Rotten Mango
South Korea "Erased" 4,000 People To Host The Olympic Games: True Story Behind “Squid Game”
Sun, 12 Jan 2025
It’s the biggest church in South Korea but nobody knows it exists. The church itself can fit at least 4,000 church goers all at once. But that’s not the intriguing part of the church… they just do things differently. There are a row of people standing in front of the pastor. They are asking him for forgiveness but they’re all wearing the same thing. A red sack with big ugly painted letters on there that read “I am a sinner who has gone against God’s word.” Pastor Lim prays over them - one by one. Before he turns around and pulls out a set of red boxing gloves. He slowly, calmly puts them on and starts beating the people down. He doesn’t stop till the entire row of red sack wearing people are bloody on the floor. Then he calmly fixes his clothes and heads back to the podium to continue preaching to the church goers. This is not a cult story. This is Brother’s Home.A government funded camp to cleanse the humans of South Korea ahead of the Olympics. The true story behind the Squid Game show.
Chapter 1: What is the Brothers Home and its significance?
It is one of the biggest churches in the city of Busan in South Korea. Only nobody really knows it exists. It's in the middle of the woods. You have to be invited in to join the church. But it's also not a cult. This is not a cult story. The church has the capacity to seat 3,500 people, give or take. Sometimes it's 4,000.
There are just what feels like an endless row upon row upon row of rock-hard church pews. Every church member is forced to sit on for hours every single Sunday. The pews, the chairs, they're at a firm 90 degree angle. And because attendance is so high, you're arm to arm.
In the summer, it feels like you and the person next to you are going to fuse together in the flesh because the sweat, the moistness. just touching each other for hours at a time. Winter is not as bad, but every single Sunday, the inevitable moment comes like every Sunday, the red sack people, the pastor, pastor limb at the podium will ask the red sack members to come up.
It looks like a row of red floating balls that just float onto the stage, but they're people they're wearing red burlap sacks and with ugly paint on the front. And the ugly paint reads, I am a sinner who has gone against God's word. Everyone in the church holds their breath as the pastor approaches the Red Sack people. His eyes look soft. They look sympathetic.
He puts his hands on their heads and they bow down. The pastor closes his eyes. In the name of Jesus, you are being punished. Then he moves to the next one. In the name of Jesus, you are being punished. And then the next one by one, he does this to all of them. In the name of Jesus, you're being punished. In the name of Jesus, you're being punished. And then he turns around. The pastor does.
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Chapter 2: What happens during the church services?
And when he turns back to face the row of red sack wearing people, he has put on a pair of boxing gloves. And bam, he just starts pummeling them one by one to the ground. None of the thousands of people in this church look away. They're not allowed to. Their eyes are glued to the front. None of them stop the pastor. None of them scream. None of them shout. None of them do anything.
until these red sacks at the front are laying down horizontal on the ground, and now they're oozing red liquid. They're dead. The church members think, well, they're lucky if they're dead, actually.
Chapter 3: How are the 'Red Sack People' treated?
He punched them to death?
A lot of them get beaten to death. The church members think, well, they're lucky if they're dead, you know? If they're dead, their bodies will be dragged off, probably to be sold. If not, they're going to repeat this again next week. This is not a cult. This is the Brothers Home, a government-funded camp to cleanse the humans of South Korea for the Olympics.
But instead, the welfare center known as Brothers Home basically is its own torture facility with sick, twisted games played with these prisoners. This is the inspiration behind the Netflix series Squid Games. We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to directly support a survivor of today's episode.
This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team. And we'd also like to thank you guys for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates.
as always full show notes are available at rottenminglepodcast.com with that being said today's case involves mentions of internment essay trafficking and torture please take a break if it gets to be too much this case is on the heavier side but i also think it's very important another thing to note is that this is something that happens all across the world like i said in the
And South Korea at the time that this took place was not a democracy, it was run by a dictator, so hopefully massive changes have been made. And additionally, our amazing Korean researchers and translators were actually able to travel to some of the survivors involved in today's case, conduct in-person interviews, They translated the survivor's book, The Surviving Child, written by Han Jung-sun.
He's a huge part of the case. I'm going to refer to him as Han. Additionally, this is a three-part case. If you haven't watched part one, please go watch that first. I'm going to link it because none of this is going to make sense. In part one, we go through the torture games that were held at the Brothers Home Welfare Center, how they compare to squid games.
And in this episode, we're going to go through what they do to the dead bodies. as well as the salt, water, food torture, and what happens when you escape. In part three, we will go in depth on the wealthy benefactors of this facility. So with that being said, let's get started. In season two of Netflix's Squid Games, the main character, Ki-hoon, he just survived Squid Games.
In season one, he walks away with 40 something million dollars. But he more or less, I mean, was it worth it? I don't really know. He more or less had to kill his childhood friend that dies in the games to win. And the minute he comes home, he finds out that his mom is dead as well. So for a year, he can't even touch the money that he won.
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Chapter 4: What inspired the Netflix series Squid Game?
A year after his initial win, he finds out the truth. The games are created for rich people's entertainment and this lights a fire underneath him. The logical thing for him to do is find closure, walk away, But instead, Ki-hun vows he is going to get revenge on the rich VIPs and he's not going to stop.
He is going to end these stupid games, even if it means losing every single penny that he had just won and even losing his own life. The National Assembly building in South Korea is this massive stone structure. But the legislators, they show up. So do the administrative staff, personnel, researchers. They show up to work and outside is usually a row of people, protesters.
But this time is different because a lot of people will protest different things at the National Assembly. But this group, they've been very serious. They've been here, living here for three years, living outside the National Assembly in tents. Sometimes they walk. Sometimes they just hold a sign with tears streaming down their face.
Sometimes they fast and people have to beg them to eat because they're becoming emaciated. This time they're sitting next to each other one by one and they're all looking stoic. They're not saying anything. Their eyes look like they're about to start crying. Some of them are already crying. There's just tears dropping everywhere. And they're all shaving their heads to get attention.
How many people in that group?
It's like a row of 10 almost. These are the victims of the brothers' home. They have been protesting for three something plus years. I mean, it's a long time. And it all started with one man, the man who wrote the book, Han. He tells the legislators, I am a child who survived hell.
You know, it's easy to go from human to beast, but very hard to return from beast to human, which is why after he escaped Brother's home, he wanted to kill people. He admits he thought becoming a serial killer was the only way that he could escape brother's home. He says, like a psychopath, after I left, I just wanted to kill everyone around me.
I felt like it was the only way to get everyone to listen to my story. But then I thought, what about everybody else? Everybody already hates us. We were labeled as vagrants. People saw us as less than human even after we got out of brother's home. Why give them more reason to look down on us? So he said, I'll give it one shot.
I will go to the National Assembly and I will protest and see what happens. Escaping the brothers home compound is nearly impossible. In part one, we talked about how the walls are 30 feet tall. I mean, even if you somehow manage to Spider-Man climb the structure, they put in certain parts of the wall glass shards on top. One attempted escapee, Lee, he says he made it up the wall. He climbed it.
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Chapter 5: What is Han Jung-sun's story?
But he's another top person.
They're a family. In the end of part one, 12-year-old Jung, do you remember him? His dad is the toilet paper salesman. He's trapped in brother's home for two years. And the only thing keeping him alive is the thought that his dad is going to come and save him. Years later, his dad shows up at brother's home.
But instead of being there to take him out, rescue him, Jung's dad is standing there wearing a blue tracksuit. It's very interesting because Squid Game, even the actual show, has a lot of interesting components that Like the fact that there's so many familial dynamics at play in season two. I would say these are not really spoilers because season two is connected to season three.
So we don't really know what happens even. But if you're adverse to any type of spoiler, please be warned. So, for example, in the new round of Squid Games, there's a mother and son duo. The two of them, they meet in the games. Neither knew that the other party was gonna show up. They have no idea.
They get there, they enter the games, and both of them are there to win the money so that they could pay off the son's gambling debt. Without giving any spoilers, I mean, how is that gonna play out? We don't know, because like I said, season three is coming. But if it's just like the first games, there's only one standing. It can't be both the mother and the son.
If there's an unspoken familial bond that would indicate then it has to be the son, right? Because he's younger. And mothers likely have that innate desire to protect their own children. Or I wonder if it's a question of are humans just humans? At the end of the day, like when it really comes down to it, survival instincts kick in regardless of who birthed you. And it's about surviving in the end.
For example, the recruiter. Remember the guy in the suit that works for the games? His whole job is to go around, approach people at subway stations. He knows they have debt. He's the one that scouts the potential candidates for the game, invites them in. He thinks all these recruits are beneath humans. He thinks they're subhumans.
He believes genuinely that he is doing the world a favor by getting rid of them. He used to be a pink suit wearing guard inside of Squid Games. And he tells the main character in season two, clearing and incinerating the bodies of countless people like you. These things aren't human. They're just trash. They have no purpose in this world. That's what I kept telling myself for years.
And I worked hard. And one day, the game makers, they gave me a gun. I like the way it felt. It was like somebody had finally acknowledged my existence. One year, there was a man who lost, and I went over to shoot him, but I recognized his face. Can you guess who it was?
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Chapter 6: How did Jung escape from Brothers Home?
Yeah.
Wow. That...
Jung was in there since he was 12 till he was nearly 15. He says, I strongly resisted the essays at the time that were happening every single night to others. But because of that, I was beaten even more. It's a different humiliation that's different from just being beat. Even now, the shock is too much. I just knew I had to escape that hell.
he's out in the courtyard one day and his eyes are glazed over just trying not to get burnt by the sun, which is really hard. Okay. So they're saying in the summers, even in the winters, it's really difficult because if you listen to part one, they're only allowed to wash their face with coarse salt grains. It rips your flesh. It makes it raw in the sun.
And then you're getting punched in the face by these guards every day. And now you have no moisturizer, nothing. You're just in the glare of the sun. He's squinting and he looks up and his heart starts pounding. He notices all the guards are busy. And there's been this one building he's always looked at.
Because if you were to get to the roof of that building, it's tall enough that you could potentially jump onto the ledge of the wall that's blocking them.
Like the 30 feet wall?
Yes. If you climb to the top of that building, the gap between the wall and that building are not that much. And it's about the same height, the roof and the upper ledge of the wall. So he takes a chance. He says, I ran like lightning to the building's roof. He jumps from the roof knowing that he could very well land on the floor and die or worse survive only to be beaten to death. Okay.
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Chapter 7: What challenges did Jung face after escaping?
But he jumps, lands on the ledge of the wall, scrapes himself from all the blood. He drops down from the wall on the other side. It's not nearly as high because it's
it's built on a hill he jumps down and just starts booking it there's no looking back he's sprinting through the woods scraping his face he can't even keep his eyes fully open because the branches are slamming into him and he doesn't want to slow down he's just running the next thing he knows there's this massive barbed wire fence in front of him what the hell is this some sort of secondary blockade he doesn't even know how long he's been running he just starts without even thinking oh
climbing up the barbed wired fence, breaking the skin all over his hands, face, body. It's like going through a paper shredder. But he said he didn't even feel pain in the moment. The only thought being, I have to escape this hell no matter what. There is no other way. I have to escape this hell. He drops down on the other side. He made it. This is freedom. He made it past the walls.
And then click. It's the sound of a gun right behind him. Put your hands up and don't move. He raises his bloody hands in the air and turns around. It's a uniformed man holding a gun up to him. He's not wearing a blue tracksuit. He's wearing a military outfit. A soldier. Jung had been so desperate. Honestly, nobody knows how long he ran for. He doesn't even remember.
But he ran for so long, he ran directly into a military base. Sneaking into a military base, to him, still can't be worse than being stuck at brother's home, right? I mean, that's what he thinks. He begs them to save him because all the other people that make it past the walls, if you're wearing the blue tracksuit, you're just brought immediately back in.
You're seen almost like an escaped prisoner. And he begs the soldiers to save him or better yet, don't save me. Don't, don't do anything. Just let me go. I won't tell anyone. The soldiers load him up to a car and he's just begging, please sir, help me. Please sir, help me. The door to the soldier's car opens. They throw him out and then they throw something into his hands.
It's a big loaf of bread. He's just standing on the road on the street. He's not back at brother's home. He's free. With that, the car just drives off.
Wow. So they kind of saved him?
Yeah, they did. They could have sent him back. I don't think that they knew anything of the true torture of what was going on at brother's home, but they had a lot more mercy than the guards at brother's home, clearly. They just thought if this guy doesn't want to go back that much, that he's begging and crying and willing to climb over a barbed wire defense, maybe he doesn't want to go back.
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Chapter 8: What was the role of the police in this story?
And then one day the cops barge in and they take him in. They arrest him.
Why?
One of the neighbors reported a vagrant was living at the distribution center.
What?
They arrested him for being a vagrant. And just like in season two of Squid Games, just like Ki-hoon, the main character, when Jung opens his eyes, he's back in a blue tracksuit in a bunk bed at the brother's home.
You are kidding me. How long was he out?
A few months. But he's a lot more bloodier now from all the beatings from running away. He said in that moment he realized, I'm never going to get out of here. I'm never going to get out of here, at least alive. Another survivor says, as you keep getting beaten up, you know, you just, you just give up. The end of all this waiting, you think you're waiting to escape.
The end of all of it is just death. There's nothing to wait for except the day that you die. Nobody's coming to save you.
Wait, so this was... Okay, they started this whole initiative for...
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