Have you ever heard of the Frog Boys? No, it’s not some quirky Ok-pop group — it’s a reputation tied to one among Korea’s most haunting mysteries.
Within the early Nineties, 5 younger boys set out on a forest tour and by no means got here residence. Their sudden disappearance despatched shockwaves throughout the nation. Their faces turned inconceivable to keep away from, plastered all over the place from milk cartons to detergent bins.
It was a narrative that no Korean who lived by that period might escape.
On this episode of True Crime, we take you again to March 1991, when 5 boys mysteriously disappeared on the similar time in a small, rural village in South Korea.
Who had been the boys?
Their faces had been all over the place, plastered on partitions and printed on varied grocery store merchandise, however wherever they had been seen, the outline and particulars had been nearly at all times an identical to the flier you see right here.
On the prime, there’s a reward: 42 million Korean gained. Again in 1991, with inflation, that may’ve been value about $81,000 at in the present day’s charges.
And these are the pictures of the boys, frozen in time, perpetually in adolescence.
The youngest is Kim Jong-sik, simply 10 years outdated. He’s sporting a purple prime in his image. A short description reads, “a chubby, spherical face with a slight hole between his entrance enamel.”
Subsequent is Kim Yeong-gyu, age 12, famous as being “a little bit chubby” with scars on each his brow and the bridge of his nostril.
Woo Chul-won, age 14, is the oldest. He’s described as “skinny, long-faced, with a small 1-centimeter scar between his eyebrows.”
Then there’s Jo Ho-yeon, age 13, described as “skinny, with higher entrance enamel that protrude.”
And eventually, the youngest Park Chan-in, 11. He stands out together with his pink shirt and smiling face. The outline provides, “skinny, lengthy face, large ears and thick backside lip.”
The flyer additionally states that each one 5 boys went lacking on March 26, 1991. That is the day we’re touring again to now.
The 12 months was 1991. The Gulf Battle had simply ended, and within the US, Rodney King was brutally crushed by Los Angeles police, captured on videotape. The Soviet Union was nonetheless round, however had only a few months earlier than its dissolution within the ultimate days of the 12 months.
In South Korea, democracy had returned after years of navy dictatorship. On March 26, the nation took one other historic step by holding its first native authorities elections in three a long time.
The town of Daegu, within the nation’s southeast, wasn’t notably recognized for a lot however its robust dialect and conservative political leanings.
For the boys within the village of Seongseo, none of this mattered. It was a special occasion as a result of faculty was closed, and so they had all day to play.
The daddy of Woo Chul-won, the oldest of the boys, remembers the day vividly.
From early morning, his son had been enjoying outdoors.
Simply as the daddy was on the brink of go forged his vote within the historic election, Chul-won, or Gained, as the daddy lovingly referred to as him, burst into the home. The boy grabbed his jacket and was about to go away, when his father stopped him and requested if he wished to return and watch him vote.
However the boy declined, his thoughts already fastened on the little journey to a close-by hill that he had deliberate with mates.
That was the final time his father noticed him.
From right here, the boys’ journey can solely be pieced collectively by fragments of reminiscence — the accounts of those that crossed paths with them that day.
Close to a grocery store, the 5 youngsters bumped into the older brother of one among their firm, the 13-year-old Jo Ho-yeon. They advised him they had been heading to the mountain and Jo suggested them to ensure and are available residence earlier than it received too late.
On their approach to the mountain, they handed by a college playground. There, they ran into one other village boy and invited him to hitch their journey to hunt for salamander eggs.
The buddy thought-about becoming a member of them, however determined to not and headed residence. He later mentioned he noticed them crossing the playground and climbing the steps within the path of the mountain.
Close to the foot of the mountain, extra witnesses reported seeing the boys. They had been carrying sticks and milk cartons, most likely to gather the salamander eggs they hoped to seek out.
Generally, when one thing dangerous has occurred to their youngsters, dad and mom simply know. It could have been this unexplainable parental intuition.
Round 11 a.m., Kim Jong-sik’s mom felt a sudden surge of hysteria. Unable to shake the sensation, she began looking for her son, checking all his regular hangouts.
Lunchtime got here and went, and her fear deepened. It was uncommon for her son to not come residence for lunch.
By afternoon, concern had totally set in. Different dad and mom, too, had been looking. They went to the police station, pleading with officers to take motion.
The police weren’t as involved because the dad and mom. In any case, the boys had been collectively. They will need to have misplaced monitor of time whereas enjoying — that was their thought.
However the dad and mom knew their youngsters higher than anybody. They mentioned their youngsters had been reliable and punctual, particularly when it got here to the boys’ Taekwondo lessons, which they beloved, and had been speculated to attend that day.
The Taekwondo instructors had even provided to allow them to skip class because it was election day, however the boys had insisted on attending.
Lacking class — and staying out so late — was fully out of character.
Late that evening, the dad and mom and cops went up the hill, calling out the children’ names. But it surely was too darkish to maintain wanting. In order that they determined to select up their search the following morning.
Lots of them thought the children would possibly simply come again after spending a tough evening away from residence.
Days handed, however not one of the 5 boys got here residence.
Whereas their fathers combed the mountain, checked each bus and practice station within the area and traveled to much more distant locations seeking any clue to their whereabouts, the moms stayed residence, glued to the cellphone, ready for any information. By this time, the disappearance of the 5 boys from a small village had change into main information, drawing consideration from the general public.
Sooner or later, a name got here in.
Mysterious caller mentioned, “Your sons are with me. Put together 4 million gained and put it on the railroad tracks at Daegu Station.”
In 1991, 4 million gained was the equal of round $7,000 in in the present day’s cash.
The dad and mom clung to the determined hope that handing over the cash would convey their boys residence safely. So, they did precisely what the thriller kidnapper requested them to do.
However no one confirmed up on the tracks that day.
This name marked the start of many extra prank calls that adopted. Every ring sparked hope that was extinguished.
Sooner or later, Kim Jong-sik’s mom answered a cellphone name that left her surprised. By then, she was accustomed to prank calls and was hardly ever shocked by them.
“Mother.”
The voice, eerily much like her son’s, made her coronary heart pound.
When she requested if it was Jong-sik, the caller replied, “Sure,” and the decision ended.
Later, a voice knowledgeable analyzed a recording of the decision, evaluating it to a recording the boy’s mother had of her son singing. The end result was disappointing: The 2 voices appeared related, however the cellphone recording was too quick to find out something conclusively.
All 5 fathers give up their jobs, devoting themselves completely to the seek for their lacking youngsters. They transformed a battered truck right into a cell billboard, masking it with giant pictures of their sons.
Prepare stations, shops and bus terminals turned their fixed locations. Day and evening, they distributed flyers bearing their youngsters’s faces.
The boys’ disappearance consumed the fathers’ lives, leaving no house for a break. Even sharing a bottle of soju, an affordable liquor, felt inconceivable with out feeling responsible.
“What are you so joyful about to be ingesting?” was the query the fathers dreaded most.
The daddy’s determined search moved many hearts across the nation, prompting media shops to cowl the unsolved case extensively. Though the boys had gone to seek for salamander eggs, the media, unfamiliar with the creature, reported they had been searching for frog eggs. This is the reason the case turned generally known as the “lacking frog boys.”
Quickly, the whole nation was gripped by the story.
Everybody knew their names and hoped for his or her return. The police search centered on Bulmigol, a specific spot on Waryongsan, the mountain close to the boys’ residence.
Even South Korea’s president, Roh Tae-woo, ordered a full investigation, and almost 300,000 individuals joined the search.
Native companies pitched in, too. The boys’ faces appeared in surprising locations like cigarette bins, milk cartons and phone playing cards — even bins of Tremendous Ti laundry detergent.
However time was not on their facet. Three years handed by, however the boys had been nonetheless lacking.
The fathers believed they’d carried out every thing they might. Finally, the time got here for them to face the tough resolution to finish their search.
The fathers mentioned in an announcement: “We have given up our careers and searched the whole nation. We won’t go on. We’re leaving the search to the authorities and hoping for a miracle. Thanks to everybody who supported us.”
Simply because the dad and mom had been attempting to return to their extraordinary lives, a bombshell shook them in 1996.
Professor Kim Ga-won, a psychologist who lectured at KAIST, a prestigious science and know-how college, claimed that Kim Jong-sik’s father was the offender. He additionally claimed that he had performed an investigation of his personal since 1993. His idea was that Kim Jong-sik’s dad killed the boys and buried their our bodies beneath his home.
One would possibly assume, “Who would consider such a baseless accusation?”
Effectively, the police did. Or, not less than, they had been determined sufficient to provide it a shot.
They dug up the bottom beneath Kim’s home, particularly focusing on the washroom space that the professor pinpointed in January 1996. Within the washroom, they discovered Kim Jong-sik’s shoe, however nothing else. It was the boy’s residence, in any case, so the invention of the shoe didn’t inform them a lot.
Simply when the boys’ story slowly began to fade from Korea’s public consciousness, the boys reappeared.
On Sept. 26, 2002, 11 years after they went lacking, the boys had been discovered, as stays on Waryongsan, only one kilometer from the closely investigated Bulmigol space.
This was lower than a 12 months after Kim Jong-sik’s father, the one who was falsely accused, died in October 2001. Nonetheless in his 40s, he died of most cancers.
The boys had been discovered by a forager who was accumulating acorns. Their stays weren’t buried deep — some had been barely coated with soil.
One could surprise, if a forager might discover them so simply, why couldn’t the over 300,000 individuals who’d been searching for them?
The situation may very well be a part of it. They had been discovered off the crushed monitor in Sebanggol, separated by a ridge from the closely searched Bulmigol.
When the our bodies had been discovered, the nation was unhappy but additionally hopeful that they’d lastly be taught what occurred to the boys, some long-awaited closure.
However that’s not what occurred. As an alternative, their discovery solely added to the confusion.
Initially, some cops attributed the deaths to hypothermia attributable to the chilly and wet climate.
On the day they went to the mountain, the temperature ranged from a low of three.3 levels to a excessive of 12.3 levels, with rain beginning within the night, making it chillier.
However this rationalization was not believed by many within the public or by the boys’ households.
The households believed that if they’d frozen to demise, there was no method that they’d not have been found by somebody 11 years in the past. They claimed the police had been simply attempting to shut the case rapidly as an unlucky accident.
The dad and mom additionally mentioned the situation of the corpses made it arduous to consider that chilly climate was the killer.
4 units of stays had been tangled collectively within the filth, together with 5 pairs of youngsters’ sneakers and round ten items of clothes. Amongst them, one of many corpses had dental work resembling that of Jo Ho-yeon. Woo Chul-won’s cranium was enveloped by his sweatshirt, whereas the legs of Kim Yeong-gyu’s tracksuit bottoms had been knotted.
The outcomes of a more in-depth forensic examination got here out a few month later, concluding that the boys had been murdered.
Paek Jung-sik, a forensic official, mentioned, “Three of the skulls bore distinct, man-made holes, doubtless inflicted on the time of demise.”
A flier searching for details about the deaths of the kids, created after the bones had been discovered, famous that the cranium of one of many boys had rectangular-shaped holes measuring between 1.4 and a couple of millimeters. Moreover, there have been 15 smaller puncture marks across the holes.
The forensic crew added that the boys doubtless had been murdered from repeated blows to the top with an unidentified weapon or weapons. Regrettably, the investigation didn’t pinpoint the perpetrator(s) or the homicide weapon(s).
On March 26, 2004, precisely 13 years after they went to the mountains, the boys’ stays had been cremated and laid to relaxation. The households, nevertheless, saved their skulls within the hope that at some point they’d function proof that might assist convict the killer.
Two years later, in 2006, the case exceeded the statute of limitations.
This isn’t the top of the Frog Boys’ story.
In 2022, the case gained renewed consideration on-line.
An nameless submit claimed that the writer knew what was used to kill the boys: a vernier caliper, a measuring system used for measuring the dimensions of objects. The submit additionally recommended {that a} group of delinquent teenagers within the neighborhood might need been concerned, with out giving any substantial proof to again the declare.
Regardless of the shortage of proof, the submit gained public consideration, and MBC’s “PD Notepad,” an iconic investigative TV journalism program in South Korea, featured an episode concerning the case in 2022.
The present recommended that whereas many younger college students used to hang around on the mountain, probably sniffing glue to get excessive, it was unlikely they’d have vernier calipers — it was not a software generally used on the close by vocational excessive colleges.
However the present did take into account the chance that the weapon was a pair of calipers or pruning shears, primarily based on experiments with forensic scientists.
A scientist mentioned the “X” formed holes on one of many skulls usually are not simply made with a type of two implements.
The present additionally raised the potential for navy involvement, with a witness claiming to have seen a soldier in a pink hat with an eagle emblem interacting with the 5 boys. The witness mentioned the soldier advised the children to play someplace else, and the children requested if he might give them a salamander egg.
However the navy claimed there have been no coaching workout routines on that day as a result of election, which was a vacation.
As a result of the case is of such nice public curiosity, it stays formally open. The investigation is the accountability of the Daegu police’s chilly case unit.
The daddy of Chul-won, the oldest of the 5 boys, advised the media that the dad and mom used to hope for the children to look of their desires and reveal what had occurred — or for the killer, or somebody who knew the reality, to return ahead and at last relieve their consciences of their later years. They desperately wished solutions.
However after so a few years, all they need now, he mentioned, is for the boys to relaxation in peace.
This text is a written adaptation of The Korea Herald’s new podcast True Crime. You may hearken to the total episode on Spotify and Podbbang. ― Ed.
