Five boys disappear in a matter of hours, and years later their bodies are found. Korea’s most famous cold case!
The man advanced into the undergrowth, clearing some leaves on the ground in order to look for acorns to harvest. Alerted by his friend’s scream, he went to meet him and discovered pieces of fabric here and there scattered on the ground, buried under the rocks. It is not common to find so many rags, resembling old worn clothes, in this corner of the forest. This one was only a hundred meters from a military camp.
Pushing aside a few more leaves in his path, the man bumps into a long wooden stick, and it is after grabbing it with his fingers that the two walkers are struck by shock. A bone, human one. On September 26, 2002, eleven years after their mysterious disappearance, the bones of five boys nicknamed the “Frog Boys” are found
JO HOYEON, WOO CHULWON, KIM JONGSIK, KIM YOUNGGYU, and PARK CHANIN were young children between the ages of 10 and 14, all neighbors in a small village not far from the city of Daegu. Best friends since their early childhood, the locals used to nickname them the “five musketeers,” not going a day without seeing each other or playing together. Always hanging out, all five of them, it was only natural that their parents let them go out to have fun on the morning of March 26, 1991, around nine in the morning.
It is a special day for the entire country, as it is the first time in thirty years that democratic presidential elections are being held, ending the long period of military dictatorship that followed Korea’s liberation from Japanese occupation.
At 1pm, one of the fathers receives a call from his son’s taekwondo school to inform him that he did not show up for class today, nor did the other four children. Four hours have passed since he saw his son this morning, but anxiety is growing in him, and he wastes no time in contacting the other parents and asking them if they know where the children are.
They, who are described as kind, helpful, honest and sociable, seem to have disappeared from the radar and not given any sign of life since the beginning of the morning. A neighbor will then tell the panicked parents that he heard the boys several hours ago leaving to look for lizard eggs in the mountain, a first lead emerges.
At the edge of the forest, a farm with dogs known to be aggressive could have frightened the children, or worse, attacked them, but the animals remained wisely with their masters. The parents, along with their neighbors, spent the day searching the forest, as well as the nearby rice fields, because the children were known to go there.
After reporting the boys’ disappearance to the authorities, the police mainly assumed that they had run away, claiming that after all, parents should keep a closer eye on their children. Since they were not interested in the case, the police were described as being useless for this first day of investigation, and for those that followed.
On March 29, three days after their disappearance, a ransom was asked, but no one showed up at the meeting place to receive the money. Several prank calls prompted the parents to invest in phones that could record calls in order to explore all possible leads. Two days later, the television news headlined “Frog Boys Disappear in Daegu,” the first time that nickname had been given to the boys who were described as having run away to look for frogs.
The fathers are outraged and decide to appear on television on the show “The Square of Public Opinion” to protest and re-establish the truth: the boys did not run away, but something serious happened.
While the show was being broadcast live, people made fun of calling the parents, with the mothers’ reactions being filmed for sensationalism. The parents’ plight was broadcast nationwide, but things only really started to move on October 24, when thousands of people mobilized to search for the children in the forest, digging up the ground and searching the woods from helicopters.
No evidence was found, but a child spoke up, saying he heard a gunshot and then a scream on election day. That’s when a new lead emerged: an accident linked to the military camp near the mountain.
Dismayed, the fathers mutually decided to quit their jobs in order to devote themselves day and night to the search for their child. They rented a truck and drove through several cities armed with flyers to raise awareness about this strange disappearance, because after all, how could five children have vanished without a trace in the space of just a few hours? Over time, most of the parents sank into alcoholism and sleeping pills and even considered suicide to join their son.
This awareness-raising gained attention, and the police ended up searching the entire region, even the islands off the coast and religious sects. But for the people, the military camp trail was an imperative to explore, which the police refused to do, without giving any specific reason.
Weeks, then months pass, until the first anniversary of the disappearance of the “Frog Boys” is reached. The Korean CIA decides to send private detectives to investigate the parents, in vain, a film was made, a book published, and a song broadcast on TV to continue to alert the people about the disappearance, but, whatever strategies were put in place to collect testimonies and funding, all were doomed to failure.
Then three years pass, the families are heavily in debt and the matter gradually fades into the past, because if the children had been alive, they would probably have been found by now. One day, in a dramatic turn of events, the army contacts the parents, asking them to go to the camp urgently.
« The soldiers told us that they would give us supernatural powers. That whoever was endowed with them would be able to locate the children. » — WOO JUNGWU, CHULWON‘s father.
The soldiers eventually led the families into the forest, waiting for something to happen without success, as if they had mocked the parents. The then president then went to Daegu, to meet the parents to take pictures with them and give each of them one million won as compensation, so that they could continue the search.
Time continues to pass, and on the fifth anniversary, a psychologist named KIM GAWON meets with the families, telling them that JONGSIK‘s father had buried the children in his house. The reason is due to his shaky alibi, not remembering what he was doing for three hours after the children disappeared. The psychologist was so convincing that the TV and newspapers were sent to cover the search that turned the house upside down.
After destroying walls and digging holes in the ground on both sides, nothing was found except a shoe belonging to JONGSIK in the toilets. He was thus exonerated, but after five years of tireless searches and demonstrations, he finally died of stress and fatigue, when he had barely entered his forties. Six years pass, until two walkers in the forest come across bodies, having gone to collect acorns.
It was only 3.5 km from their home that the “Frog Boys” were finally found, intertwined, some even in a position suggesting that their legs had been pulled up above their heads, as if to weigh them down on their shoulders. Their clothes were also twisted and tied, like gags.
Even stranger, they were found about a hundred meters from the military camp, an area that had been searched many times without ever finding a single clue. The boys no longer wore their school badges with their names on them, and in the pockets of the YOUNGGYU, a few bullet cartridges were even found, as well as near the bodies. The police took charge of recovering all the bones they could, spreading them out on a white cloth live on television and mixing the bones at the same time.
The parents found this method shameful, outraged by the lack of respect shown to the remains of their child, of which only bones were visible, sorted by size and type. The next day, the police hastened to declare the children dead of cold from hypothermia, the bodies having all been gathered together as if to keep warm, knowing that the temperature at night at that time had been around 5 degrees.
However, even if they were 3.5 km from home, the children only had two hundred meters to go to reach the road taking them to the village, so if they had really been so cold, why would they have stayed all night in the forest? The people and especially the parents found this whole situation ridiculous, whether it be the excavations or the statements giving a very sloppy feeling to this whole affair for several years.
At no time did the police notified the bullets finding and the potential track of a murder, and the police chief ended up confessing that he had taken out hypothermia as an excuse, as he felt oppressed by the press. that time.
To summarize the facts, the bodies were found near a military base not far from their shooting training area, highlighting a possible accident of one or more bullets which could have hit the children from a distance while they were walking in the forest.
The military began a search that quickly ended, claiming that March 26, 1991, was a holiday for them with elections, so no one was in the firing range with a weapon. However, a report from that day proved that an officer—whose identity the military never released—had fired that day to empty some guns. The military vehemently denied the accusations and was never questioned again.
The military began a search that quickly ended, claiming that March 26, 1991, was a holiday for them with elections, so no one was in the firing range with a weapon. However, a report from that day proved that an officer—whose identity the military never released—had fired that day to empty some guns. The military vehemently denied the accusations and was never questioned again.
The theory that a farm implement caused the boys’ deaths given the marks on their skulls, after Korean forensic scientists sent the bones to American police who had better equipment and who stated that the boys died of head injuries caused by a blunt object.
CHULWON was the one with the most marks on his skull, and the murder theory was finally taken seriously, but the police also eventually determined that the “Frog Boys” were killed at the location where their remains were found, calling into question the extensive searches of the forest that were carried out over several months in 1991. However, with eleven years having passed since their disappearance, and the statute of limitations approaching, the police gave up the search and the case remains to this day considered a cold case, an unsolved case.
Over the years, more than 500 leads have been explored and on March 26, 2014, two years after the bodies were found, the boys were given a funeral, where they were honored before their ashes were scattered in the Nakdong River to join the Pacific Ocean.
Among the relatives still alive, and others from the people, some formed civil parties and filed complaints against the police for not having properly conducted the investigation. Despite three trials, the police were declared innocent each time and what was called into question was the total absence of searches or interrogations in the military camp.
The most likely theory to date for some, including the parents, was that when the officer emptied the guns in the shooting range, he accidentally killed a child, and that in order not to leave a trace or be accused of murder, he killed the four other witnesses to cover up his crime with a bladed weapon. However, it would have been more logical to dispose of the bodies in the camp’s incinerator, so that their bodies would never be found.
33 years after the mysterious disappearance of the “Frog Boys,” no suspects have been arrested, and no concrete leads have been explored. The police changed the statute of limitations so that if a clue is ever found, it is now possible to reopen the case, for first-degree murder. So there is still hope that one day the boys’ killer will be found, although the chances are slim three decades later.
Journalist : Pillet Anaïs
Photos : Sous les photos
Source : KSTATION TV
