March 26, 1991 was a day off in South Korea. It was the "extraordinary weekend" announced by the government in connection with the elections to local councils of lower-level territorial administrative units. This was the first such election in Korea in 30 years. March 25 and 26 were declared holidays and the smell of spring was in the air, mixed with a feeling of patriotic elation. But children in any corner of the world remain children, they do not understand adult claims, they want to explore the world, travel and, of course, play. The day was fine, the early spring was pleasing with the sun, and the trees began to be covered with bright, sticky from the juice, light green leaves. It was still cool enough, according to the meteorological services on March 26, 1991, the maximum temperature reached 12.3 degrees, the lowest, at night, was only 3,3 degrees, it was raining the day before.
But how can the weather prevent you from dreaming? Five boys, rejoicing that there is no need to go to school today, decide to go to play in the forest. The reason for their true departure to the forest was simple and banal: they often played there, in the summer, along the way, collecting frogs as a delicacy, in the fall - chestnuts. But chestnuts are harvested in the fall and frogs in late spring. The end of March is not at all the season, after the winter hibernation the frogs are just beginning to grow. When the police subsequently ask the boys' parents why they went to the forest on Mount Variong, they will answer: “… they often played there in their free time. In autumn they gathered chestnuts, in the spring we caught frogs.”
So for the first time in this story there will be a mention of frogs. Subsequently, the journalists paraphrase these words of the parents, and it turns out that the boys went into the forest to collect frogs. However, in reality it was not so. The original name of the missing boys case was the “Song-so Elementary School Disappearance Case”. But it was from the myth about the purpose of the boys' walk that the name of this terrible affair "Frog Boys" was born.
Five young friends will leave very close in search of adventure. They will go to the neighboring forest on the mountain, located not far from their school (the photo of the school itself is posted a little higher), to the forest that they knew like the back of their hand, and will never return. Their ringing laughter will never be able to illuminate the area, every resident of Korea will know a photo of their faces, hundreds of thousands will mourn them, and their inconsolable parents have been looking for an answer to the question: who? and why? Korea has a very low crime rate. Of course, I do not want to say that there is no crime at all. Hour after hour, and there are resonant murders.
For example, in 1995, a popular singer was brutally murdered in his apartment, who had just returned from America with an album released. In his blood they found a veterinary drug with a soporific effect, and 28 stab wounds on his chest and arms. However, this crime was quickly solved, condemning and executing his jealous girlfriend. It's just that in comparison with the unfortunate America or the unfortunate Russia, this crime is negligible. To the question "Why is this?" Koreans answer simply: we were raised by our parents and this is how we raise our children, instilling that any crime is a shame! Also, probably, the fact that in the old days, for the slightest offense, a person was publicly beaten with sticks, and the genetic memory of this was preserved. Against the background of understanding this picture, try to imagine: the boys were ordered to return home by 18.00 at the latest. And when their parents did not wait for them at the appointed time, the thought immediately arose - something had happened, because the children simply could not disobey their parents. The thought that this was a murder did not even arise at first: it was useless to demand a ransom for them - all the boys were from poor families, and it was completely impossible to think of a criminal who would have kidnapped five children at once. And the version that they got lost was also hard to believe. The lights of nearby houses are clearly visible from Mount Varion, it is extremely difficult to get lost there - you just need to go to the night lights.and even to think of a criminal who would have kidnapped five children at once was completely impossible. And the version that they got lost was also hard to believe. The lights of nearby houses are clearly visible from Mount Varion, it is extremely difficult to get lost there - you just need to go to the night lights.and even to think of a criminal who would have kidnapped five children at once was completely impossible. And the version that they got lost was also hard to believe. The lights of nearby houses are clearly visible from Mount Varion, it is extremely difficult to get lost there - you just need to go to the night lights.
The first two families contacted the police already at 19.00. They started looking for the boys right there. But at first, these searches were very few. Only 15 people were sent, of which there were only five police officers. Only then the mountain was turned over literally by centimeters. The search operation became truly national - 300,000 people were involved in not 1.
But the search did not yield any results: no children could be found either in the forest or in the city. It was all strange. Found the last witness to see them. It was an old woman who lived at the foot of the "dragon mountain". According to her testimony, at about 2 pm, five schoolchildren walked along a forest path up the slope of the "dragon mountain". Nobody saw them again. Nobody, except, obviously, the killer. One witness claimed that at about 6 pm he allegedly heard children's screams in the forest, but whether this was a fact - one can only guess. The forest near the "dragon mountain" was sifted through a sieve.
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So it was stated. In fact, people are people. And as it turns out later, the search was not so good. Mount Varion is fairly gentle and abounds in ravines and ravines. They didn't look at them properly. And for the search, obviously, devices were needed, which for the most part the search engines did not have. The investigation was personally supervised by the President of the country, and millions of leaflets with photographs of the disappeared children were issued.
Ordinary people walked the streets of all Joseon with their portraits, their faces looked from cars, shop windows, TV screens and balloons. On television, information was inserted into programs and even cartoons, they were necessarily told about in class at schools, photos of boys were printed on candy wrappers and cake boxes. Probably, there was not a single person in the country who did not know about the missing children. As a result of a boy search campaign, a fund was established to accept donations. A very significant amount for those times was collected - 42 million won (this is approximately $ 35,000). It was intended as a reward for anyone with useful information about the boys' whereabouts.
However, it didn't work either. Children have sunk into the water! No one knew where they could have gone. After all, from the moment when they were last seen, to the beginning of the search, no more than 6-7 hours passed, and as the Koreans themselves joke, you can go round Korea in a day by bike.
Already on September 26, 2002, an elderly resident of Daegu went to the forest on the "dragon mountain" to collect chestnuts. For a week Korea was flooded with heavy rains and under the influence of violent water flows the slopes of the "dragon mountain" were sliding.
It was not easy to walk through the forest, you had to look at your step all the time so that you would not break your neck on the slippery "dragon flanks". And picking chestnuts is not an easy task, you need to be careful and vigilant. Going deep into the forest, the man saw a ravine, in which something strangely white. Looking closer, he realized that he saw small human bones and scraps of clothing. This is how the remains of the long-sought missing five "frog boys" were found.
Arriving at the place, already in the first minutes of exploring the grave, the police have no doubts - these are indeed the remains of five missing boys. The very fact of finding the remains of boys in the forest, which was supposedly combed with a "fine comb", at a distance of about 2 kilometers from the school, caused a real a wave of indignation. The country exploded: is it police and military negligence or a deliberate cover-up? The investigators themselves were perplexed, but hoped that an explanation would be found, perhaps in the form of the bodies being reburied here.
A long and painful excavation begins, which was carried out as carefully and carefully as possible, for more than three weeks. The first thing that caught the eye when looking at the grave was that it was created hastily, but rather thoughtfully. Mount Varion is 30 centimeters of sod, and then there is a rock. It is impossible to hide the bodies by digging a grave. Namely, this grave was crafted. Having dumped the bodies into a deep, narrow hollow, the corpses were pelted with branches and leaves, pressing them with a stone from above. Surely it looked pretty natural initially. In their initial searches, the seekers apparently saw only foliage and stones. Not doubting the "content" of the hollow, they passed by.
Looking at the bare gaze of the remains, it seemed "that the boys died, hugging each other closely." This is what the investigators wrote in their reports, and so they told reporters. However, I think it was more a "figure of speech" than a fact that should be taken into account. You can roughly imagine the state of corpses that have lain in a wooded, humid environment for 11 years. The remains were a set of bones with remnants of clothing. The best thing that survived was the boys' shoes. Having understood this, we can realize with you the fact that bones obviously cannot hug. Apparently, initially the bodies of the boys were piled up in one heap, which caused the effect of "hugging" the one looking at their remains.
The further the excavation proceeded, the more the experts had questions. First, the heads of all the corpses were covered with their clothes. All the boys had their pants down and their legs were tied with them. And they are connected by a rather clever knot. Further more. Only four pairs of shoes were found. Where the fifth got to is still unclear. One boy was missing his panties. There was a strange quirk with the socks. Since the decomposition of corpses took place in clothes and shoes, respectively, after the complete disappearance of soft tissues, each sock had to remain in the shoes.
In contrast to the missing pieces of clothing, experts confirmed that the bones of all five bodies were complete. This could indicate that if a forest animal, for example, took away a bone with a sock on it, this could explain the absence of some items of clothing. In turn, the assumption that the beast could carry off the sneaker and not touch the body itself, in my opinion, is incompetent.
And the finding by experts in a huge number of cartridges and fragments of various ammunition will become very significant finds near the buried remains. In particular, at a distance of about 20 meters from the found bodies of shells, more than 80 pieces were found: most of them were shells with a diameter of 6-7 mm and one shell with a diameter of 7-8 mm. All these parts of ammunition were localized in two places, as if someone had poured them there. The police now faced many questions: when and where did the children die? Have the bodies been reburied? What caused death? Is their death the result of an accident or is it a criminal case? And now only a forensic examination could shed light on these questions.
But, the very first results of the experts disappointed everyone who hoped to get an explanation - the expertise was not able to answer most of the questions. Firstly, it was impossible to determine the time of death from the remains in this state. Only the fact that death occurred more than 10 years ago was stated. It was also impossible to say whether the boys had accepted their death in the place where they were found. However, it was confirmed with certainty that the bones were not reburied.
A similar statement is determined based on the "picture" of the location of the bones in relation to each other at the burial site itself. The most demonstrative in this case is the spinal column, which consists of rather small and fragile vertebrae. Once it is "disturbed", the spine can no longer be given its original appearance. Korean experts have confirmed that no reburial of EXACT bones was carried out. Well, based on this, in my opinion, it can be assumed that this does not exclude the burial of bodies at the moment when the body has integrity. That is, it can be hypothesized that the boys could have died in another place, but were buried in the forest after some time, even before the disappearance of soft tissues from the bones.
The main question of the investigation was that the experts also found it difficult to determine the cause of death. Two of the remains did not have any traces of the effects of foreign objects on the bones. And it was impossible to establish the cause of their death. Equally, such a state could be explained both by death from exposure to cold, that is, a natural cause, and, for example, by death from suffocation or drowning, which was already a crime. Three more remains had no injuries to the bones of the body and limbs, but the skulls were severely damaged.
In several places they had rather strange damage, chips and holes, but it was impossible to determine their nature. Either it was the impact of the surrounding, rather aggressive environment, or it was injuries inflicted by something. But the experts' biggest question was the strange markings on three damaged skulls. On one of them, 10 such injuries were counted, on the second as many as 25, on the third - 6. What traces caused such bewilderment among seasoned specialists?
These traces were very deep, but not through, clearly delineated, diamond-shaped traces left by some object. But what - the experts found it difficult to say. The apparent cause of death of frog boys cannot be determined from the remains. All possible options that suggest themselves are death from strangulation (not hanging under the force of the weight of your body, otherwise the so-called "butcher's fractures" of the cervical vertebrae, leading to decapitation), the impact of a piercing-cutting weapon or poisoning. In a word, death that does not touch the bones of the skeleton. There is no separation of limbs, no traces of accidents of different nature. And this is exactly what brings up the idea of a maniac, of a man who either committed the mass murder of children over a short period of time, or a man, in the manner of Golovkin,who kept and killed the victims in turn in his lair. The version about the maniac, in principle, can clarify many things that other versions do not explain.
The loss of items of clothing can be explained by the conduct of some sexual manipulation of undressing / dressing children. At the same time, some items of clothing could either be forgotten by the killer elsewhere or left by the maniac as a fetish, as a trophy, as a reminder of the crime. The boys' lowered and tied pants, again, can be evidence of sexual manipulation.
An interesting moment with the covering of the heads of those killed by their own clothes. Eminent profilers claim that such manipulations testify to the remorse of the killer, his regret that the victim had to be killed. This is very common in the behavior of maniacs following the murder. And most importantly, the version about the maniac can give at least some explanation for the tracks on the skulls. Of course, it is not possible to establish now what exactly and for what his sick purpose he could perform.
You and I will still try to stick to facts and the most possible assumptions. In particular, the hammer was named the most likely weapon of the crime by both Korean and American experts. Now let's dwell on who this killer could be. The version about the maniac confuses me with one main point: neither before nor after the killing of frog boys, such crimes were not recorded in Korea. Meanwhile, serial killers almost never stop. As the well-known profiler Robert Ressler said: a maniac is also a drug addict, he cannot live without his "dose" and this "dose" needs to be constantly increased. Hence, it can be assumed that the murder of children in Korea could be the first murder of a maniac.
But what about next with the "dose" he needs so much? How did it happen that there were no more such crimes? The conclusion suggests itself: either the maniac was a citizen of Korea, but after the mass murder of the boys, something very serious prevented him from going “on the hunt” - illness, prison, departure to another country or death. Or the maniac was a visiting man and was a citizen of another country. For example, America. And if we remember that there are several American military bases on the territory of South Korea, this version does not seem so far-fetched.
After committing a crime, an American soldier could ask for a transfer to another part of the planet and simply leave Korea in the shortest possible time. However, it is not publicly known about such crimes in other countries, and, therefore, the visiting criminal could either objectively interfere with the subsequent series, or he completely changed his handwriting, or such crimes were not made public by the police.
Another very controversial point is the place of murder and burial of children. As it turned out, the search for the boys in the forest was not carried out very carefully. Now it is very difficult to assert with 100% certainty whether their bodies were hidden in the forest on the day they disappeared, and not later. It may happen that the place where the murder was committed does not coincide with the place of burial. It is possible that the boys were lured into some secluded place, where they died. They got rid of the corpses later, at the end of the search in the forest. It was on the basis of such conclusions that Professor Lee built his assumptions that a person familiar to them, like one of the parents, was luring the boys. Of course, this is possible, just as it is possible that almost any adult can lure children who are not afraid, living in conditions of a low crime rate,possessing external charm and ability to handle children. But there is also another version. It was based, for the most part, on the likelihood that the marks on the skulls of the killed boys could be marks from cartridges loaded with shot and buckshot.
This version is likely, but only in the first part. Indeed, in those days, in 1991, there were hunters in the forest on Mount Variong. Of course, I used the word in a derogatory form, because no one had an official permission to shoot animals in that area in March. And that means that it could only be poachers, not hunters. The second part of the assumption obviously cannot correspond to reality. I dare to assure you that the marks left on the body by buckshot and shot have nothing to do in appearance with the marks on the turtles of frog boys.
Kwemul and Chan-in are mythical South Korean monsters created by urban legends.
Chan-in is a shaggy toothy giant, the beliefs about which go back to bygone days. According to legend, it was this monster-thug with its huge paws that blinded, as if from plasticine, the mountainous terrain of Korea. Kvemul is a carnivorous mutant monster, born in the city sewers due to the discharge of chemicals there. Of course, as an inveterate skeptic, I am not saying that these are versions. But someone also believes in it.
We have considered with you all the facts available in the case of the frog boys, all the assumptions, evidence and versions. In conclusion, I would like to tell you a few more interesting points.
No matter how the Korean police pinned their hopes on American experts, unfortunately, their hopes were not destined to come true. American forensic scientists were unable to add a single significant fact or version to the case. The remains of the boys were so destroyed that it was not possible to find any evidence or clue. Years passed, and in 2006 the time limit for the consideration of the criminal case on the disappearance and death of five Korean children expired. In South Korea, it is only 15 years old. The Joseon media have repeatedly discussed the issue of extending these restrictions. Petitions were written to the government, numerous signatures were collected under the appeals, but the Korean legislature found no reason to revise the deadlines established by law.
One of the fathers, Mr. Sick, once accused by Professor Lee of killing his own child, did not live to see the remains of the children were found in the forest. He had died of liver cancer a few years earlier, never knowing what had happened to his son.
But every year, in the forest on the "dragon mountain", at the place where the small bones of murdered children were found, caring people gather and pray to the gods for forgiveness and justice. Maybe someday they will be heard by heaven and then there will be one less sinister riddle on planet Earth.