear it for breakfast lunch and dinner look in most instances it's an effort from the higher-ups to get everyone on the same page aligned with the company goals re-passionate reinvigorated about the company Mission maybe if you work at Google it's a blast because of how much money they shovel into stuff like this or if you work for a small business maybe it genuinely can be fun but for the workers at wedisc it was the most miserable times of their lives the CEO would go around passing out weapons in the middle of the woods to his terrified employees it feels like some squid Games Hunger Games is about to start you want the bow or you want the katana the big knife which one hurry pick sir what's just take the goddamn bow he would pass out bow and arrows katanas like the Japanese swords they did not understand how is this to refocus ourselves with the company Mission right this doesn't make sense so this year we're going to be killing our targets just like you're killing these chickens kidding me oh my God excuse me a dozen or so tiny little chickens are brought out of their Coop here's the plan you with the knife you stand here and hey you what's your name Scott come here Scott you're gonna catch a chicken throw it in the air and you with the knife you're gonna slice it midair I want you to decapitate it while it's in the air do you understand me or else you're fired and Kim your name Kim right Kim with the bow and arrow what you're gonna do is you're gonna run over there there's three chickens they're running around they're scared you're gonna shoot them with a bow and arrow and if you guys don't kill these chickens then we don't have dinner and if we don't have dinner then you're all fired not only were you being abused but you were forced to abuse live chickens and I mean at the risk of your livelihood if you don't do this you're gonna lose your job and in South Korea some context to add I think it's a bit different in the U.S where you lose your job it's rough it's life-changing but you can find a new job South Korea if you get fired from a job it is incredibly hard so difficult to find a new job like people do not care about suing your former employer for bad-mouthing you to potential new employers no that like doesn't exist in South Korea so the employees they're tearfully slaughtering chickens in the most inhumane cruel and foul ways possible there is a video of this again I think that it would be very hard to post on here but I also think if you just saw this in a drama you would never believe this is real I am going to post the uncensored version on Spotify but you've been warned it's a lot of animal abuse it's very sad other employees were instructed to shoot at the Frantic chickens and if you couldn't do any of those if you were really sad about it he wanted you to get up close and personal so he would hand you a tiny little knife and say stab the chicken to death and you would have to hold the chicken in your hands while you did this this was his idea of team bonding and when they were all done he would have them all gather around standing around him in a circle with a big bag of garlic in one hand and he would just reach in and grab a fistful of raw garlic walk up to an employee open your mouth and shove the garlic into there the raw eye watering garlic into their mouths chew Garlic's good for you who's next oh this is like just like those Glory bully torture but like workplace adults like your boss yeah your boss exactly it it's like you can't escape no or you get fired and your whole life is over and it wasn't just the company trips okay it's not like oh once a year we go to this company trip that's like hazing hell it's actually all of these after works okay these are like the bane of the employee's existence Korean culture is very big on Ohio Chic and it's like Yang's favorite part of being a CEO basically you get called out to dinner or for drinks after work with your boss your manager all of your colleagues and it's a miserable existence it's not like the US where you get to just eat a bunch of good food on the company card you're there to entertain your boss you're there to pour Soju in your boss's little glass and hope that he doesn't try to touch your butt afterwards you have to spend your free time your off work hours with these people getting drunk and eating food that you don't even want to eat and laughing at their not funny at all jokes so what the managers can get a bit of an ego boost there's not even work talk it's not even about team bonding Yang would get a private room in these restaurants he would sit down all of his new employees and a few of his old ones and he would have ordered a bunch of beers already and they're all over the table each cup was filled to the brim to give you like an exact measurement because I don't know why they all measured it two cups of glass so like 16 fluid ounces of glass that's a lot okay and uh oh sorry I don't if you're trying to tell CEO Yang that you don't drink even just the angry look on his face would make you stop talking you felt like you just have to do what he says so he would order every single employee to chug the beer and when you're done you get an immediate refill and when you're done you get an immediate refill until you're throwing up because that's the point he wants you to throw up he's already actually prepared vomit buckets so you don't throw up on the chairs another employee will slide a vomit bucket to you and you throw up heave out the contents of your lunch and when you sit back down with tears in your eyes and like this nasty smell in your throat he slides over another glass of beer and you know what he wants he wants you to do it again sometimes the game was different sometimes it wasn't about throwing up he would take everyone out to eat oh eat more of this it's so salty but it's good salty right here drink this chug the water chug the beer chug the soju and at the end of the dinner he would sit back and smile for the rest of the night nobody is allowed to use the restroom unless you pay me a hundred dollars actually let's do 150. that was when he was in a good mood sometimes he just straight up forbid anyone from using the restroom or else they would get fired which would result in employees wetting themselves in public in front of all of their colleagues in front of their bosses in front of the general civilian population the humiliation the mental and oftentimes physical torture that these employees had to go through is insane imagine working for an evil creative bored sadistic man you never know what you're gonna get sometimes you would walk into the office in a foul mood and just scream at everyone other times if he was feeling extra creative he would um he would ride around in his electric scooter and shoot at people with his BB gun this feels like a show a parody of like a tech CEO exactly yeah if right it feels like an SNL skit riding around an electric scooter like just what is going on one employee alleged that he loved testing for cancer so you know how a lot of these big companies will provide benefits and sometimes they'll do like extra Health screenings on top of that so he said okay I'm gonna do a cancer health screening and yang would allegedly walk into the office with bottles upon bottles of vitamins just supplements that you get over the counter vitamin D vitamin A and the employees were told stop doing your work line up in the break room they would run and stand in line and each one was handed a little plastic cup with just all these different vitamins in there this one is said to have been the most awful torture the employees said that they were forced to take more than 10 times the normal dosage of a bunch of different vitamins including vitamin A d e and K to explain how dangerous and Reckless that is you can actually get intoxicated off of vitamins vitamin A intoxication leads to a risk of seizures headaches blurred vision it elevates intracranial pressure chronic toxicity can lead to anorexia muscle and bone pain vitamin D intoxication can lead to confusion recurrent vomiting abdominal pain dehydration vitamin E bleeding muscle weakness fatigue nausea diarrhea vitamin K anemia enlarged liver shortness of breath irregular breathing and they are taking 10 times more it was really bad people said it was almost immediate you would double over in pain and then you would have explosive diarrhea from the combination of vitamins now there was not one toilet per every employee in the office clearly because no one expects that the whole group is going to get explosive diarrhea so it was a mess they would run to the bathroom and when they came out they're sweaty they're exhausted they're holding their stomachs in pain and yang would say you're welcome excuse me did you know that when cancer patients are given too many vitamins like when they overdose on vitamins they still don't use the restroom this is the cheapest way to test if you guys have cancer and since you use the restroom you don't have cancer anyway this is your work sponsored Health checkup you're welcome other employees allege that he would force them to do illegal drugs like smoking weed now smoking weed is super illegal in South Korea I mean the equivalent in America would not even be like doing that it would probably be like you getting caught trying to shove up a police officer's butt crack like that is the level of seriousness and punishment that you will be dealt with if you ever smoke weed in Korea Yang would later deny the drug allegations but a lot of the employees allege that he would force them to smoke weed so that they really can't even leave the company because then he threatens to expose them for doing drugs now as for the garlic and vitamins he would argue that he just wanted his employees to be healthier I mean think about it people spend lots of money on supplements and garlic every year because it's good for your health I'm just looking out for my employees I don't know what you're talking about now let's talk about the brightly dyed hair remember in the beginning of the story I told you it was like a bizarre Skittles commercial inside of that office building there is a picture of CEO chairman Yang with his employees he's got green hair all of his employees have like these bright red hair blue hair it is said that he liked to force everyone to dye their hair a fun color because he thought it was funny so basically what he would do is he would go out to these restaurants with his employees while they were getting drunk off beer and forced to wet themselves he'd be like wait a minute look at that raw beef over there it's a good color you I don't need to know your name dye your hair that color tomorrow show up to work or you're fired they would bring out green onion salad that's a good color you I want that on your head you would have to dye your hair and show up to work with that color or else you would be fired how did he do this he actually had a salon that he worked with in Korea where he had a company card on there and all the employees would have to go and dye their hair for the fun of it now extra added layer of nuance in South Korea dyeing your hair these colors like in America it's cool you have a sense of style you're an individual in South Korea it's weird like people will stare at you you will not be treated as well you will be judged by ajumas and adushis at the market like your whole life will be impacted by the color of your hair which is annoying yes but that is literally how it is there is a different explanation out there on why they all had funky hair one allegation is that yang actually would um get everyone to dye their hair colors because when you test for drugs in the hair the hair dye can mess with the test so maybe that's why he had a company card at the hair salon but either way what a bizarre thing yeah I don't know how he comes up with these tortures and yes that's what I'm saying it's so creative and so sick yeah so sick so sick like if you use that creativity to come up with like a Netflix show you would be the next Shonda Rhimes yeah it will be the next Square game exactly but instead he's like no I'm gonna do it in real life and torture people oh and of course at his company it was raging with social harassment this guy is the epitome of evil so of course there's gonna be sexual harassment because that is the sad world that we live in he would force his female employees to sit on his lap while he played explicit videos he would take pictures of female employees without their consent and apparently he had files upon files on his computer of his female employees he would also write his name on them their thighs their inner arms he would take pictures of his name written on them as some sort of way to degrade and humiliate them in front of their peers and this one I really don't know what to think or how to feel about it but it would really freak me out he was really into shamanism so he would collect and force employees to hand over fingernail clippings hair and blood if he was really upset with you he would let you know that he performed a ritual and buried a doll with your name and your DNA as he prayed for your inevitable death to be long and painful like imagine you come to work on a Tuesday and your boss sits you down is like Okay so this weekend you know what I did yeah I buried a doll with your name on it because you didn't hand in the project on time this is absolutely unreal it's a it's us it's so unbelievable that someone like this out there exists so clearly the word culture here is horrendous I mean the worst that I've ever heard but what does the business even do like with all the drinking and torture do they even have time to run a full-scale company like how is it possible that this guy is in charge of a company that rakes in tens of millions of dollars in profits a year how has nobody stood up to him or reported him like what kind of business is this to understand that let's talk about a girl named Ashley and this is a fake name Ashley was a woman in South Korea and Ashley had never worked for we disc she actually doesn't know anyone that works for we disc she has no affiliation with we disc by all accounts Ashley is a normal citizen she had just gotten married is technically supposed to be a very happy time in her life but it was all being ruined okay so Ashley would go to the store she'll go to the market or the mall and she would notice a few people just staring at her not in like a glancing at her but we kind of stare at her as if they recognized her from somewhere but they would they didn't know exactly where they couldn't put their finger on it a lot of men in particular would do this and she tried to shake it off you know it's creepy but the world is generally still a nice place right then she started getting text messages from old acquaintances that asked her hey are you okay do you know she's like no about what and that is when Ashley found herself calling we discs customer service support an illegal file an illegal video file of hers was being shared on a internet platform called we disc and attracting tens of thousands of views this video was ruining Ashley's life before Ashley had gotten married she had worked in Japan as a sex worker she had no idea that at one of these motels that she was engaging in sex work at had a hidden spy camera in the hotel room there was footage of her engaging in explicit activities her face was right there uncovered nothing was censored and that video that she didn't even know existed from years and years ago it felt like a lifetime away from today was being shared on WE disc and it was Haunting her it was ruining her life imagine how utterly violated disgusted and gross she felt not only knowing that this was illegally taken but now it's being spread like wildfire on the CD website we disc is like a dull site or no okay we're gonna get into wedisc so she calls we disc and this customer service guy is very very understanding of her situation he reassures her I'm gonna do everything that I possibly can to try and suppress this video there's only so much that I can do though however if people keep uploading it it might not be something that I can control you know I don't know how many people out there have already downloaded this and have this file in their possession I mean that makes sense right okay well thank you I appreciate your trying she had no idea that right after this man hung up the phone he turned around in the we disc office and said get this video up I'm gonna send you the link we're gonna re-upload it over and over make new accounts upload this video the same video that he just promised this woman to try and delete he's telling every single employee in that office to upload it more what is the reasoning because if she had gotten word of this video that means this video is going viral people like this video and viral videos equals more money for we disc he doesn't care that her life was impacted by it he doesn't care it's a hot video that other people want to see and that means money so everyone is instructed to upload that video over and over again and if they got more calls asking for it to be taken down they all lied and sympathetically said yes of course we're trying our best I don't know who all these random accounts are they probably downloaded the video and they're re-uploading it because at wedisc the only thing that mattered was well keeping CEO Yang happy but the bottom line the company was willing to screw over anyone for money and they mainly stuck to screwing over women so let's talk about the business of wedisc in terms of structure in terms of just structure minus all the actual video content think of wedisc kind of like YouTube like not really but kind of so some general principles apply people anyone in the world can create an account post a video and why will they post a video because they're incentivized in some way to post yes there's love for creating for getting publicity but to make it simple users get paid when they post videos that are viewed or in we disc situation are downloaded so people not only post videos but they post videos that other people will want to download so that they can make money other people will join we disc and pay membership fees or fees to download videos or bring in ad Revenue because there are videos that they want to watch so literally like YouTube some of them might even think wait a minute look at these people making so much money off uploading videos I should become an uploader too now we disc may have the right to push certain videos further and they might even have their own industry plans we disc employees whose hold jobs we're just posting videos pretending to be regular creators very interesting right but they're on WE discs payroll the main point was to keep viewers entertained so they kept coming so in essence wedisc is a video company slash platform now this is where it gets a bit complicated and it's very crucial because of South Korea's the legal laws are different when you sit down on your laptop or computer or open up your Gmail app all those emails that you open up on Gmail like your read emails unread sent drafted all of them are going to be ready for you because you're connected to the internet but not all of these emails are stored on your device because that would take up so much space so these big companies Gmail Google YouTube Microsoft Tick Tock they have these big servers all over the world they're like these massive physical like hard drives and they store all the data and the server's main job is oh okay Stephanie just logged into Gmail so let's show her all her emails and they'll send the data to my computer right so when you have something in the cloud or not on your device it's actually not stored in like the cloud it's like stored in a database server like a big computer somewhere else so you can retrieve it later to put it simply there's a ton of different servers for a ton of different things you know there's a database server so right now you're probably connected to the YouTube database server who is giving you the data so that you can view this video right now instead of having it on your computer now why does this matter in the scheme of wedisc let's say I want to send you a video file thinking about the easiest way I would probably send you a link to my YouTube video or I would upload a video file to a shared Dropbox space then you receive the video and then you can download it to your computer if you want but there is a middleman I am uploading my video to the YouTube server and it's going to be stored in the YouTube database or the Dropbox database there's a middleman and these middle men go off regulations and rules that are set by different countries and different government entities there is something called P2P this was big back in like the early stages of the internet peer-to-peer yes you can download a video straight out of my computer to yours without a middleman people might want to do this for a few reasons and the reasons that matter today are it is the most cost efficient for the tech company because they don't need to buy massive servers that cost geez so much money you don't have to have a middleman telling you oh I don't know if you should share this file the file doesn't go with my rules and regulations so I'm not gonna let you share it like if I were to post a video of YouTube of my cat it'll flag before it ever gets to you to download so P2P is a way to not have that censorship now what we disc does is say hey user123 thank you for joining wedisc you can now upload a video and make money but in order to do that you must also give other Wii disk users ability to download directly off your network so peer-to-peer we disc saves a ton of money and there's less censorship now why is this important in the early 2000s of the internet world it was a time of lawlessness chaos I'm talking do you remember LimeWire um oh this is like torrenting at its peak torrent no copyrighted downloading of movies and music okay so there were like no internet laws and if there were laws it was very weak laws there were no platforms like Netflix or Hulu really like if you wanted to watch a movie you would still have to go to Blockbuster to rent the movie half of you guys are gonna be like Blockbuster it's like a DVD store and if you want to listen to a song you would have to wait for the buffering on a platform or you would have to download it for like 99 cents a song so people started using P2P to download illegally off of each other's computers without getting flagged by a government entity or using an illegal platform to do it so many people start using we disc to download TV shows music a lot of copyrighted content and later on the primary business of we disc was pornographic material now let me tell you why this is important South Korea is one of the very few countries that Outlaws still to this day it is illegal to produce and distribute porn now in 2023 it's very easy to access those videos because all you need is a VPN but back then half these people had never seen these types of films you can't get it at the DVD store you can maybe see an artistic movie that has nudity involved but they can download from we disc yes that's illegal or super illegal oh but that's the illegal business yes okay so we disc would allow people to download things off of each other's computer now remember how I told you we just had a bunch of employees pretending to be creators uh-huh because those employees were uploading but if they came out and said we disc is uploading turn it would be illegal so they would create these accounts pretending to be random South Korean civilians and upload these videos so that we disc could step back and say oh oh my God we've been trying our best to take down these videos I see yeah that's not even the problem okay that's literally not even the problem it's crazy the biggest problem was people on WE disc did not just want to watch any sort of x-rated video they had two specific kinds that they liked both of which were super illegal spycam World Cup videos which is hidden camera videos these criminals will go into motel rooms love motels hide cameras in the wall the outlet the shower head the clock on the wall they will record all the activities by these unconsenting parties and then upload it or the second the biggest category for we disc was Revenge videos partners typically boyfriends who would take videos of their partner either knowingly or not knowingly while they were dating doing sexual things once they broke up they would put it online so that was we discuss business and in the beginning employees would be sent around to restaurants and internet cafes outside of schools just standing there passing out these small little paper coupons and you're about to trash it but then you read for one week you can download movies music TV shows x-rated movies for free of course people are gonna get curious a free 7-Day membership you're telling me if I missed the episode of the succession last night at 8pm instead of waiting for a random rerun and basing my whole schedule off of that I can just go home and re-watch it now that's good people would rush home and get on Wii disk's website but instead of watching succession they would fall down the rabbit hole of explicit material and we disc employees knew exactly who they were targeting they were not targeting girls that were coming out of dorms they were targeting men of different ages young men impressionable men so many men and the employees were very very very smart even their coupon is smart within seven days these men would be fully addicted to the x-rated material on WE disc there does seem to be other added layers of why these people became so addicted again like I said they had probably never even seen before up until this point and this part is sick but a lot of men were interviewed and were asked you know why do you watch videos like this you clearly know it's illegal you clearly know that these videos all have a victim like these hidden camera videos these Revenge videos they all have a victim that's very real you're hurting people why do you watch it and they said well the regular x-rated stuff feels a little bit too productiony All In All We disc was a flourishing company and it made the CEO Yang a very rich man it is said that he was making about 40 million USD a year calculated for inflation and his net worth was said to be around 200 million dollars he'd also never let you forget it like if you ever told him that he was a horrible human being he would get in your face and say you can sue me if you want but I have 200 million dollars and you don't he actually had the number one P2P website in South Korea at one point we disc was number one but he also owned another company called file Nori which was number three of all P2P websites in Korea so he's basically like a P2P Monopoly and both these sites they focused on Revenge videos and spy cam videos that was the money maker to give you perspective in 2010 alone around 200 illegal explicit videos were uploaded per hour to these P2P websites per hour many of it wasn't even uploaded by Third parties which is just as bad but we disc was uploading them the company itself was uploading them they would actually go scour the internet for uploaded Revenge videos from other parts of the world Japan was a big market for them and side note before you get on your high horse of like oh Asians America had a version of we disc that was taking place um it was called is anyoneup.com website dedicated to just posting Revenge pictures and videos of women the website has now since been taken down so but this is not a Korea problem it's a global problem so we disc would have their employees not all but a big selection of their employees go online and download these illegal Revenge videos highly illegal in Korea they go they download it and they start posting it on wedisc for South Korean consumption what's crazy is we disc is technically a software company it's a tech company so what they would do is a lot of these websites in Japan you cannot download these videos off of or you have to pay a lot of money in that case we Discount Company cards that you could use to pay for that and download it and if you can't even pay to download it they created software to record the whole screen and the audio this is like before it was easily done so that you could re-upload it back to we disk they also had software that was specifically created by wedisc for Wii disk for making the upload of these videos faster one employee would upload more than 1 000 videos a day they said 60 of that was Revenge videos that is 600 victims a day per employee the employee said we used around 500 IDs per employee to make it look like a ton of regular people were uploading these videos and you know a lot of the questions were how do you make 500 IDs though if you've ever been to Korea you need a very specific ID number that only you can have one person only gets one ID and it's government issued to make an account on any social media platform on any of these Pages even just food delivery you need that ID number how did you make 500 accounts oh we were granted permission by the administrators of the we discs team I mean we just approve it from the inside technically the people are checking our we disc so so it's a fake account yeah you're saying so you just create a bunch of fake accounts and then modify the IP addresses so it looked like it was real IP addresses from all over Korea and not just from our office we also had special software to make sure that the video is uploaded quickly and to keep track of all of the different accounts now according to many employees each employee that was involved in this Shady uploading process was able to bring in close to a hundred fifty thousand dollars a month to we disc one employee so a handful of employees could make a million dollars a month they're not making it we disc is making it they would get paid commission on that as well it definitely was nowhere near a million dollars but it was definitely incentive for these people to stay to avoid police detection because this is super illegal they used fake accounts fake IDs special USBs for computers so they would have all these computers in the office and if you were to sit down and log into one it would look like your generic library computer your generic guest computers at the apartment's amenity Center there was nothing on there it looks like a guest page you can't really do anything but the minute that you input the correct USB into the correct USB drive little insert the whole desktop changes it is suddenly the screen of a master x rated material uploader they would make sure to guard those USBS with their life all the accounts that they uploaded on were deleted within two weeks but they were also scrubbed of money so it gets complicated but it's it's crazy let's say an employee at wedisc uploads a video using a fake username pretending to be a civilian that video probably a legal video with a victim gets downloaded a hundred thousand times let's just for the purpose of making it easy let's say Wii disk makes a hundred dollars from it so the company takes a hundred dollars like how YouTube takes ad Revenue probably more but again just for ease of explanation they make a hundred dollars now the uploader the Creator will make 25 from the video so we disc gets 100 you get a 25. now the problem is if you close the account with money still in there that looks Shady the government would be like what kind of idiot would close their YouTube account or their Wii disk account without taking out the money they earned that is bizarre so what do they do now if they take out the money and put it into a random bank that's a paper trail and you can't open up 500 different banks every day so the we disc employees would create these really stupid purchasing abilities on wedisc the platform they said for the low price of ten dollars you can make your font yellow and sparkly for the low purchase price of five dollars you can make your video title bubble up and down no one's really spending money on that because why would anyone spend money on that unless you're a weed disk employee that has 25 that you need to funnel back into wedisc somehow so you would okay bubble font bright yellow font um heart emoji let's do the Hello Kitty and you would spend all the money in this Creator's account and then close it down to take money laundry yeah basically money laundering at its finest now for all of this April 2011 Yang jinho was arrested the first time for uploading copyrighted movies to his platform not even the Revenge videos not even the spy cam videos he was rather quickly released from prison and he went back to being quote the emperor of the spy cam Empire so from 2011 until 2018 when [ __ ] hit the fan again he was doing atrocious things that's a lot of years that's seven years in 2018 the video of him slapping his employee surfaces on the internet the one that we talked about earlier this episode and let's go over that whole story so on WE disc there are different places where you can leave posts you don't have to post videos or pictures you can just write a forum like a little word post anyone can do this you can make an ID and do it you don't need an ID to do it but there were three IDs that were made that really bothered wedisk the IDS were young jino the CEO's name and yangtinoda which means it's Yang jino and lastly which means calling the CEO yes yeah and the IDS would um create their own posts just mocking the CEO there wasn't anything dangerous in the post it's not like the poster was doxing the CEO or threatening his life they were just mocking the CEO saying things like it's me peasants I'm young to know I know you're working hard but you'll never get paid like this anywhere else just making fun of how horrendous we disc is he also took Jabs at the former manager one of the other Executives at wedisc again is it a good thing to do no is it a professional thing to do no but is it the end of the world for these people absolutely not within a few hours though the we disc team tracks down the IP addresses of these new accounts and gives them to Mr Yang he finds out it was an ex-employee of his that used to work as an engineer at we disc and yang was pissed he messaged him it's me yangtino I had fun reading your posts listen I respect that you have different opinions about me and your colleagues and and my company but you gotta at least take responsibility for your actions right so buckle up kid because it's my turn he texts the former employee you little [ __ ] that can't even apologize the former employee probably just posted this to let off steam like they had no intention of being found out by Mr Yang they just wanted to let out their trauma and frustrations it's honestly kind of okay it's not harmless but you get it it's not that big of a deal yeah but compared to what the CEO probably did to him or everyone else what are you talking about exactly you're allowed to freaking abuse people you can't even allow other people to complain are you kidding me and it's not even it's not even a threat it's literally just like a mocking joke like an elementary style joke the employee was freaked out terrified he's anonymous to this day but just think of the power imbalance so the ex-employee texts him back I'm sorry Mr Yang I didn't do this with malicious intent I just visited we disc after a long time of staying away from the platform and I randomly had the urge to write what I thought was silly and you know and it's not appropriate so I deleted it soon after and I'm just very sorry Mr Yang I already saw everything you don't even know how to say sorry so I'm gonna make you take responsibility for this I'll take care of you in the way that I always methodically do things you really forgot my personality huh I mean it's just threat after threat like what does he mean he's gonna force him to take responsibility what methodical process of taking care of it is he talking about and also you really don't know my personality or you forgot my personality it's to imply that he's gonna do something horrible to the ex-employee so this employee tries to apologize once more over the messages I'm so sorry Mr yang you better come over here and get on your knees to beg for forgiveness I will never do anything like this again it was so stupid I will apologize to your colleagues as well or whoever you need me to do you think that I'm asking you to apologize like you have a choice never mind I think that you think you have choices in all of this and I guess you're just not listening so let me be very very Frank with you you are a person who doesn't want to take responsibility and I will feel more comfortable having no sympathy when I talk to you don't say sorry from now on I'm gonna work on a plan for you I I'm so sorry Mr chairman Yang please I'm so sorry are you challenging me I said I don't accept your apology and pick up my calls because now I have to get my feelings out [ __ ] coward I'll call you right back sir I'm so sorry I'm at work right now so after work and after all these messages the ex-employee slash poster visited Yang company and was assaulted the video in question I mean yeah of course to impersonate and mock someone online is not the right thing to do but Mr Yang's reaction even his messages out of this world like South Korea is no stranger to workplace harassment in fact there's a whole lingo for it there's a word called kaptu and it means someone in power that abuses their power and is abusive we've seen this with like the Korean Air Captain heiress Korean said that during quarantine when they worked from home things were getting better and they thought maybe Society was progressing to get better but recently they all went back to work and they said it's so bad workplace harassment is making a comeback whether it's physical or verbal abuse or sexual harassment it is just non-stop so the old companies like Samsung like these older establishments you kind of expect it you expect to be overworked run to the ground devastated but at least you probably get paid more than most people now the newer companies that said they run off of this Western environment they you know like KakaoTalk neighbor they all tout themselves as like meta Google YouTube We're the tech world but recently they too have had scandals a lot of people anonymously post about working at KakaoTalk which is just miserable they said it's like a dictatorship there were multiple employees who died of a heart attack from Naver and it said that they died of overwork but even in comparison to that this video was shocking it was watched by practically every single Korean citizen the news organization news stoppa that we've talked about with this Howard fairy case nustapa was able to find the ex-employee and get him to sit down for an anonymous interview a lot of netizens just had a hard time comprehending why did you even go why did you go like you know he's violent why did you go and he said well I have no choice he is so scary he said he was going to work on something for me and knowing him he loves Revenge he also said he had no idea that this video existed because the assault happened in 2015. he was interviewed after the video was released in 2018. he said recently he found out this video existed he didn't know so he didn't know that he had any power against Mr Yang he had to move to the countryside in South Korea and develop a completely new lifestyle he had to leave the tech industry because you know how in America we have so many big big metropolitan areas so you can have Tech startups in New York and SF and la and Atlanta and Dallas in Korea the big companies are all in Seoul and they all work with each other or they all meet in the same meeting areas they have a lot of not shared spaces but places that everyone will frequent because they work in this industry he was so terrified he could not even be a software engineer anymore he gave up his whole career it was just terrifying I mean he said he tried he got a couple new jobs at a different I.T places and every time he would be drawn into meetings near the wedis company office sometimes in the same building sometimes there would be conferences where the we disc team would also show up he just couldn't do it he also said he found out that the person who uploaded the video was an ex-employee who was told to film the video and everyone's like what do you mean he was told apparently Mr Yang the CEO ordered an employee to take the video of the assault this is so bizarre this guy is so cocky and so Brazen that he wanted someone to record him being the scum of the earth he said it is a souvenir if other employees want to act up or post about him or mock him online he's going to send them this video to show them that's what's going to happen to you then this guy was so cocky he felt he was so untouchable that he ordered someone to take this video of him most people would be like don't take a video of me doing this horrendous thing I'm trying to hide this from the world he's like no I'm trying to show the world wow he really thinks he's like the king of Korea yeah the ex-employee also said you know I personally understand the situation I I think a lot of people online were confused about how there could be so many employees that just sit and watch but I get it when you work there you're not allowed to go up against Yang you are only allowed to obey him so because of the company culture I don't think that anyone could have even stopped him from what he did so I'm not mad at them there's even a Korean website called job Planet it's a bit like Glassdoor it's a Yelp for businesses for verified employees to anonymously write about their experience working at these companies we disc is rated 1.8 out of 5. with only four percent of employees recommending we disc to other applicants many employees wrote If you're willing to do anything for your boss come here yeah this is basically a website management company a company that's very similar to the Army if you've never been to the Army this is the closest you will get other employees talked about how it's nearly impossible to survive in the company if you're a woman or if you don't like smoking bullying and drinking every night oh and they stated we disc will track your IP addresses when you're off work to micromanage your life to make sure you never betray the company many people accuse the company of stooping down to any level willing to do anything many former employees accused we disc of corroding Korea Society they brought up the illegal Revenge videos the spy cam videos that are posted on there but nothing was being done side note many employees did state that they felt really bad for their hand in the spreading of all these illegal videos one of them stated at the time I didn't have guilt but now I realize what I did was very bad maybe I even ruined someone's life what we did was wrong okay do I think that it absolves them of wrongdoing no okay it's confusing because in their own right they are victims of workplace violence and harassment and I can see how hard that is but also many of them stayed with the promise of money even after they realized what kind of videos that they were working on now I don't know what it was maybe once you enter we disc you're told if you quit for whatever reason even if you give a really good excuse I will make your life miserable I will find you hunt you down and kill your family members I don't know what they were told I don't know why they didn't leave but it is um yeah there are a lot of victims to this case so I can't say that I feel the utmost sympathy for these victims versus the ones that were the subjects of the videos I feel like if the business model was different or if they weren't doing anything illegal or heinous I would have nothing but sympathy for these employees who are just trying to feed their families you know but this this feels a bit different you know where do you stand on this topic I'd love to know your thoughts but also the professor in the beginning of this story that was assaulted by the CEO in the room he didn't just move on after being beaten he was still harassed by Yang non-stop he was being left threatening calls saying things like I'm gonna give you one month so go on alive yourself yeah he was egging him on he would say things like he would leave voicemails are you driving to the school right now you should drive into the Han River instead eventually Yang got bored and moved on but when those terrifying calls stopped the professor still had to deal with a cervical spine sprain multiple fractures TMJ disorder headaches migraines vertigo and severe PTSD because of his beating he had to go to a psychiatrist he lost his job as a professor he couldn't even finish the book that he was in the middle of writing so finally November 7th of 2018 the emperor of the spy cams was arrested and here's the frustrating part apparently he knew that the cops were going to raid we disc three days before they did how ex-employes allege that Yang had bribed a ton of the high officials including prosecutors in zhor they stated that one time a prosecutor straight up came into the meeting with them and coached them on what to say imagine a prosecutor comes in and is like hey I'm about to arrest the [ __ ] out of you guys so here's what I think you should say so that we can go easy on you they had three full days can you imagine how much footage evidence was destroyed in three days this is the thing and this happens everywhere in the us as well the police won't do anything until they are forced by the public until the public is hey either it's that guy's head on a stick or we're gonna put your head on a stick you pick then the police are like well don't take my head let's go after him you're right and you're like are you serious right now so that video went viral and it was all the backlash that caused the prosecutors to have to investigate we disc because it was leading into who even is the CEO and then to wait what even is we disc and then people being like oh you don't know we disc all they do is post Revenge videos so he was arrested for charges related to assault harassment abuse drugs he hired the best attorney money could buy he admitted to the things that he was caught on video doing so the chickens and the slapping of the employee but he gave very thought-out excuses to all of that he's like well it was just very passionate man you know I'm just protecting my other co-workers from my ex-employee meanwhile he denied anything that didn't have concrete evidence attached to it and he also apologized but it was very verbatim he said I know I did wrong so I'm sorry foreign like he ever addressed or apologized to the victims of the Revenge videos or the spy cam videos the biggest victims in this case he was sentenced to seven years in prison which he immediately appealed and in his second trial in 2020 the judge lowered his sentence from seven years to five years he was forced to pay a twenty thousand dollar fine he did have multiple trials though um one of them was for the harassment one of them was for the illegal uploading of videos that one he was sentenced to five years all in all with his appeals he was sentenced to a whopping total of 12 years in prison and all I have to say is and this is a sentiment that is shared with a lot of people in South Korea against spy cam and revenge videos I don't think that this is going to teach him a lesson and Society teaches women to feel ashamed when a man does something wrong against them but they never teach that man to respect women I don't think 12 years and a 20 fine basically is going to teach Yang to respect women the penalty of these crimes should match the trauma that the victims will have to carry for the rest of their lives in lots of countries speaking of women cannot even use the restroom in peace I saw people commenting to talk about this because we were recently in Korea but the spy cam videos that we talked about in today in connection with we disc a lot of those videos were indeed Motel footage that was illegally taken but even in public bathrooms and subway stations nothing is safe anymore for anyone for women for children for men if you go into a woman's bathroom in Korea it is very common to see you know like if you go to like the older areas you see some holes in the wall or cracks in the stone women will stuff those areas those holes with wet tissue or Draw over with marker there will be some signs outside of subway station bathrooms that say that this bathroom is being monitored by a team of the police that are dedicated to detecting hidden cameras women can quite literally not even [ __ ] in peace male colleagues have been caught in South Korea hiding secret cameras in the female colleagues bathrooms a famous news anchor in South Korea was caught taking upskirt pictures in the subway of girls a famous news anchor he was going up the stairs and his whole phone was filled with upskirt shots there are literal companies now in South Korea that you can hire that will come out to check that given area for hidden cameras obviously that's a luxury for most people that most people cannot afford and would not even be feasible on a day-to-day basis because okay fine you go to a hotel and then what you just have to hire people to pay a bunch of money to look for cameras it's crazy it's primarily right now being used for government activities but it's insane that there's a market for it they've found waterproof cameras and shower heads Outlets that have hidden cameras cameras and clothing hangers in changing rooms and a lot of these are Wi-Fi so this person installs it they never have to go back for it they get the live feed and these live feeds are being channeled into these platforms illegal platforms that creepy disgusting people will pay anywhere in the ballpark of 50 a month to watch all these live streams cameras will be head in in teddy bears lotion bottles at hotels it looks like a bottle of lotion and you put lotion in there but at the bottom it's a camera and it's part of the design you would never see it screws on the wall picture frames you can buy sunglass cameras hat cameras like the baseball caps that have a camera car keys cameras water bottles these camera feeds get live streamed and the main target is unfortunately women and what do the police do not much in 2019 almost half of social digital crime cases were dropped by the police in South Korea too many police officers not all police but many this is just something that happens because men can't control themselves these police officers basically just accept the fact that some men out there are gross and they expect the rest of the world AKA woman to just kind of live with the consequences of that so women are told to wear masks into public restrooms because it helps keep your identity hidden in case there is a hidden camera that is posted online of you of you peeing yeah but I do think that times are changing um in Korea there have been organized marches of not just women showing up but a lot of men showing up to march with signs that read my life is not your enough backlash has gotten the government to create entities that are tasked with ridding public places like hotels motels bathrooms of these cameras and a lot more men are standing up to other men online to let them know hey this video is not acceptable which is really great but it doesn't change what's still going on okay so this is from an interview and not me finding Revenge videos and watching them but an interview of a guy watching Revenge videos he said the comments would read things like sorry to the girl but thanks for uploading this love it they said in Revenge videos a lot of the comments will joke actively about how this girl is [ __ ] now like her life is over now and they will still continue to show this video so these people are so sad because guys are never the victim in this scenario right the other guy even if they see the face yeah they don't think that guy is no the only thing the girl is [ __ ] yeah it doesn't even make sense I think we should start shaming victims of all crime then just so maybe people will start being like okay yeah why do we shame victims of crime because that's crazy like if you got mugged on the street should I start shaming you that's insane should I be like well your life is [ __ ] now so LOL thanks for uploading the video there's a recent case and this is not just happening in South Korea there is a recent Scandal between reality stars where the boyfriend secretly recorded doing the deed with his other reality star famous girlfriend in their house while they were dating so these are two stars they break up he posts this video to promote his new of account he was sent to prison because she found out she didn't know this video was created she didn't know he was gonna upload it it's a revenge video there's a whole Daily Mail article about how the Daily Mail never a great source but the fact that they dedicated paragraphs to how sad this man was how he was so shaken up that he was being sent to prison and how it's very rough time for him and it's literally what like I have no idea who these people are I have no idea if they're good people in other aspects of their life or if they've done other bad things but none of that matters so he secretly recorded a video and then posted it and posted it and then tried to make money out of it and now he's like he was so sad he's like I'm heartbroken and the Daily Mail is posting it like he's heartbroken look at him let's give him a couple paragraphs to talk about his feelings so again I don't know if these are horrible people but none of it matters because in this particular case it's a revenge video it's illegal he belongs in prison he was wrong she is a victim of this but some of the comments read the video is pretty decent to be honest another one read he made a mistake and it's gonna cost him dear time people move on stop demonizing him let the first person without sin cast the first stone will people finally be happy if he ends his life in jail so much sympathy for what for what some people just commented she's milking it now he's a vile creature and deserved everything he got but like come on sorry but enough already if this poor girl is as traumatized as she says why keep bringing it up get therapy move on and stop trying to get in the papers uh I can see she's making the most out of this publicity I was genuinely shocked I didn't I really I mean it's the daily mail but I did not expect the comments to be like that and to me that just reaffirms why Revenge videos still exist and why they aren't going away and why they're gonna become an even bigger problem I feel like we just do not value a woman's trauma and that is where I will leave you with today's case and story what are your thoughts what are the most shocking aspects of this case the company's culture the actual company's crimes and do you think Mr Yang is just gonna quietly come out and be a tech Guru again like is he just gonna wreak more havoc and menace to women and employees everywhere yeah with 200 million dollars yeah I don't think he will stop yeah please stay safe and I will see you guys on Wednesday for the main episode bye

Channel: Rotten Mango

Views: 1,412,494

Keywords: Stephanie Soo, MissMangoButt, Stephanie Soo Story, Stephanie Soo Storytime, Stephanie Soo Podcast, Podcast, Rotten mango, Rotten Mango Podcast, Mystery, Mystery Storytime, Mysterious, Scary Story, Urban Legends, Internet Mysteries, Creepy Stories, Bailey Sarian, Dark History, Morbid, That Chapter, Strange & Mysterious, Mr. Ballen, Two Hot Takes, Kendall Rae, Mile Higher, Danielle Kirsty, Eleanor Neale, GrazyTV, Documentary, True Story, Dark Reality, The Truth, Korean, Seoul, Korea

Id: t4xUfEex9ho

Length: 71min 40sec (4300 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 11 2023