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The locks come off these big heavy doors.
Interestingly enough, the locks are on the outside.
Hundreds of these doors, they open in unison.
They open at the same time and thousands, a thousand, two thousand, it feels more like four thousand people.
They walk out of these different doors that have now just been unlocked.
They're walking out into the sun and a lot of them are squinting because they've been inside all night long.
They've been trapped essentially padlocked from the outside and now they're walking into what feels like a massive atrium.
They're staring up at the sky.
They're doing circles.
They're doing like a 360 turn and all you see around you are these buildings, buildings and then beyond those buildings, woods.
It's so strange. It feels like its own secret country in the middle of the woods.
There's 60 something buildings.
They're all this brutalist style cement blocks.
Very unwelcoming. The scale of this place is massive.
How do you even build infrastructure like this in the middle of the woods?
It's dense woods. Dozens of dozens of buildings just circling the center field where they're all standing and there's also these walls.
There are some walls that are built to keep people out and there are some walls built to keep people in.
This is one of those walls because how do you climb 30 feet up with no grip, no help?
Beyond that, beyond the wall, centering this field, there's a fence just as tall, potentially taller.
And even if you get beyond that, what do you do?
You don't even know where you are.
You're in the middle of nowhere.
Which way do you run?
What if you run deeper into the woods or you run straight off a cliff or you run and run and run until you circle back to whatever this place is?
Regardless, it would be impossible to get past all the guards.
The guards are holding these wooden bats and they're shuffling all these people to the center of this field.
Every single one of the 3 ,500 something people are wearing identical tracksuits.
Blue tracksuits. Think of like the Adidas jumpsuits.
Their heads are shaved, but it's clear whoever shaved their heads did not care.
They did not pay attention.
There's scars all over their scalp.
And behind these people, the rooms that they just came out of is even more bizarre.
Every single room is occupied by stacks and stacks of bunk beds.
Just rows of bunk beds.
Practically on top of each other.
One of the people in the blue tracksuits blinks.
What the hell is this place?
A lot of the people gathered are minors.
Some are young as 4 years old.
But there seems to be no consistent pattern to even the people that are there.
There are children.
There's teenagers, adults, elderly people.
Everybody is wearing the appropriate sized blue tracksuit without distinction.
How do you even get a 4 year old sized tracksuit?
And pinned to each tracksuit are numbers.
That's what they're known by here.
Nobody goes by names, they just go by numbers.
Most of the people in the tracksuits, they look scared.
Some of them remember the first words the guard said when they were brought here.
This is a quote, from today, you will abandon your rotten mentality and be born as a new human.
And then there's a scream.
Hey, get down from there.
Everybody's whipping around trying to see what the guards are yelling about until they see it.
Over there, there is a man in a blue tracksuit climbing up one of the buildings onto the roof and he leaps from the roof and lands straight on his head on the ground.
One person who was standing right there says, honestly, I didn't know the sound of someone's head exploding could make such a loud splitting sound.
I saw his skull explode open.
A guard member just walks over and sweeps up the brains and bones as if nothing has happened.
And everything goes back to normal.
Nobody screams, nobody cries, nobody reacts because it's going to be them next.
All of this sounds pretty familiar, no?
One could sensibly say that it does sound like the plot of one of the most famous series on Netflix, The Squid Games.
But it's not. This is the real life case of the brother's home in South Korea, the true story behind 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.
The episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team.
And we'd also like to thank you guys, our listeners, for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates.
As always, full show notes are available at RottenMangoPodcast .com.
With that being said, today's case involves mentions of internment, essay, trafficking, torture.
So please take a break if it gets to be too much.
It is on the heavier side.
But I do think it's important to note, especially with the Olympics coming up in LA in 2028, this is going to be very important.
Another thing to note is this is something that happens all over the world, including in America.
There have been recent cases, potentially not to this scale, but this is not an episode to point fingers at one country and throw stones from our glass homes.
Another note, South Korea at the time that this took place was not a democracy.
It was run by a dictator.
So clearly times have changed, times are different.
I mean, I don't know how different considering the recent president was just impeached.
But additionally, our amazing Korean researchers and translators were actually able to travel out to some of the survivors involved in today's case to conduct in -person interviews.
They translated the survivor's book, The Surviving Child written by Han Jung -san.
He's going to be a huge part of the case.
We will refer to him as Han moving forward.
Additionally, this is a three -part case.
So in part one, we're going to go through all the torture games at the Brothers Home Welfare Center and how it compares to the show, Squid Games.
In part two, we're going to talk about what they do with the dead bodies.
There were hundreds, if not maybe even a thousand.
The official number is close to 600 of dead bodies left at the facility.
We're going to talk about what happened to those bodies as well as, yeah, it's, this is a huge scale incident.
As well as the salt water and food torture, as well as what happens to you if you manage to escape from Brothers Home.
And in part three, we go in depth on the wealthy benefactors of these games, if you will.
So with that being said, let's get started.
So this is like the real life, real story behind the Squid Game.
Do you think Squid Game is actually inspired by this or did they actually?
I think so. I think it's heavily inspired by this.
It doesn't feel loose.
I mean, I think some elements seem on trend, like having the wealthy VIPs watching, that seems to be kind of reminiscent of like, you know, the Hunger Games and all these things.
But most of it seems very on point, even like the social commentary is very similar.
Okay. Now, Squid Games is one of Netflix's best performing series.
It's, I feel like everybody knows this series.
It's a South Korean series where a man in a suit approaches people that are drowning in debt and are at the cliff's edge of financial ruin.
He has a fascinating proposal.
You play a few games against 400 something other people in the same exact situation as you.
And if you win these series of fun little games, you're the last one standing.
You walk away with 40 million dollars.
It's a proposal that you really can't pass up.
It sounds easy considering most of the games played are children's games, but it's not made explicitly clear that if you lose, you lose your life.
And at that point, the contestants have already entered into the game.
There's no backing out.
The first season focuses on mainly the shocking nature of the games where everybody gets to know each other.
They form bonds and then they got to backstab each other.
And then they have to watch each other die.
But then also at the same time, if you don't die, then I'm going to die.
And it's this very stark reality.
And the first season, they focus on the existence of the games and the fact that it's due to VIP clients who want entertainment.
These rich people, they don't think reality show games are high stakes enough.
So they want to watch people fight to the death.
The first season shows Ki -hun, the main character winning the final prize at the end of the season.
He survives until the end.
He's now $40 million richer, but he's so traumatized.
He just wants to know, who the hell did this?
Why the hell would they even do something like this?
Why does this exist?
I don't get it. And I want to put an end to it.
The money is not worth the trauma and the anger that he feels.
And if it happens, let's say once every year, you're talking about hundreds of people are going to die every single year for what?
Squid Game season two is more focused on Ki -hun's revenge, but it really starts with a piece of bread.
Episode one in season two is even titled bread and lottery.
Just a spoiler alert.
I'm not going to tell you guys who wins or who dies in each games, which is the main premise of season two.
But there are going to be mentions of certain descriptions of kind of what happens, but it's not the main plot.
So just be warned. The man in the suit.
This is the main recruiter for Squid Games.
He walks around the park to find people without homes that are sleeping on benches.
He leans down smiling at them.
He's in like the cleanest suit.
Hello. You seem to be struggling.
You live a life with no future.
I've prepared a small gift for you today.
They all get up. A gift?
What is a gift? The man in the suit pushes out both of his hands and his right hand is a piece of bread.
It looks good. Food.
And then in the left hand, a lottery ticket.
The first man smiles.
He gets up and he reaches for, uh, no, no, no, you can only have one gift.
Bread or lottery. You may only choose one.
The first man chooses the lottery ticket.
The man in the suit even offers him a coin to use to scratch it off to see if you won.
He did not win. Oof, seems like you've lost.
My coin back, please.
The man gives back the coin and the suit man moves on to do it again to the next person.
He's got two bags full of bread from the bakery.
He does not give anyone who loses the lottery a piece of bread.
Did anyone choose bread?
One person. Most people chose lottery and you see most of them even almost hesitating to grab the bread, but ultimately at the end they choose the lottery ticket.
Interesting. Yeah. Just squiggity, right?
Everyone wants a chance at money.
He approaches and then once he's through with all of them, he goes to the center of the park and he still has two full bags of bread and a much lower stack of lottery tickets.
And he spills, throws all the bread onto the ground.
They're packaged in plastic from the bakery.
So all the park doors, they start approaching him.
They're confused. They want that bread.
Why are you throwing away such good pieces of bread?
You could give it to us.
The suit man smiles and he stomps on a piece of bread before the man can reach for it.
I gave you a chance and you made your choice.
Listen, everyone. I am not the one who threw this bread away.
It is you, ladies and gentlemen.
And with that, he starts stomping all over the bread in the middle of the park.
He's grunting. He's stomping with both of his pristine loafers till the bread explodes out of the plastic packaging and just splatters onto the ground.
Then very calmly, he tucks his tie back in, fixes his lapel, smiles and walks off.
It all starts with bread in real life as well in South Korea.
14 -year -old Choi is walking home from school when this big hand just grips his shoulder, drags him into the alleyway.
And there's a man staring at him, a middle -aged man.
Did you steal a piece of bread?
Why? Did you steal the piece of bread from the store?
The adult man rips the backpack off of Choi, rips it open and there's a piece of bread in there.
It's just leftovers I had from school.
I didn't steal any bread.
Leftovers from school?
Where the hell did you get this piece of bread?
Tell me the truth. By the way, this is from Choi's account, first -hand account.
Like I said, I had leftovers at school.
You're lying to me.
Where the fuck did you get this, you little punk?
Where did you steal it from?
Which store? 14 -year -old Choi is too ashamed to tell him, sir, I'm poor, okay?
I take home the bread from school so that I can eat it for dinner.
But also, why do I need to explain that to this random man in the alleyway?
This back and forth goes on for what feels like forever and this man just keeps smoking cigarettes.
He's lighting the cigarette, blowing it in Choi's face, lighting another one, bl - where did you get the bread?
Lighting it, blowing it.
Where did you get the bread?
Over and over and over again.
Why is this man stopping him out of nowhere, screaming at him about a random piece of half -eaten bread?
Things start blurring together, but Choi says he will never forget that moment where he is standing in front of this strange man, fully naked, and there's a cigarette in that man's mouth, and the man grabs his lighter, holds Choi's private parts, and starts holding the lighter underneath it.
What? In the alleyway?
Yes. He flicks it on.
The flame almost makes contact.
Tell me again, you stole the bread, didn't you?
Please just let me go home, please.
Tell me the truth then.
I just want to go home.
I didn't steal anything.
Things have been disappearing from the local store.
It must be you, right?
I saw you coming down the road, you stole it, and you ate a piece of it, didn't you?
Didn't you? And now the flame is touching him.
It's burning him completely on his private parts.
If you tell the truth, I will let you go home.
It's not the truth, but what else is Choi supposed to do?
Okay, fine. I stole it.
I stole the bread. From where?
The market up ahead.
That's what Choi tells him.
That's what he says.
From the market up ahead, I stole it.
Okay, are you happy?
You should have just told the truth sooner.
I mean, look at you.
You got beat up for nothing, didn't you?
Stay here and wait a second.
Choi is putting on his clothes back when the man walks off to make a call, and within seconds, he comes back, holds Choi down, and in a few minutes, a white van starts speeding down the empty road and screeches to a halt in front of the alleyway.
It's one of those refrigerated trucks that you transport.
I would imagine refrigerated goods.
You know, the back is like a windowless compartment.
It's kind of reminiscent of like a moving truck.
The back door slides open, and the man throws Choi in there and slams it shut.
It is completely pitched back inside.
There's not a single window.
There's no light penetrating.
Nothing. It's even blocked from the driver's side.
They can't see anything.
He's panicking. He's trying to ask, hello?
Is anybody there? Where am I?
You can't just do this.
Nobody responds. He says he waits until his eyes are adjusted to the dim light, and he's rubbing them, and then he sees like a glowing orb, like tiny little marble just like glowing, then another one, and he's squinting, and his eyes slowly adjust, and he said, children's eyes floating, staring at him.
At least a dozen kids slammed into the back of this freezer truck.
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If you are kidnapped in a windowless van, it is very important that you listen and you try to figure out where they're taking you.
The 20 pairs of what looks like floating eyeballs now, they seem to be arranged by height, but that doesn't make sense because why would the kidnappers kidnap from shortest to tallest?
I mean, why would they do that?
No, it's because they're going up a hill, a steep hill, and they've been going up it for the past 30 minutes.
It's not even clear if this is an authorized road that they should be driving on.
It sounds like branches are hitting and scraping the sides of the van.
In another 10 minutes, give or take, it's been 30 already.
The floating eyes, they slide to one side and the truck slams to a halt.
The door slams open and the flashlight is shining in directly.
Everybody's trying to block it.
It's nighttime outside.
They're so confused and there's a handful of men holding large wooden clubs.
They're reminiscent of baseball bats, but they're not.
They're more primitive.
They look more painful.
There's little spots of red on them, like blood.
They're solid and they're massive.
According to one victim, the men scream, hey, you bastards, what are you fucking waiting for?
Get out and get down now.
One by one, they jump out of the white truck and they're so confused at what they're staring at.
It's nighttime, but they know that they're in the middle of the woods.
There's trees everywhere.
It's dense. It's not even the kind of forest that you do a little hike in.
It's very unkempt, but that's not even the alarming part.
It's the fact that they're in the middle of the woods and they're standing in this massive structure, a compound.
There's rows and rows of cement buildings, all uniform uninviting.
It feels like some sort of camp with 60 or so buildings and they're all tiered.
It's like kind of like a hole in the center and all the buildings go up around it.
There's this little open field in the center that they're getting ushered into.
It's like a stadium.
Yes. It's like a stadium setup, but instead of bleachers and chairs for you to sit and watch sports, buildings.
Think of the scale of this.
It's like a military base.
That's what they said it feels like in the middle of nowhere.
Where is the actual location of this?
Busan. Train to Busan?
Yes. The water side city?
Yes. On the very southern part of South Korea.
I actually have family from Busan.
Wow. Okay. Now the setup of this massive compound is similar to that of an arena which gladiators would fight.
So they're all getting ushered into the center field, which is just like flat, sandy land.
The kids that are quick enough to try and plot and escape, they're like, yeah, it's not happening.
The walls around this place, around the buildings even, are 30 feet tall.
There's no grip. There's nothing that you can hold on to climb 30 feet tall walls.
On top of that, there's guards with wooden sticks posted around the perimeter of this place.
Wait. So there's it like a circle wall on the very outside.
So there's a circular flat field and then around it are buildings that go up about 60 different buildings and they go up and up and up.
And then around those buildings are another 30 foot wall.
You're just trapped.
It's really like the opening scene of squid games where they open the top and you're just stuck in the hole in the middle of the woods.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It feels like that.
The kids who aren't quick enough to plot and escape, they don't even know what's happened when they're all dragged to the center and their hair is just getting chopped off.
It's the first thing they do.
It feels random. It doesn't matter if you have this neat bowl cut or long hair that goes to your waist.
They're grabbing chunks and cutting it almost intentionally to make it look bad.
It's weird. It doesn't feel utilitarian because if you have long hair, the best, fastest way to cut it would be to grab it in a ponytail and then chop, right?
But they're taking chunks and cutting it at varying heights.
Very weird. Once the kids' hair looks like they've been run through a cheese grater, they make the kids stand at attention.
Stand up, back straight, look here.
And there's a bright flash.
They're taking pictures just like in squid games.
Each person that enters just like in squid games takes a picture that looks more like a mugshot.
The children are forced to hold a plaque with individualized numbers.
It'll say like 82, 9, 21, 67.
From then on, nobody is referred to by their real names.
When you say children, like how old?
Are they only taking children there?
So this place has about 3 ,500 plus people at any given time.
That's not including the people that die there.
But there's about a thousand children.
So these are minors.
Some of them are as young as four.
Some of them, most of them are teenagers, I would say 12, 13 seems to be the age that they get taken in.
Some are five, some are seven.
And then you have a lot of young adults, 20s and 30s.
And then a small portion of elderly people.
Now we're going to go through a lot of the children's stories because they have since grown into adults and if they survived, they have come out to try and get justice for what happened.
When was this? This was in the 80s and 90s.
So a lot of the survivors that were taken as kids are 40s and 50s now.
Everyone will be assigned a number.
And that is what you will be referred to here on out.
Not your name, your number, just like squid games.
The men with the wooden sticks, they hand out a pair of clothes to each person.
It's a blue track suit.
Identical blue track suits with new numbers on each one.
Everyone, listen up.
You're going to take off your clothes, be strip searched, and then you will put on your new uniforms.
Give me all of your clothes, your old clothes, your belongings.
From now on, your only true possessions are this blue track suit and another blue track suit that you will wear when this blue track suit is being washed, which is not that often.
If the zipper breaks, you're going to have to make do because you're not going to get a new one.
When the winter weather hits negative degrees, you're not going to get another one or an outer layer.
This is your new life.
Every child then gets sorted into the correct warehouse or one of the massive cement structures that they saw coming in, which, side note, it's dawning on a lot of them.
That means if all the structures are filled with people, again, you're talking about thousands of people in blue track suits.
I don't know if they're prisoners.
I mean, what would you even consider them right now?
What is even happening?
Once they get sectioned off, they quickly realize the entire place is run like a military.
Each building is called and considered a platoon.
There are platoon leaders, room leaders.
There's this established hierarchy, but technically, they're just guards.
They'll open the door.
Who the hell is screaming in here?
Shut the hell up, 24th platoon lights out.
If you don't shut up, they'll come in there and they'll beat every single one in the platoon.
Each door is slammed shut and locked from the outside with a giant padlock.
And the very first night is very terrifying for a lot of the kids.
One survivor says, I just knew that I was trapped.
Unable to go where I want, I was terrified.
We all spent our first night in extreme fear.
They're not allowed to talk to one another.
Otherwise, the so -called platoon leader, the guard, will walk in, grab that wooden stick, and slam it down on someone's head.
So most of the kids are just laying there with these floating eyes open, scared, until the military alarm rings at five in the morning.
It's very clear in the morning, which kids have been here a while, because once that alarm goes off, they jump out of bed.
They're folding up their blankets in record speed that I don't even think the military can achieve.
The blankets have to be folded military style with perfectly sharp corners and placed at the end of their bed.
The new kids, the ones with strong survival instincts, they're just looking and trying to figure out what to do.
They're trying to fold it just no one's helping them.
Nobody told them what to do.
They're just trying to fit in.
The other kids, they're crying and asking, what are we doing?
Why is there an alarm?
Hello? Why won't anyone talk to me?
Just why can't I go home?
Hello? They get beat.
Once a head count is done in the room, all the kids are ushered into the big field, the courtyard, and the center of all the buildings, and another head count is done.
They're really making sure nobody escapes.
Then, once your platoon is called, you have to march in sync to this one building called the washrooms.
So this is, you've got seven -year -olds that have never done this before.
They don't know why they're here, where their parents are, and they have to march in sync.
Otherwise, they get beat.
In the washroom, you get three seconds of water.
Your face wash, salt.
Your toothpaste, salt.
Your toothbrush, your finger.
Three seconds of wash time?
Three seconds of water.
So you scrub the salt all over your skin and you use your index finger to rub your teeth and gums with salt and then they will only turn on the water for three seconds per group.
To wash your face, mouth, and everything in three seconds.
But if one child falls behind, even if they were just brought in last night, they get dragged to the corner of the cold washroom and they're beaten with sticks and nobody says anything.
Nobody tries to stop the guards from beating the new kid because they don't know what's going on.
They get beaten until they're in a fetal position on the cold washroom floor begging for mercy.
And it's very clear why nobody stops them because if you look at anybody in a blue suit, all of them have pestering wounds everywhere.
So it's very clear to them, hey, if I try to stop you from getting beat, nothing changes.
The only thing that changes is that instead of you getting beat, we'll both get beat.
That's it. That's the way of life in this compound.
One survivor says, violence always comes first.
Words are unnecessary even if they say stand up straight.
They don't mean stand up straight like a normal citizen.
They want military level attention from a five year old.
How many of us would know how to do that?
If we're even a little bit slow to react, they kick and hit us.
Every day, the guards will ask the terrified tracksuit wearers something along the lines of, okay, now do you want to play a game?
What? They have games at brother's home.
They're forced to play?
Yes. Now, squid games.
The premise of the show is everyone in the game will participate in six different games over six days.
Those who win all six games will receive a handsome cash prize.
Interestingly enough, like I said all the games are childhood games.
They're not particularly the most mentally or physically taxing, at least not on the surface.
But sometimes it's luck, like the Torgona game where you have to cut out the figure in the hard candy.
Or theoretically, you have some very simple games like red light green light, where you have to run or walk towards this finish line when the doll in front of you is screaming green light.
And then it turns around and says red light, and you better stop moving.
Because you will get shot if you're still moving.
If you lose your balance, if you trip, if you fall, you're going to get shot.
Or recently in season two, they have this one game where the contestants get teamed up into groups of five.
They have to run across a track and play five separate mini games that have to be completed before going on to the next mini game.
So it's mini game, you run, run, run, mini game, run, run, run.
And you have to complete this whole track within five minutes.
Now the premise of this though, the hard part is that you, they're all tied together.
The five people, your right leg is going to be tied to your partner's left leg and your left leg to the other partner's right leg.
And if one of you trips, you're all going to trip.
And it's all about being physically connected, because if you trip, you lose so much time and you're going to die.
The games in the brother's home are just as intense, and I would say just as high stakes, if not more so than Squid Games.
Obviously if you don't even factor in the fact that Squid Games is fictional, but the guards, they instruct the children and others at the compound, all 3500 of them, create the Han River Bridge right now.
Each 50 people are told to line up side by side, and then they have to turn.
So now your face is facing the back of somebody's head and someone's looking at the back of your head.
Then you get down onto a pushup position.
And then in unison, each person has to lift their legs and rest them on the shoulders and back of the person behind them.
So your legs are being supported by the person's behind you, and then your hands are on the ground.
It's maybe three people.
It's easy. I don't even know if it's easy with three people.
Maybe 10 it's easy, but it's 50.
A human centipede formed by 50 humans all leaning on top of each other.
And the bridge has to be held for at least like half an hour long enough for all the guards to take turns walking across the quote unquote Han River Bridge.
What? Is that something that just a guard made up or?
It's like a childhood game.
But you don't do it with 50 people.
You do it with a few people, and the stakes of the game are if you fall, you all giggle.
But if you fall here, you get beat and sometimes to the point of death.
And this is something that created by the guards or by like the higher up for entertainment for the higher up.
It seems like the guards for fun.
Yes, for fun. The survivor Han who authored the book says, we had to use all of our strength in our arms and waist to maintain balance so the team leaders, the guards wouldn't fall.
If they fell, everybody goes down onto the floor.
They're just laying there stomped on beaten with wooden bats.
I mean none of these activities are real games.
They're technically games because a lot of them are childhood games.
But other than that, it's not a game.
A game would imply there's a winner and a loser in squid games.
Sure, it could be argued that most games don't have a clear winner, but at the very end the winner walks away with tens of millions of dollars.
The game stakes at brother's home is if you win, you get out with maybe just a few wounds from that game.
If you lose, you could lose your life.
The so -called games are just straight up punishments.
The guards would ask everyone if they wanted to play games, but like I said, they're not games.
They'll stand and gather everybody in the bunk rooms and scream Hiroshima.
Every single person in that cramped warehouse like room is going to stand up, climb to the top bunk and hang themselves upside down with their legs hooked over the side of the top bunk.
Like you know how you go upside down on monkey bars?
Yeah. Dangling head down.
Now hold the pose. The rules of the game are simple.
Don't get up and don't fall.
And if you do, you get beat and possibly die.
One survivor says kids who renew had the hardest time.
They would cry a lot and their faces would get swollen from the rush of blood.
Others would collapse because they're fainting, not even because they can't take the pressure in their ears anymore.
But if you fall from that position because you fainted, it hurts a lot.
You land on your neck, which side note a lot of people have become permanently disfigured, permanently disabled and or just completely paralyzed at the brother's home.
Yeah. The game is made even more twisted by the fact that when you're upside down, they'll go around randomly hitting people on the stomach with the wooden stick and it's random.
It's not even like you fell or you're groaning or anything.
It could just be for no reason at all.
They said the anticipation of that random hit to your stomach when you're upside down and staring at everything from that angle, it kills you.
The anticipation. They say quote, there's no way to express the terror of not knowing where the guards would hit when your vision was pointed downward like a handstand.
Another sick game is called the kimpap roll.
It's a rice roll or blanket rolling, which sounds like it would be the easier of the so -called punishment games, but it's not.
Barely anyone walks out without a concussion.
The guards will roll the blanket out, slam you down onto it and start rolling it across the floor.
So now you're in this burrito of a blanket.
If you don't crunch your core immediately and bring your hands to cover your head in time, you've lost the game because the second the blanket rolls, they start kicking you, beating you, stomping you.
They say they kick you like they're kicking soccer balls at the World Cup, but it's just your head.
One survivor says if you don't curl your body up as much as possible, your intestines could rupture or we've seen people with arms and legs that break in that game.
You could also end up with head injuries and cavalry.
Calvary is one of the worst games.
It's more of a battle than anything.
They get two blue tracksuit wearing people sometimes from the same platoon, same room.
They're forced to fist fight each other until one of them is on the brink of death.
The game does not end until at least one child has a broken nose, a few broken missing teeth and or a concussion.
It's like a horrific battlefield for no reason that would even remotely make sense.
Other games include taking on stress poses.
One is where you start with your feet on the ground.
So imagine you're just standing on the ground, then you bend at the waist and you keep bending and bending until your forehead touches the floor.
So you're in this upside down V shape and the two points that are touching the ground are your forehead and your feet, which doesn't seem that bad.
But just like red light, green light, if you move even just a little, if you even shake because you're getting tired, they will step on you.
They'll step on your lower back, your butt area, putting pressure onto your skull that's already digging into the gravel.
And you're in this position, this stress pose, for an hour.
It's not even five minutes.
They say it's a very unique type of unescapable pain.
Another variation consists of being on your knees on the gravel like you're about to pray and then lowering your forehead to touch the pebbly gravelly floor and your hands are behind your back.
If you move, the guards will come and stomp your head down onto the floor.
But the hardest stress position according to multiple survivors.
So remember the first one with the upside down V.
They said when they really want to torture you, you don't put your forehead on the ground.
They shove your nose into the ground.
It's called the red pepper powder because the minute they even press you a little bit, it's just blood everywhere.
And it goes into your nose.
It goes everywhere.
Then there's another one called motor vehicle and it's just you standing in front of a guard and they say motor vehicle and they'll shout left indicator like turn on your left signal.
But you don't really do anything because it's not really a game.
They just whack your left eye with a wooden bat until it's swollen.
Sometimes the games are less creative.
They'll put wooden sticks, soak them in salt water and hit the back of people's calves or the soles of their feet.
Why they soak it in salt?
So once you hit somebody's skin with a wood stick, you're going to break the skin open and this is soaked in salt water.
So now it's just going to be extra painful.
Oh my god. Okay. One survivor says, how does it feel to get hit with it just once?
I mean, your knees automatically buckle.
After that it becomes bearable because you lose all feeling, at least in that moment.
One survivor says, once one of the guards hit me so hard he broke my two front teeth and you know what they said?
Don't worry, they'll grow back out and then we'll pull the mat all over again.
And because he kept crying because he's a little kid, they grabbed a string and pulled out the rest of his remaining teeth one by one.
And I guess these were his adult teeth or maybe it's the malnutrition or I don't know, but he does not have a single tooth to this day.
He doesn't have any teeth.
This was all part of the games in the compound called Brother's Home.
Unlike squid games, there's no winning.
There's no nothing.
There's no grand cash prize at the end.
There's only losing or losing your life.
One survivor, Han, again the one that authored the book that our researchers met up with, he said, there's one particular memory that haunts me.
Someone in our group was having an epileptic seizure.
The guard said he was faking it and started beating him with a wooden bat.
The boy regained consciousness and grabbed the guard's leg, begging him, please stop please.
I'm sorry, begging for forgiveness.
But the guard was upset.
He continued beating him and bang, beat his head with the bat.
And then one last quote, he kicked the boy's head like a soccer ball.
The boy collapsed, his eyes rolled back into his head.
And when they rolled back, they were unfocused and blood started oozing out of his skull.
His body was dragged away and he was never seen again.
That's what happens when you lose the game.
One survivor says, I saw people being beaten to death.
I saw someone frothing at the mouth.
The fear that if I make a mistake, I could be beaten to death was intense.
It was all consuming.
And even if you survived the day, there is no guarantee that you survived the night.
One survivor who was taken in when they were 10, by the way, they say, at night, there were things, a lot of things that were happening that shouldn't even happen during war times.
At night, when we were all sleeping, you could hear screams, women screaming and being dragged away, young boys being forcibly ripped from their bunk beds.
The guards were essaying them at night.
One victim states, it was so painful, I had to literally crawl back to my bunk.
Another survivor, he was 15 when he was kidnapped.
He says, I was subjected to all forms of brutal abuse and was essayed daily.
Every night I was essayed by the guards.
This lasted for more than four years.
That's how I grew up.
I don't even know how I survived.
Another victim, Choi, the one that was accused of stealing the bread, he said, one night, one of the guards stripped off all my clothes, washed me in cold water, ordered me to lie down in the bed.
And I was so scared that night, the guard essayed me so bad, I was bleeding everywhere.
It was excruciating.
He was essayed almost nightly for the next five years by the guards, multiple guards at a time.
But that wasn't the worst part.
He said the worst part was later, a few years in, he was in the cafeteria when he saw his brother.
And he says, I saw him and I didn't know what to say.
I just had tears streaming down my face.
I could see him struggling to adapt to the brother's home and it hurt me so much that I could just only walk from afar.
Was it younger or older?
A little bit older, but still a child.
The mental and physical damage that was inflicted on me was something I could never imagine.
By the time that he turned 19, he only weighed 80 pounds.
Another survivor states she didn't really know exactly what happened to her because she was so young.
She says the guard ripped my clothes off, then he tied my legs to the bed.
I didn't know what sex was yet, so I didn't even know that I was being essayed, only that it was like the most painful thing.
You hear the so -called guards say things like, this one's pretty and then you'll just hear someone getting dragged away screaming.
Han says, one of the guards asked me to come over, so I went to him.
He was naked and he asked me, do you know how to jerk off?
I thought he was naked because it was hot and it was summer and we don't have AC.
I didn't understand anything because I was so young.
When I hesitated, he angrily cursed at me.
Hey, you son of a bitch.
I asked you if you know how to jerk off, you son of a fucking bitch, like just a string of curse words.
Han screamed, thinking, I mean, if I don't respond or help him cool down, he's gonna beat me.
I'm confused. I don't know.
I have no clue what this man is saying.
He screams, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do.
The guard is just laying on the bed and he orders Han, then do it.
Han writes, as soon as he said that, I ran back to the shoe rack.
I grabbed the slipper with the guard's name on it and I clapped the slippers together.
So the translation, the slang for jerk off, especially in the dialect that Han uses because he's from a smaller town, the self -pleasure slang kind of sounds like the word that he uses for slippers.
So he was like trying to cool him off by clapping the slippers together.
He was just frantic.
He didn't know what to do.
And the guard thinks that Han is mocking him, so he grabs the slippers, starts slapping him across the face repeatedly, then forces him to lay face down, spits on him and essays him.
Han says, the guard just kept screaming, you're trying to mess with me, huh?
And he starts violently beating him while violently essaying him.
He was probably 14.
Han says the pain was so severe, I couldn't even breathe, let alone speak.
I could hear what the guard was saying and see how he was hitting me, but I couldn't defend myself at all and I could barely breathe properly.
The whole time it was happening, I only had one thought, that I would kill this bastard somehow, no matter what.
I mean, I had no choice though, but to grit my teeth and endure this.
Sometimes they would commit the essays while other kids are there, just frozen, eyes clenched because they don't want to be next.
And in the massive compound, they have a psych ward, which sounds like they care about the people in there enough about their mental health, but not really.
I mean, you were taken into the psych ward if you could not be beaten into submission.
You would be drugged 24 -7 and still beaten and abused in the psych ward.
Even in the psych ward, one survivor states she saw the guards every night.
They would drag patients away, one patient at a time, but it'd be like three guards on one patient.
The survivor was 10.
She says, if a woman vomits, I just knew that they would take her to the basement.
The implication being she's pregnant and they force a termination, but she didn't realize that when she was 10.
And she says, now that I think about it, I feel so sorry for those people.
If I had known then, I mean, even if I knew I wouldn't have had the power, but I could have at least tried protecting them, right?
Saying not to do that to them.
That's what my heart hurts the most now.
One survivor says, I was a child with a home and parents and siblings.
I just couldn't understand why I was there, why I was trapped in a place like this.
Survivor King was left paralyzed from these games and stuck in that mental institution for years.
After one particularly brutal beating by a bunch of the guards, he says, they had me tied up and smashed my head onto the concrete.
When I woke up, honestly, I was so shocked.
My left arm and leg wouldn't move at all.
And to this day they don't.
He was labeled as crazy, thrown into the psych ward where he was forced to take every pill that they wanted to give him.
He says, quote, whenever I took those drugs for about 10 hours, I was in a complete days.
If I tried not to take it or tried to spit it out, one person would squeeze my nose shut and the other person would pop the pill in my mouth and just pour water down my throat.
They were forcing him to take the pills via waterboarding in a way.
He says, I ended up becoming a real psychiatric patient.
They drove him crazy.
He says they treat humans like animals.
If you don't listen to the guards, you're beat on the spot.
I mean, if there was a hell, this place was it.
Brothers Home is a place that doesn't even begin to make sense.
I mean, even their medical procedures don't make sense.
If someone has a cut, an open cut, their solution, because they have a medical wing, a building, you go there and they rub salt on you.
A disinfectant, they say.
The survivor said the guards would just rub salt all over us, roughly, which made all the wounds so much worse.
One of the worst incidents a survivor witnessed was one man, well, other than death was, one man got caught on a wire in the field and his stomach had split open.
His intestines were pulling out.
Do you know what they did?
This is the survivor asking us.
They brought the salt, they rub salt into his open stomach.
The place feels like it exists merely to torture thousands of people in tandem, but how and why?
I mean, even though everyone is starving, living in the worst conditions, it still costs something to run a place like this.
So someone must be funding it or something.
For what reason? Nothing makes sense.
What the hell is this place?
All the survivors say we felt like animals in the compound.
We were not treated like human beings.
We could not behave like human beings.
We couldn't do anything.
Thinking in there is the luxury.
Everyone only has one thought.
I don't want to get beat.
I don't want to die.
And then one day a guard walks in.
Attention! Look over here.
Everyone stands at attention.
They're looking. If one of you eats this, there will be no punishment games today.
Everyone's squinting.
What even is that? And they're looking and he's holding up this leathery -looking substance.
It looks scary. One survivor says, snakeskin.
Who's snakeskin? You know, it's interesting because we were so hungry we would eat centipedes.
You know, pine cones and pine needles.
We would eat those too, but apparently snakeskin was too much for us.
So it feels like so many moments.
Nobody says anything until a little boy steps forward and his voice is so calm.
Team leader, if I eat that, will there really be no group game punishments today?
The guard nods and the little boy walks up, grabs the snakeskin and lets it slide down his throat.
And everybody thought, well that makes sense.
If anybody in this platoon was going to do it, it was going to be that kid.
That's why his nickname is Cannibal.
He didn't earn that nickname for eating the snakeskin.
He earned that nickname because when he was everybody was cleaning the bunk rooms, the warehouses, they have to clean it every day as well.
He saw this baby mouse sleeping.
The baby mouse was so young the eyes weren't even open yet.
And he immediately just snatched it and gulped it down.
He ate the mouse. And everyone stared at him and he just responded, it's good.
It's good for the body.
And they all looked away and the name Cannibal just stuck.
I mean, what can make a little kid so desperate that he would eat a mouse like that?
Why don't they just let him go?
Why even bring him here in the first place?
What is the purpose of any of this?
Why are they running this place?
Where are they getting these people?
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In the very first episode of season one of Squid Games the main character Ki -hun is approached by this very clean sharp looking man, Suit Man.
He just seemingly at random approaches Ki -hun.
This is the man who is bread stomping by the way.
They're sitting at the subway station.
Hello sir. Can I have a moment of your time?
I don't believe in Jesus, please.
That's not it. Today I wanted to offer you a great opportunity.
Ki -hun points a gun at him.
The suit man with no fear puts his hands up.
Ki -hun pulls the trigger.
It's a lighter. Listen dude, I come from a family of Buddhists so don't piss me off and just please leave me alone.
Sir, would you like to play a game with me?
What are you? A salesman?
God you guys have such unique tactics these days.
Look I get it. You're just trying to do your job.
I just see or whatever but I just don't have time and sit here and listen all of this.
Suit Man opens up his briefcase to show a blue folded up paper, a red folded up paper and stacks of cash.
Sir, have you played takji before?
It's a Korean childhood game where you fold papers, you smack it down on the other party's folded paper on the ground and you try to flip it.
Every time the suit man loses he will give Ki -hun the main character $100.
For every time the main character loses the suit man will slap him across the face.
At the very end Ki -hun the main character has traded in his dignity for a few hundred dollars while the suit man seemingly knows everything about Ki -hun's life.
You've been divorced for about three years.
Your daughter is 10 years old, $110 ,000 owed to loan sharks, another $170 ,000 owed to the bank.
Who the hell are you?
The suit man hands him a business card, just a phone number on there.
Call me. We don't have many slots left.
That's how Ki -hun the main character gets into squid games.
A man approaches him at the subway station.
If you're out of toilet paper the next best option is a wet wipe or paper towel or maybe a scrap of fabric.
Just good old plain water probably works the best.
Near the end of alternatives of good for your toilet paper is newspaper.
But did you know that if you rub two pieces of newspaper like you're trying to create a fire force of static the newspaper gets soft enough to wipe your butt.
It is the type of information that you only know from firsthand experience of using newspaper to wipe your bottom as well as the fact that sometimes the morning headlines will be imprinted onto your butt for the rest of the day.
But back then in less populated areas of the world and in South Korea this was what was generally used.
Newspaper and 12 -year -old Jeong his dad was a luxury salesman of sorts because he sold toilet paper and that's not an easy job because everybody's slamming the door in his face.
Newspaper just works fine okay you little sleaze stop trying to sell me your scam.
It's not a fun job.
Wiping hygiene is not that advanced yet.
Everyone feels like he's out to scam them and the only purpose Jeong's dad is doing any of this is because his 12 -year -old son Jeong.
Everyone in the neighborhood would tell Jeong and his dad one day your son could be president.
He was top of his class.
He just had this charisma and humanity about him that all the neighbors said if you were president this country would be a way better place.
That is until he vanishes.
He is one of the serial child disappearances in the city of Busan in South Korea.
It seems like every week another child is going missing.
Sometimes they're five years old, other times they're teenagers, other times they're full -blown adults.
People are just disappearing.
A few things are certain with each disappearance.
The commonalities include a child or person vanishes typically at a subway station Busan station most of the time and two men approach them at the subway station and they're well dressed.
Kids we need to talk to you about something could you come here for a moment or sometimes you poor thing you look lost I could help you.
Then they vanish. So the first thing uncovered about the two well -dressed people you know how in squid games it's the man wearing the suit that asks if you want to play a game.
Well in this case in the real life version the two men approaching and talking to the kids that vanish are police officers.
But why would police officers be kidnapping kids to bring them to a torture facility?
The bids open every four years technically.
Every group sends in their proposal.
If you let us be the ones to facilitate the games we will spend billions of dollars, at least 10 billion dollars.
Some of us will even spend like 40 billion dollars.
One year that number was like 45 calculated for inflation.
Each group more or less competes to see who will have the honor of overseeing the games.
Billions of dollars are spent to see people compete to see who wins, who comes out on top, while everybody else watches.
Welcome to the Olympic games.
Which okay side note despite it being a financial hellscape for most host cities there are still fighting bids to continue hosting.
I mean don't get me wrong I love watching the Olympic games.
I look forward to the Olympics.
I think it is a very clear representation of the physical and mental abilities of far superior human beings and a constant reminder of how wind did I get after coming up two flights of stairs.
I also really enjoy the fact that it's the only time Americans come together.
But it is almost a migraine and a half to host.
The International Olympics Committee requires a minimum of 400 ,000 hotel rooms available for visiting spectators, and an Olympic village that is able to house 15 ,000 athletes, referees, and officials.
If you don't have internal external transportation facilities to bus people there, to get them on the train to go there, you got to build those.
Let alone you have to build the actual facilities that the Olympic games will be hosted in.
There is the argument that maybe it's because there's hard value.
So hard value is direct profits from hosting the game.
How much the games itself brings to that city and the tourism associated directly with the games.
Then there's soft value, or like the trickling effect of global sentiment.
Maybe your city was not on the map but now everybody knows your city's name because you hosted one of the Olympics and now everybody knows that you guys have train stations so they're gonna go visit you more often.
Or like the Beijing Olympics for example, it said that many residents, they had so many new train routes that were created that are still being heavily utilized today.
But there are benefits, especially for actually US cities benefit a lot from the Olympics.
So for example, 2028 Olympics will be hosted in LA.
LA will likely financially be okay with hosting.
I mean I do see a lot of people in LA, we're still upset.
But most of the major sporting arenas and the infrastructure is already in place.
There are world -class stadiums and facilities all over LA.
Their biggest expense will likely be fixing the public transit.
And there's also another problem that they might have to deal with.
The population of people that are unhoused in Los Angeles.
Recently in 2024 Paris hosted the Olympics and there were news reports that Parisian officials were going around Paris and clearing out the encampments.
They were busting out unhoused populations with little to no support.
They were sending them 250 miles away to a neighboring town to make sure that all the foreign tourists did not see the unsightly people.
Which I mean obviously that's not what the Parisian authorities have claimed.
In fact they deny doing that.
They say actually we were offering people free housing.
Which technically they were.
People were bust out of the city 250 miles away given temporary housing and the second that the Olympic games were over the temporary housing disappeared.
And now they're left wandering 250 miles away confused.
But this has been the trend during the Olympics.
One expert says hosting the Olympic games is an inequality machine.
Most cities find ways to quote dispose of their unhoused population.
It's not just Paris, Atlanta, Moscow, LA and the 80s.
They're all the same.
One man without a home in LA was interviewed and said before the Olympics it wasn't bad.
Now they treat us like dirt.
One LA police captain told a reporter as he was scattering unhoused people to less visible parts of town.
We're trying to sanitize the area.
A lot of cities are in it for economic growth but maybe 40 50 years ago hosting the Olympics was more so for a symbol of pride.
It's showing that your country is doing well.
At least that's what it meant for South Korea.
1988 the Olympic games will be hosted in Seoul, South Korea to show you how big of a deal this is.
This is the first time okay that the Olympics are gonna be hosted in South Korea since the country is founded.
Foreigners are coming on a mass scale for the first time.
It is the perfect opportunity for Korea to show the world what South Korea is.
Now side note this is Korea in the 80s.
It's not now you know back in the 80s there were no cute aesthetic cafes and color theory appointments.
South Korea was scoffed at by most countries.
It's like a tiny little plot of land way far out in the east.
How could they ever possibly dominate industries like tourism, electronics, music and slowly even movies and shows?
This is before all of that.
South Korea needs to make a statement.
There's widespread propaganda that they gotta put their best foot forward.
So one way that describes how important this is.
Think of it like this.
There's two families sworn enemies.
They took a blood oath.
They hate each other.
It seems like this feud is never gonna end and all they do every day is send each other shit balloons and they absolutely without mercy will fight each other if they need to.
Everyone in the whole area practically knows that these two families hate each other.
In the beginning family A has a massive chip on their shoulder because family B has always been richer than them.
They just always have more resources.
So family A works really hard to show the world you know what I don't care about family B.
We're doing so much better than family B actually.
Now we're gonna have this once in a lifetime gathering where all of the people are gonna come.
Some are our friends.
Some are family B's friends.
Some are people that are just watching in between and we have to show them that we're okay and that we're doing better than family B.
Family A is South Korea and family B is North Korea.
So you're saying a lot of it is from you know North and South.
Yeah and they need to have this grand old party, host the Olympics and I will say the way South Koreans unite during tough times is probably one of the more admirable things I've ever seen.
I mean I don't really see other countries coming together like that during times of grief.
Recently with Jeju Airlines crash but also with the impeachment of the president the way citizens would order food for protesters.
They don't even know.
They would make orders at restaurants near protest sites so they would post it online.
You go in and you pick up free food.
And then afterwards the citizens that couldn't make it to the protest they went out to clean up the debris because it's a bad luck if you protest and you leave trash then the police might try to make you not protest.
So a lot of Koreans really want to make this happen for South Korea and I will say this could be a big rumor but at the time which this is no longer the case.
South Korea is really safe.
Well most parts. South Korea had a big pickpocketing problem back then.
Really big. And there's this rumor that all the pickpocketing was organized crime.
They're not going to pickpocket any foreigners.
And there was not a pickpocketing problem that Olympics and it was really decreased that month.
But one thing the citizens can't really help with is the environment beautification work.
That's what it's called.
Anything that doesn't look good for foreign guests clean it all up including the people.
Clean up the unsightly humans.
Just like what LA police captain said they need to sanitize the streets.
So who are these people?
The government categorizes them as vagrants.
That is an outdated term.
It's actually pretty derogatory and might even be considered an official slur in a few years.
But it is... I can't not use it in this specific legal setting.
Not that this is a legal setting but when it was used in a legal setting, if I replace the word it would lose the full meaning.
It's not just semantics.
Okay so the word and definition for vagrant is it's how people are being pulled off the streets.
So the government wants all quote unquote vagrants off the street.
The definition for vagrants is a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place typically lives by begging.
That's how they get their food in form of payment.
Which is already quite problematic to want a chunk of the human population hidden away so that you can host the Olympics.
But now the government behind closed doors is asking well if we want to get rid of the vagrants and we want to arrest them and take them away.
How do we do that? Like how do you know if someone is a vagrant?
I mean the scale of coordination that would entail because to be that definition a few things have to be true.
You know you have to be without a settled home.
You have to be wandering from place to place and you have to live by begging.
By definition they can't just beg in one place.
They cannot just not have a home.
They have to do all of these things.
They have to travel and beg.
It's a combination you know but the government is like how are we going to track that?
We're just going to follow one person from town to town and then arrest them?
That's not effective.
Well let's just change the definition.
The new qualifications of vagrant include drinking in public.
What if it's an outdoor patio of a restaurant?
It's technically public you know but you're allowed to drink.
What if it's like that?
Or sometimes this isn't allowed but some people will drink in the alleyways with their friends after the convenience store?
No vagrant. Also if someone makes a scene at a bar drunk take a vagrant.
Matter of fact anyone who looks like they've gone several days without shaving their beard they look unkempt vagrant.
Do you see why the haircuts are important now?
Oh my god they want to make them look more unkempt.
Yes. Wow. The biggest one sleeping at subway or train stations or on the train on public transit.
Okay um not to get all nitty gritty about things but what about people who fall asleep while waiting for their train or taking a quick power nap while the train is moving towards their destination like they're commuting?
Yeah vagrant. Who's making these rules?
The dictator at the time.
In fact if anyone watches tv at a train station or a bus terminal count them in as a vagrant.
What do you mean watching tv?
Even for a second? Even if they just glance at the tv?
I mean the train stations themselves put the tv up on the train stations.
I don't get it. Vagrant.
If they had a home they would watch tv at home.
So if the police the police are given all these definitions and told to capture all the vagrants.
If they went around checking off even just one of these things make someone a vagrant glancing at a tv at a train station.
I mean they would have to arrest the whole train station by the new definitions.
But then you're gonna have a bunch of angry people.
You're gonna have that husband calling, this person's wife calling, this person's dad calling and screaming at you like how dare you arrest my loved one for no freaking reason at all.
This is not okay. People will come with pitchforks to the police station.
So the police will end up taking in zero people.
So the government set up this incentive, a reward system.
Each police officer gets points for each person that they bring in as a vagrant.
And now there's incentive to bring people in, but again you can't just round everyone up in the crowd and bring them in because you want bonuses, okay?
They need to bring in people that won't cause trouble.
They can't accidentally bring in the pastor's wife or the mayor's daughter or the successful businessman's son.
They have to bring in people that won't be missed.
Or even if they are missed, guess what?
Their loved ones have no power.
What are they going to do?
Complain to the police about it?
We are the police. So these are not disclosed to the public.
No, the public, they think vagrants are like the pickpocketers, criminals.
Like they've been told, hey, we're just going to clean up the streets of people who are harming you.
Instead, they're taking like every single person.
They're just taking a kid that doesn't have a financial background or a family that are wealthy, like village kids, small town kids.
I see. People that don't fit those categories, they think that the government is going to rehabilitate these people and provide help.
More or less, the citizens, because of ignorance, they think it's okay.
And those people who don't think it's okay, they have no power.
And the police are just bringing people in.
In Squid Game Season 2, the suit man, the recruiter, says, clearing and incinerating the bodies of countless people like you, Mr.
Song, the main character, these things aren't human.
They're just trash.
They have no purpose in this world.
But is it a cycle? Because by treating people as subhuman, putting them in the brother's home in subhuman conditions, how do you expect them to still act human afterwards?
And I'm not saying that as my social commentary.
Han, the victim who wrote the book says, I was once a human, but I became an animal in the brother's home.
At the brother's home, rather than learning to live like human beings, you learn to cower around powerful people, struggle to even get a little bit of soup and plot to escape being hit.
It's like living in a barbaric era, like animals.
12 year old Jung, the son of the toilet paper salesman that was kidnapped, he would do this thing where he would use the restroom and for a brief moment before reaching the handle for the door, he would close his eyes, taken a breath and pray for a portal to open.
When I open this bathroom door, it's not going to be brother's home.
It's going to open into my home and my dad's going to be there and he's going to be cooking something and that's what's going to happen.
And then he would open the door and nothing would be there.
He's still in hell for the next two years.
Until Jung looks up one day and standing in the middle of the field, there he is.
The man that he has been praying for years to come, the one that's going to save him get, get him out of this hell of a place.
His dad, he's about to break out into this full blown sprint and jump and hug his dad, maybe even scream at him like, why did you take so long to find me?
But it's like the wind gets knocked out of him instead and he quickly pushes his head down and he acts like he doesn't see his dad.
Because just like him, just like Jung, his dad is standing there wearing a blue tracksuit.
Inside the giant compound in the brother's home, in the very back, away from the stench of dead people, there's the director's office, the man who runs it, the man who makes money from the government by taking people in, the front man, if you will, the game maker.
When you open the door to the office, you see, just like Squid Game, a giant vault.
So in the show, the giant vault is this clear see -through piggy bank that drops down from the ceiling, filling with tens of millions of dollars in cash.
But at brother's home, it's a giant bank vault, like the ones used in banks.
It's large. One day it gets torched and it's pried open by prosecutors who finally decide to investigate.
They yank open the door and they find $8 million sitting there, mostly in foreign currency.
Welcome to the largest social welfare facility in South Korea.
Where is all this money coming from?
Because it's not just the government.
Wait, $8 million back in the days?
A million? Calculated for inflation.
Where's this money coming from?
Because it's not just coming from the government.
Who the hell is running this place?
This is part one of the Real Life Squid Games.
Part two and three will cover the adoption scams taking place inside the compound.
Yeah, they have like an adoption ring where if the baby is young enough that they took in, they're like, okay, let's have a foreign person adopt this Korean baby.
What happens to all the dead bodies?
What happens to when entire families, family members are trapped in the same torture chamber together and sometimes pit against each other?
Also, the process for revenge and retribution that the victims decide to get when they come together, that will all be covered in part two and three.
That is it for part one.
Stay safe. Let me know your thoughts in the comments and I will see you in the next one.
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