transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] There is only one rule in this story, survive. In the new Netflix film Apex, Charlize Theron is Sasha, a woman testing her limits in the Australian wilderness, but what starts as a test of endurance turns into a deadly game with a ruthless and lethal predator played by Taron Egerton, whose familiarity with the landscape gives him a chilling advantage. For Sasha, every decision is a matter of survival, but her resilience and intelligence make her a force to be reckoned with. Apex, only on Netflix April 24th. Having insurance isn't the same as having State Farm. It's like showing up for movie night ready for a heart-pounding thriller, but getting a three-hour documentary on lawn care. That's kind of like insurance. Insurance may all seem the same on the surface, but when it comes to getting the help you need, State Farm is the real deal. You wouldn't settle for a snooze fest when you came for a thrill ride, so don't settle for just any insurance when there's State Farm. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. If you really want to know what somebody is into, you follow them at night. You do not follow them throughout the day, because during the day, we're all doing things that we don't really want to do, but we kind of have to do. We're going to work, we're going to school, we're running errands. But at night, that's usually when someone makes a choice. Regardless of sleep, the fact that it's dark outside, I'm going to go outside and I'm going to do this thing. And taxi drivers are the ones that get to see all of us in our dirty little glory. One taxi driver says, You're awake when the world is asleep. It changes how you see things. The night shifts. Okay, a lot of taxi drivers have stated, during the night, people are more open to sharing things about themselves that they probably wouldn't during the day. Maybe because it's dark in the car and they feel the need to fill the silence all of a sudden, and you just see weird things. One taxi driver said the strangest incident that he had was, this guy gets into the back, he makes eye contact through the rear view mirror, he's got this pent up energy like something big is about to happen. Where to? The whole time, he's anxiously rubbing his hands on his thighs, he's going to propose to the love of his life. It's like a beautiful thing to witness, the driver drops him off, wishes him good luck in the rear view mirror, and then a few stops later, he picks up the same man. Now the destination is a bar. The girl said no. Same person, same night, two very different car rides. Taxi drivers, they just know way too much about people. Not in like the psychic way, but the observational way, which I think is arguably a lot creepier. Another one, the same taxi driver had a woman get into the back of his car. Quote, she silently cried the whole time in the back, completely silent the whole ride, and then just says, thank you for not asking anything, and then walked away. She told him, thank you for not asking her if she's okay while she's falling apart in the back of his car. Which side note, there are types of criers in the caps. Relief criers, they just got relieving news. Leaving a hospital with better news, just signed divorce papers, and they feel a sense of relief. They cry with their mouths slightly open, and they almost always over tip. Then you have the angry crier. They cry in those very short, sharp bursts, and the tip is unpredictable. Sometimes it's really high, sometimes there's zero tip. The silent criers are the more unsettling ones, because they give you the address in a very steady voice. They say thank you when they get out in a steady voice, and they tip exactly the average amount, but the whole time they've been staring out the window and silently just crying. One finance executive is picked up, and he confesses to the taxi driver at two in the morning that this is his very first conversation in months. He doesn't talk to his wife, he doesn't talk to his kids, he has no friends. The only people that he talks to are people at work, and it's mainly through emails. Then another woman, she confesses that she just likes to go to 24 hour supermarkets, because it's really lonely. So she just wants to be around people. But these are like the normal interesting people watching taxi experiences. Sometimes taxi drivers, they have experiences where they can't stop thinking about it for multiple days, because it's just unsettling. There's nothing inherently creepy, it's just weird. And taxis all have a very specific smell at two in the morning. It's usually people going out in the middle of the night, and for some odd reason, they spray a lot more perfume and cologne at night. Maybe it's because they haven't showered all day and they're still headed out, or maybe because they're meeting someone who's going to be able to smell them. It's that mixed with the sanitizing scent of the seats, that's the smell. Except one particular taxi driver in South Korea, he's on his night shift when the door opens. Beautiful 20-year-old woman gets in with two giant takeout bags of fried chicken, two heavy bags of fried chicken. He can smell it. The entire taxi cab suddenly smells like fried chicken now. She gets into the car and the driver is trying his best not to stare at her chest in the rear view mirror, but it's just, she's wearing a very unusually low-cut shirt considering how cold it is outside, and it's also the middle of the night, and she's got two bags of fried chicken. And he's picking her up from a local motel, because, I don't know, you know, you can ponder a bit further. She's the first to talk. Hurry, sir, go fast, I'm being chased. I'll give you cash. And she's like, go, go, go. So out of just pure instinct, he's stepping on the gas, and she's leaning back, taking a deep breath of what looks like $100 worth of fried chicken, and then she starts taking a picture. She's almost smirking while she's typing something out on her phone. And the whole reason that this is odd is because the driver's on high alert. He's looking for whoever could be potentially chasing this young woman in the middle of the night. Like, what happens if they catch up? But also, the fried chicken smell is very distracting, and she said someone is chasing them. But suddenly, her demeanor is very relaxed in the back of the car, as if she's just getting a ride to a local coffee shop at 2 p.m., not 2 a.m. Everything about this ride, even though it's not one of the most outwardly outrageous rides that he's had recently, everything about this ride makes him uncomfortable. He can't stop thinking about it to the point where he starts coming up with these random ideas of why she was in a rush, but not really. He comes up with this idea, maybe she wanted him to take her seriously and rush her home so that she could eat the fried chicken before it got cold, but if she had just said that, then he wouldn't have taken her seriously, so maybe she just said, someone's chasing me. He's thinking of all these weird scenarios until he turns on the news one day, and he realizes the woman that he picked up that night is the motel serial killer of South Korea, the newest female serial killer in Seoul. The one that netizens have said is too pretty to go to jail. We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support NAMI National, also known as the National Allegiance on Mental Illness. NAMI is the nation's largest mental health organization dedicated to improving the lives of individuals. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team, and we'd also like to thank you guys for your continued support. As always, full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com. Today's case involves the intentional drugging of individuals without their consent, also sometimes referred to as date R-word drugging, so please watch with caution. We did have help from our wonderful Korean researchers for translations for today's case, but if anything is misrepresented or miscommunicated, please let us know in the comments. Also keep in mind that any quotes or statements have been translated and may be condensed for brevity, so with that, let's get started. Running clubs are like a big part of South Korea these days. If you search up running crew on Instagram, you get at least 200,000 posts from different running clubs that are packed with a bunch of young single people. Clothing brands create running clubs in the city so that you can go run with people your age. To the point where they have these organized cops and robbers games, they do at running gatherings. Okay, so community message boards will read, anyone up for cops and robbers tonight at APM, adults only, 20 plus, fast runners welcome.

Speaker 2:
[08:21] Like what, it's a game?

Speaker 1:
[08:22] Yeah, so half the people are cops, the other half are robbers, and you just chase each other in the park. And it's a bunch of like 25 year olds chasing other 25 year olds that they just met.

Speaker 2:
[08:33] This is like a Korean thing.

Speaker 1:
[08:34] Yeah, and it's like normal people go. Cause I think when you think of a message board like that, maybe in the States, it sounds like not a lot of normal people will go and you'd be kind of scared.

Speaker 2:
[08:43] Like you have to be runners and...

Speaker 1:
[08:44] Yeah, but just lots of normal young people go because it's so hard to meet people these days. And Korea, there's also this like contextual nuance of usually when you meet people in a serious setting, everyone wants to know your age, your income, what you do for a living, who your parents are. And it's a very strict society of who you know, who is what you are. And so this running club, nobody asks what your job is. You just be chasing people. It will be 14 degrees outside and there will be gatherings of people in their 20s and 30s outside at the park. And it looks like some sort of corporate initiation, but they're just here to play tag in the freezing cold. It's just, are you a cop? Are you a runner? Start running. That's how younger people in South Korea will meet people these days. Or you could make it easier and just go to a hunting bar. A hunting bar is a bar specifically set up in Korea for singles to approach strangers and try to start dates. It's set up so there's a bunch of tables all circling a dance floor, and singles will walk from table to table asking if they can join them. So sometimes you'll have like a full table of women, and then a group of men will want to join their table, or tables of men and groups of women will come up and want to join their table.

Speaker 2:
[09:55] That's cool.

Speaker 1:
[09:56] Yeah, it's set up so singles are encouraged, and it's very normal to go from table to table. So it's not like, oh, you need to know all these people to make friends at the bar.

Speaker 2:
[10:03] It's like Tinder in real life.

Speaker 1:
[10:05] Yeah, it's like speed dating in real life. It's weird. Yeah. And then sometimes they'll pay for the drinks. Sometimes they'll get drunk, and then maybe they'll go to a second part for like the second half of the show, I guess. They'll go to a separate bar or a separate club. The hunting bar is specifically to meet people. But because you're meeting complete strangers, it is hard to vouch for everybody. Sometimes you meet someone at a hunting bar, and you meet them outside for a secondary date. And maybe it's without the beer all of a sudden or the dim lights. And they're just like a little weird. They're just weird. As dramatically as possible. It's like this tiny little part of soul is cursed. There's a group of guys, they don't know each other, they're not friends, they don't work at the same place. But they've all been to the local hunting bars. And after that, they've all been on some of the worst dates imaginable. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, is this the worst thing to happen to a man? No, but these dates, they've just been so bizarrely odd. It's not even like your typical, we just didn't mesh well and it was a waste of time. It's like, this is very uncomfortable. I am contemplating the idea of never dating again, because the idea of going on another date after this makes them want to dry heave. Let's start with Adam. These are all fake names because these people have all maintained anonymity, even in Korean. So Adam meets up with a 22 year old woman. She ends up spending $213 on a single date, which is fine. But she never said thank you, not even one time. He paid for everything the whole night, not even a thank you. And that's not the shitty part. The shitty part is the whole date, she's texting another man the whole time and he still spent $213. Ben, Ben, his head is spinning from this date. Okay, it was like a fake date. He's a 25 year old woman he's on a date with. First of all, she doesn't even seem 25. What's weird is she looks younger than 25. I mean, she doesn't look underage, but she looks like maybe she's like 21, 22. Why would you make your age older? It doesn't, so he's confused by that. Maybe it's the skin, I don't know. It's weird. Why would you? He doesn't get it. But the whole date feels like a prolonged game of two truths and a lie. Every question he asks, she'd just be making up stuff on the spot and he can tell. And he's so confused, why? And it's stuff that it doesn't make sense that she would lie. He asks her, how tall are you? Pretty, I mean, the evidence is right there. It's hard to lie about how tall you are when you're standing right in front of that person. And it's clear that she's perhaps 5'7, maybe even pushing 5'8. And in Korea, a woman being taller is a good thing.

Speaker 2:
[12:38] Oh really?

Speaker 1:
[12:39] Yeah, she's like, I'm 5'4. He's like, no the fuck you're not, I'm so confused. He's just confused.

Speaker 2:
[12:44] Oh, but like the woman's not taller than the guy, you're saying?

Speaker 1:
[12:46] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[12:47] She's just like a tall, okay, okay.

Speaker 1:
[12:48] She's a tall woman, and that's usually seen as a very positive thing in Korea to be tall. It's almost model-esque, right? But she's lying and saying she's 5'4, for genuinely no reason at all. And he's standing right there. He's like, I see you, I can see how tall you are, and I know you're not 5'4, I don't understand. She's just blatantly telling so many lies with so many inexplicable inconsistencies. Even a toddler would think that she's a pathological liar, and she's so straight-faced with it, he can't even call her out. Also, she doesn't pay for a single thing. She orders the most expensive items on the menu, and she doesn't finish any of the food that she's eating before she just ravages more food by asking the waiter to get another plate of this. She's adding on to the order throughout the date, even though she's not even done eating. Not once does she say thank you, but the oddest thing is, despite all of this, she came to the date in extremely revealing clothing on a bitterly cold day, like her entire chest is out. And he tells her multiple times, like, oh, zip your jacket, because we're about to go outside and it's the wind is so cold, you should zip up your jacket. Eventually, he's getting top top. It's like, that's so frustrating. Like, just watching you makes me cold. So he reaches over and just zips up his jacket himself because he's like, lady, think for a second, you're about to get sick. And she irritably unzips it all the way down so her cleavage is back out and just glares at him. And he's like, I wasn't even, I thought I was being a gentleman and I was trying to make sure that you're not getting sick. I'm so confused. Then another guy, Ethan, he meets a girl at the club. They start texting and she tells them in a romantic way, I want to see the beach. They plan a day trip to a local beach while they're there. She says she has no money and he's like, then why'd you come to the beach, bitch? Okay, it's fine. He pays for all the food, all the beverages while they're there, which is fine. But she's ordering ungodly amounts of food. And then when they go to the convenience store to grab waters and coffee, she starts adding in like regular house things that she wants. Like a little detergent, vitamins, feminine hygiene items, lip balms, face masks, skincare, just random things that has nothing to do with Ethan, and then just forces him to pay for it.

Speaker 2:
[14:59] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[14:59] But I guess Ethan is still really into her because he still meets up with her one more time after this god-awful beach trip. She comes over to his house for dinner, and when she leaves, he realizes two things in his house are missing. A baseball hat, like a cap, and a Starbucks gift card with $33 on there.

Speaker 2:
[15:17] So she's a liar and a thief.

Speaker 1:
[15:19] So he texts her, he's like, did you maybe accidentally take my $33 Starbucks gift card and my hat? And she blocks him. Then a guy named Kang, he goes on a date with a girl on White Day. These are all very relevant stories, okay? He goes on a date on White Day, holiday where men give candy to women. It's like Valentine's Day, but White Day, right? And they meet in front of the woman's university station, the train station. They grab coffee and the whole time she's like randomly pouring her heart out about how difficult her childhood upbringing has been. It's a little bit jarring because they just met and she's almost in tears about how abusive her father is. And he does feel bad, but also he doesn't really know how to respond because it's out of the blue. So he's like, there, there. He's trying to comfort her, but also like, I want to go. He tries to maneuver the situation so he can leave. And it seems like she catches on because she starts coughing and banging on her chest. And she's like dramatically grabbing on to him, coughing.

Speaker 2:
[16:16] He's trying to run away from the date?

Speaker 1:
[16:18] Yeah, he's like, are you okay? My chest, it feels tight. He takes her to a nearby clinic. He's contemplating leaving her at the clinic, but he's like, God, I just feel bad. I guess I'll just stay. So he wastes his time waiting around for her to be seen by the doctor. And then she's crying about how miserable her life is. He then takes her to the pharmacy to pay for her prescription, which sounds really romantic in America because a prescription is like $10 trillion without insurance. In Korea, it's like a few dollars. Okay, so he's trying to pay for the few dollars, $3 medicine. And she's boom, boom, vitamins, tampons, herbal drinks, lip balm. And he's like, I'm not paying for that. I'm not paying for $67 worth of shenanigans. I'm just trying to pay for your $3 medication. And she's like, why you need these to feel better too? He's so thrown off. He says, no, I'm just paying for the prescription. She's pissed. She storms off. He's left confused, but also she did take the $3 prescription that he paid for and he stormed out of there. Like he's the problem. Another guy named Frank, super relevant. I'm telling you, okay? Goes to our restaurant date, South Korea.

Speaker 2:
[17:29] How many guys are there?

Speaker 1:
[17:30] So many guys. Okay. And they're all coming out and they're like, let me tell you, let me tell you, okay? He leaves his wallet on the table, goes to the restroom. This is South Korea. You know what you do in Korea? You go into a restaurant and you pick a table you like and you put your phone and your wallet, your most valuable pieces of items on the table to claim it as yours. Nobody steals it. Nobody steals it. That's just how you claim a table. He leaves his wallet on the table. His date is at the table too.

Speaker 2:
[17:54] Yeah. And there's like bajillion CCTV cameras everywhere. So nobody really steals.

Speaker 1:
[17:58] Yeah. Nobody steals. So then he goes to the restroom, comes back and he's about to pay for the dinner and all the cash in his wallet is gone. Like not even just one bill, all the bills are gone. But his wallet is still there. His credit cards are still there. So he's like, what? He asks the date. Do you know if like somebody's, she's like came by and took the cash? She's like, no, I have no idea what you're talking about. They check the security camera because it's Korea and she's just pocketing the cash. And she's, the crazier part is she's standing there watching the CCTV camera footage with them. And then she's just staring at them like, and what are you going to do about it?

Speaker 2:
[18:37] So what did they do?

Speaker 1:
[18:38] She gave the cash back and then stormed out of there like he was the problem.

Speaker 2:
[18:42] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[18:44] Okay, we're almost done with these crazy dates, but there's this guy named Patrick too. And this Patrick guy, he's like, I should have known she was a problem because the minute that we started texting, she sent me a list of restaurants I really like to go to, all $4 money signs. Not even like a variety, like sometimes you gotta throw in some variety, right? No, all expensive. And she's just like, has this weird obsession with food. She's messaging him nonstop. I love all kinds of meat. By the way, meat is pretty expensive in Korea. Grilled chicken thigh, pork belly, thick cut pork, black pork, beef, Western food, love it all. I love anything with meat. Okay. He takes her out on a date and during that date, they have two full meals. At the end, she's like, can you buy me a hamburger and butter bread to take home? It's like she has this enormous, insatiable obsession with food. And the strange thing is, well, first of all, she doesn't pay for anything, which is like a thing. But also on top of that, she never used the restroom. Like they were out the whole day, never used the restroom. And he was like, hey, you know what I think? I've like, I've peed like 10 times since we've been on this date. Cause it's like a 24 hour long date. You haven't peed once. You know what I think that's weird? And she was like, that's weird. I gotta go pee. And then she just like went the minute that he pointed. Weird, weird, very weird.

Speaker 2:
[20:05] Okay, what is going on?

Speaker 1:
[20:08] So all these people, they're like, I don't know what's going on. But what happens is I meet a girl at a hunting bar, go on a date with her, and it's been weird.

Speaker 2:
[20:17] Oh, they all met at this hunting bar.

Speaker 1:
[20:19] Soon, it will be revealed that every single one of these guys, they find out that they were on a date with the same woman. And she will be all over the news for being a serial killer who kills her dates.

Speaker 2:
[20:33] Serial killer?

Speaker 1:
[20:34] That's what they're calling her in Korea. There is only one rule in this story, survive. In the new Netflix film, Apex, Charlize Theron is Sasha, a woman testing her limits in the Australian wilderness, but what starts as a test of endurance turns into a deadly game with a ruthless and lethal predator played by Taryn Edgerton, whose familiarity with the landscape gives him a chilling advantage. For Sasha, every decision is a matter of survival, but her resilience and intelligence make her a force to be reckoned with. Apex, only on Netflix April 24th. Are you tired of spending just hundreds on crazy high wireless bills, bogus fees, and quote unquote free perks that cost you more in the long run? Then a premium wireless plan from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month might be right for you. Bring your own phone and number, activate with eSIM in minutes, and start saving immediately. No long-term contracts, no hassle. When I made the switch to Mint, everything was so easy and completely online. With my previous carrier, going into the stores was always so awkward. It's like those stores that don't have a designated checkout desk or a greeter. It's just like a bunch of display tables and then everybody's scattered around. You don't know who to go to. You don't want to interrupt someone. It's just awkward and something I would rather avoid altogether. That's why switching to Mint Mobile was such a win for me. No retail stores, no salespeople, just an easy setup on my own time and a huge savings. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com/rotten. That's mintmobile.com/rotten. Upfront payment of $45 for three month, five gigabyte plan required. Equivalent to $15 per month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra, see Mint Mobile for details. When you're doing it all, you need all the electrolytes. The weather is heating up, and the best way to make it through those sweaty summers is Gatorade, which hydrates better than water itself. With new Gatorade lower sugar, you can get the amazing hydration you expect from Gatorade, but with no artificial flavors, sweeteners or colors. With 75% less sugar and all the electrolytes of Gatorade thirst quencher, you'll be back at your best and ready to take on whatever comes your way. New to the fridge, all the Gatorade electrolytes you love. Try Gatorade lower sugar today. Sam, this is a pseudonym, he's about ready to go on a date. He's already told his close friends about this girl that he's going to meet. They've been texting back and forth. And she seems like the type of person that he could see himself getting serious with. He's at the age where he's thinking about getting married. He's been saving every single month to open up his own restaurant. He's a chef, and he's really nervous about this date. He gets on ChatGPT and he looks up, can you suggest what to say on a blind date? His date is also on ChatGPT right before the date. Asking questions. Her searches include, what is a lethal overdose of sleeping pills? If you take sleeping pills with alcohol, can you die? And she's taking notes in her journal with each date. This dose doesn't even kill them. They wake up and become even more of a nuisance to me.

Speaker 2:
[23:50] It's so crazy that we've entered the ChatGPT era. Every case now, we constantly talk about AI and ChatGPT.

Speaker 1:
[23:57] Yeah, they're all searching some bizarre things on ChatGPT. Now, motels in Korea are not the same as the United States. I feel like the word motel has a very strong connotation with either affordable place to stay for the night or usually a place where scary things can happen just because of the way the buildings were set up and the locations. Korean motels are very different in the sense that they're everywhere. If you're on a street with karaoke bars and clubs, there's going to be a lot of motels. So it's used by a lot of passerby, business travelers, but also couples who still live with their parents. Because in Korea, you stay with your parents for quite a bit of time before you get married. So it's not like you just go out and live on your own, where you can invite your boyfriend or your girlfriend over and do things you would do in a loving, consensual adult relationship. So couples will go to motels. Or couples who have just met each other and don't know each other's names and just want to have a good one night stand, they'll go to a motel. But motels are also used by friends. A lot of friends, if they have a gathering of 10 friends who want to get drunk and play drinking games, but they don't want to go to an establishment and pay money for food and service charge and tip and this and that. They'll rent a motel room and just hang out in the motel room as if it's like a friend's house. Usually a younger crowd, because maybe their apartments, they still live with their parents or it's not enough space. So they'll just rent a cheap motel room. It's not unusual and it certainly doesn't have the seedier connotation maybe American motels have. But the police, they walk into this cramped motel room. There is a man on the bed laying on his side. He's rigid and he's dead. Motel staff are hiding behind the motel entry room. We saw him because we were trying to see if the room was ready for checking out. And we saw that there was like stuff in his nose. I think we think he's dead. The police are glancing around. There's nothing particularly alarming about the room. There's no signs of evident trauma. It doesn't appear that he passed with the sign of a struggle. There's no external injuries. This is not a self-exit. There's no gunshot wounds, stab wounds, no strangulation marks. There is, however, they're looking closely with their flashlight. There's small amounts of vomit in the mouth, airways. It looks like there's some swelling. There's some sort of congestion. That's about the only thing they can find, and that and his phone and a bottle on the nightstand. They're like, what is that? It's a bottle of hangover medication. It's like a detox drink that you consume if you want to avoid being hung over the next day. You can buy it at the corner store. It's not really effective. Maybe it's more so the placebo. I'm sure it's got lots of electrolytes, so it hydrates you a little bit better than water, but it's nothing that serious. I mean, nothing that would cause him to have some sort of medical reaction, that's for sure. Has his phone been checked? There is an unopened message on this man's phone, and it's a very lengthy message, and it's from a girl. It reads, oh, so I suddenly got my period, and I felt like I couldn't fall asleep in the motel room, so I decided to go home, and you had given me that wad of cash earlier for the taxi fare, which, by the way, our photo booth pictures were folded inside of it. I'll give that back to you next time we meet. Anyway, thanks for giving me the money for the cab so I wouldn't be cold getting home. Oh, and also, you ordered fried chicken using my phone, and we were watching a movie when your eyes glazed over and you suddenly fell asleep. I don't know if you remember, but when the food was about to arrive, I tried to wake you up a little bit, and you wanted to go back to sleep again. I told you not to sleep, but you seemed tired and kept wanting to sleep, so I asked you what to do about the fried chicken and you said to eat it all by myself, and just to take it home. So since eating in the motel room alone while you're sleeping seemed lonely, I thought I would just take it back home and eat it at home before work. I packed it all up and left. It just felt lonely eating alone while you were asleep. Next time, let's just go out to eat together.

Speaker 2:
[27:33] That sounds very goofy. Yeah. You're just… It's like a confession note almost.

Speaker 1:
[27:38] Yeah, you don't have to be an investigator to think that this is weird. Usually, people don't say things like, well, A happened, so then you said B, and remember how I said C, and now this is D, and now E, and so thanks. You just say, hey, thanks for the night.

Speaker 2:
[27:49] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[27:50] This looks like meeting notes or a cover your ass email after a meeting where you told everyone you knew that something was not a good idea if they kept doing that, and they kept doing that anyway. That's what it sounds like. But then there's another message, a picture from inside the taxi. So it's like a girl is sitting in the back of the taxi taking a picture with the words, I'm in the taxi heading home. I know you got the room because you wanted to hang out together, but like I said, I happened to be on the period, so a lot of stomach cramps. And I had no pads, then you gave me the wad of cash for the taxi and treated me to food, so thank you. It's so weird. The police are like, who was in the motel room with him? The motel staff said, well, I mean, there was this woman. So they came in last night, he walked in with this woman. They didn't seem that drunk or anything, these just seemed normal, like a normal couple. And then I think a little bit while after that, some guy delivered fried chicken, and then like 10 minutes after the fried chicken was delivered, the woman left alone. The man's body is taken to a medical examiner, and it shows that he was drugged. These are all the drugs found in this system. Three different types of antidepressants, sleeping pills, a benzodiazepine sedative, a cardiovascular drug, a Tylenol and an antihistamine. These are just the different types. It's not like the different pill. In fact, the amount of drugs found in his body, it was like 50 pills of different types of drugs. What? So it's only three different types of antidepressants, but it could have been four pills of each antidepressant. It's like a pharmaceutical cocktail, and a lot of them are prescription medications, which a doctor states the drugs found in his blood were essentially a standard pharmaceutical toolkit for a patient presenting with depression or sleeping disorders. So this is, we gotta find someone who was prescribed these things because they were able to give this to him, administrate him, and these are not fun drugs. This is not a situation where some people decide that they're gonna try prescription drugs for fun, and get high, and then they overdosed. These are not fun drugs.

Speaker 2:
[29:48] And drugs are very controlled in Korea.

Speaker 1:
[29:51] So according to his records, he does not have depression or a sleeping disorder, and he was not prescribed any of these medications, and it's just an obscene amount of pills in his system. And the police know that they have a big, big problem on their hands, because a homicide case in South Korea, in Seoul, is already very, very bad. It's a big fucking deal. In Seoul, there is about one homicide per week, if even that. What? And this is the second one. Yeah, okay. In comparison, I think in New York, there's about 10 a week. New York City. I mean, there's a lot more self-exits and other deaths, but in the manner, homicide is about one a week. And this is the second one. Not this week, but the second one with the same pattern. Young man in his 20s passed out in a motel room, drugged. Deceased by the morning, motel staff discover and motel staff report that he had walked in with a woman who quickly left after checking in. It happened just 11 days earlier, which one would imagine it's only a matter of time before another person ends up dead in a motel room. Police start investigating and they come across a man. He's alive, barely, but he might know something. Police talk to him now that he's feeling better. He had spent two days in the hospital unconscious. What happened? Was he in a motel room? Did he wake up in a motel room? He's like, no, December 14th, 2025, noon.

Speaker 2:
[31:15] It's like 11, 20 a.m. When was the previous one found dead?

Speaker 1:
[31:19] January and February.

Speaker 2:
[31:21] Oh, this one was a month ago, okay.

Speaker 1:
[31:24] So he's like, I was in the parking lot of this bakery with my girlfriend, and that's all I remember. That's it? Well, that and she gave me this drink. Was it a hangover recovery drink, like a detox drink? No, it was like a herbal medicine for fatigue because I've been really tired with work. I drank it, and then I don't remember anything else. I woke up in the hospital two days later. I was out for two days. He wakes up and he texts her, what did you put in that drink? The doctor told my mom twice that I could have never woken up. Like it was that bad. The bakery, the owner, the employees, they've all been shaking in their boots, frightened beyond comprehension because they assumed it was something they did with the baked goods by accident. I mean, it was a very dramatic scene. The ambulance showed up. It doesn't make sense. But I'm alive now and I have no idea what happened and she won't talk to me. And the police are taking notes and they ask if that woman, if his girlfriend looks familiar to the woman in the two motel CCTV footages. He's like, yeah, that's my ex-girlfriend. 20 year old Kim Soyoung.

Speaker 2:
[32:24] 20.

Speaker 1:
[32:26] And she's not a hard woman to find. In fact, she's not even hiding. Police arrest her at her house and just 30 minutes before her arrest, she had just posted another selfie on Instagram. And in the motel footage, her face is out and about. It's not like she's wearing a mask and hiding and then she's just on Instagram posting her face. And all of these selfies, she puts a lot of selfies on Instagram. She's always pouting at the camera while subtly but not subtly emphasizing her cleavage with the hashtag, hashtag followers welcome, hashtag cool tone beauty, follow for follow, mutual follow, likes, DM. They bring her in for questioning. And she innocently tells them, I don't, I didn't know they died. I didn't think it was that dangerous because I also take these meds myself. They're like, why would you give them meds that they're not prescribed? And she said that she was just drugging these men because she didn't like dealing with conflict. She's like, I'm so conflict adverse. I was just trying to put them to sleep. She's saying, you know, they would spend hundreds of dollars buying me food and I'm assuming that they want to do it afterwards. And I don't want to do it. So I would just put them to sleep. She's like, I just didn't want them to be like a nuisance and try to, you know, initiate these intimate relations with me. So I would drug them. And I guess two of them just happened to die.

Speaker 2:
[33:36] So she does admit to killing them.

Speaker 1:
[33:39] A post starts going viral in South Korea and it's clearly a very, very distraught man. He's asking for advice. Would it be so bad to be pen pals with a motel killer? Hear me out. She's pretty. Normally, it's not easy to date someone that pretty. If she gets life in prison, maybe I could write letters, put some money in her commissary, visit her every now and then. I had a pen pal with a regular female inmate before. She would call me babe and act all cute while writing. And then she got out and started cheating on me. So we broke up and I was devastated. But with someone serving life, which I'm assuming she's going to get life in prison, right? She can't go anywhere. She'll be in prison forever. Isn't it actually like kind of okay, keeping in touch just until she dies? After Kim Soyoung's arrest, netizens start circulating pictures of her most recent Instagram pictures, her photo shoots. And they have dubbed her, I mean, the police have dubbed her a serial killer, even though I think in the US, it's like three people or more have to be victims. But there are two victims and she also drugged countless other guys who thankfully survived. But they've dubbed her the motel serial killer, and netizens in South Korea have dubbed her the prettiest killer alive. In Korea, there's a whole legal process of releasing identities of perpetrators, even if they're adults. There has to be certain criteria met so the prosecutors have yet to release Kim Soyoung's age and name. They have now, but at this point in the story, they haven't released her name yet. But netizens are quick. They're spreading her social media pages on internet forums, and it's not exactly the reaction that people were expecting. Because usually when people start outing perpetrators, it's like a wave of hate.

Speaker 2:
[35:17] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[35:18] But people are like, whoa, she's so pretty.

Speaker 2:
[35:21] Things like this happens, right? Like remember even in the US, like, what was that guy's name?

Speaker 1:
[35:26] Yeah, yeah, the guy that everyone wanted to do.

Speaker 2:
[35:28] So once in a while, it just turns into like...

Speaker 1:
[35:30] Like a weird thing. I think it's because most of us are not... I don't even think they're conventionally attractive, but I guess most of us are not conventionally attractive, and so we all think like, oh, if we were conventionally attractive, there's not much I would want in the world. So maybe it's like the confusion of like, you're so conventionally attractive, why are you doing all this? That's what a lot of the Korean netizens are saying, especially in a place like Korea where conventional attractiveness is valued really high. So they're just confused why she would need to kill someone when she's so hot, which is, I understand the logic is weird, but it is, I guess, a natural train of thought for people in Korea. Netizens also noticed that in her Instagram post, she doesn't have a single picture with anybody else, none, not even one where she's sitting at a restaurant and someone is sitting next to her, but she covers their face. She has zero pictures with anybody else. People are saying, this is kind of odd. She doesn't have any friends, she doesn't have any family, but she's going on so many dates. This is weird. Other people are saying that she seems to have a fixation on this song that is now in hindsight a little bit creepy. It's called Damon's Year by Josie, and the translated lyrics read, Whenever you look at the moon, your eyes get bigger. Which people are like, this sounds like when people are really drugged up. Looking at the reflection in your eyes, what you love is the same as me. I see you without knowing the flowers are blooming, hugging your fine shadow, kissing you like it's the last time. Let's not get old, take it all so there's no regrets, leave nothing behind my love. Good night, my crying love. And in between her second victim's death and her arrest, she posted 41 Instagram stories and posts. She's obsessed with posting online. But the thing that becomes almost a second crime is what I said, everyone thinks that she is the prettiest killer alive. And by everyone, I mean just like a small portion of the internet, and they're very loud about it. Men in South Korea were going to vouch for her in the comments, like, if you just release her to me, I'm sure I could fix her for you. She's got like the girl next door look, slightly innocent way except all of her Instagram pictures show lots of cleavage. So like her face looks innocent, but her boobs are always out. All the pictures are angled. So it's like the main focal point is her chest. It's usually from the top down angle. That's the type of picture that she likes to post. And some men in Korea really, really, really want to save her. So for the past four months, Kim Soyoung has been very busy and they don't care. So the police are like, hey guys, stop with this nonsense. We're just gonna let you know what this crazy lady has been doing so you know what you're dealing with. October 25th, 2025, at a restaurant in Gangnam, a man named H collapses while drinking white wine with Soyoung. She calls 911 or the emergency line. He was just drinking white wine and just suddenly collapsed. Yeah, just come quickly. She's so nonchalant. Employee says, the whole thing was weird. I clocked in at 5 p.m., there was a couple at one of the tables, man was slumped over asleep on the table. At first, I thought nothing of it, but then 30 minutes later, he's still like that. I'm like, okay, something is clearly wrong. I approached them. I just figured up until this point, if the woman needed help genuinely, she would have asked for it. But when I went over to ask her if she needs help, she told me he was passed out drunk. So I asked her, is that your boyfriend? She says, we've only been dating for like two days. I don't even know his drinking tolerance. The server checks the tab. They only had two glasses of wine ordered to the table. And the glass of wine in front of the boyfriend has a lot of wine left in it. It just felt off. Do you want me to call the emergency line for you? Sure. She calls the emergency dispatch, hands it to Soyoung, and Soyoung's like, I barely know the guy. We were just drinking white wine and he passed out. Two months later, December 14th, 2025, 1120 AM, Soyoung tries to kill her boyfriend, ex-boyfriend in the bakery parking lot. He's hospitalized for two days, unconscious, and she's there playing the doting girlfriend. But when she gets home, she writes in her journal, specifically that day, Dose only knocked him out. It didn't kill him. January 24th, 2026, a man is in a karaoke bar with a girl he just met. Private room collapses on the ground. 911 is called. She says, he just won't wake up. I didn't know what to do. I just met him. I'm here for the first time on a date. I don't even know his home address. Like, how am I supposed to take him home? The ambulance comes, and side note, the owner of this karaoke bar said, the woman, she paid and she tried to leave alone without the man. And the man wouldn't wake up, no matter how much we shook him. And it's actually company policy. If you come and get a private room, you can't leave any of your friends drunk. You have to take them with you, because the business doesn't want to be liable for these drunk people who are passed out in these private rooms. And so I'm like, we cannot let you leave. And she's telling us, just wake him up and kick him out when you get the chance. We're like, no, our policy says you cannot leave your companions. So I told her that, and that's when she rolls her eyes, and she called emergency dispatch. There's a guy here who's really drunk, and I keep trying to wake him up. He won't get up, he's had way too much to drink. I don't even know where he lives. This is my first time meeting him. Are you trying to take him home, or are you trying to take him to the hospital? I don't know. I don't know where he lives. Like I said, I just met him today. Okay, we'll send medical and police. Her fifth and sixth victims were both found dead in motel rooms, and the method of killing was the same in both, the hangover drinks in Korea. They're sold at every convenience store. They're marketed as helping your body process alcohol faster. It's like a detox. So Young would go home and using the back of her kitchen knife, she would crush up all of her prescription pills that she is prescribed for PTSD. She uses a piece of paper, funnels them into the hangover drink, and throws those in her purse for dates. And when she goes on a date, and what's crazy about these dates is nobody approaches her. She religiously goes to the hunting bars looking for dates. She's always on Instagram at local community posts and writing things like, You like bowling? I like bowling too. We should bowl together on random guys' pages. And she'll message them. And once she's initiating these dates, once she goes on the date, she'll be drinking with the men and she'll look up with them with a warm smile and say, Oh, I have something for you. Remember how I mentioned in our text messages, I always get really bad hangovers for work and it sucks? Which, by the way, the police found evidence of these types of messages. She would say these things before the date. Well, I always carry around these hangover detox drinks to just make sure the hangover isn't bad. Here, you should try one. Instead of sobering up, these men would take the hangover drink. They would suddenly start feeling nauseous, as if the world is getting distorted. Their stomachs would start churning, their tongues get stiff, they can't talk, they lose consciousness. And Soyeon would just stare at them. There's no particular blend of prescription pills that Soyeon cared about. It's not like she was some sick, twisted pharmacist. She just took whatever she could get. That was strong. She would collect prescription pills. They call it medical shopping. So it's when you go around to various psychiatric clinics to get prescription meds and just pick up at various pharmacies. And there's no sort of regulated system in Korea where certain drugs can be bypassed. Obviously, you're not going to get controlled substances. I imagine like in the US, it would be easier to get maybe two different SSRIs prescribed versus getting two Adderall prescriptions, because it's not a controlled substance, the SSRIs. There's not much of an oversight system that can prevent people from doing this. And she's just experimenting with different dosages and increasing the concentration to affect the victims. It's like she's researching. And the weirdest part of each crime is her obsession with food. She's obsessed with food. All she does on these dates is consume and order large quantities of food. It's not even like she... It's weird. She likes the food, but it seems like she likes the idea of food more. It's almost like she likes the idea of spending every single dollar she can get out of these men. Like, for example, just to give you an idea, the fried chicken that she ordered... Well, first of all, that was after her second victim died in the motel room. She was laying there as he's dying on the motel bed, took his credit card and ordered fried chicken to the motel room and waited in the motel room while he's actively dying in the motel bed for the fried chicken order. And this is a huge order with 22 items, because I feel like with inflation in the US, $100 with a fried chicken sounds like a lot of fried chicken, but just to give you an idea of how much chicken it really is. Two and a half chickens in four different flavors. Tteokbokki, instant rice, drinks, sauces, black cheese ball, extra devil sauce, red pepper mayo sauce bottle, big cheese stick, instant rice, oil tteok-bokki, onion ranch sauce, extra, tricolor ball, three piece, pork, zero, times two, extra rice cakes, potato wedges, red pepper mayo sauce, big bottle.

Speaker 2:
[44:13] All of that?

Speaker 1:
[44:13] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[44:14] For $60?

Speaker 1:
[44:15] Yeah. And the delivery guy, he remembers Kim Soyoung too. He's delivering the fried chicken and well, by the way, the owners of the fried chicken shop, they were so excited because business has been slow. This is one of their biggest orders. So they were really excited to get the fried chicken hot to the motel and the driver is like, they're all on the same page. They're rushing to get it there. And he goes and he's like, I feel like I have the wrong address because this is enough to feed honestly, 10 people. 10 people could eat this fried chicken and be full. And so he's expecting some sort of crazy party in the motel room. The door opens, no sound, no TV on, nothing, dead silent. And Kim Soyoung, she has the weirdest blank expression on her face. It's so entirely blank. It's not not smiling. It's not angry. It's just empty. He doesn't know how to explain it. It's just empty. Her blank expression. It's freaky. And he's like, it's heavy. It's a lot of fried chicken. Yeah. And she just takes it and closes the door. He was like, it was so, it was just unsettling. Spring is here, and it is time to elevate your wardrobe with intention at Quince. Quince has been my go-to for clothes, home goods, bed linens, and more for quite some time now. Every single sweater, bedspread from Quince, is still sitting in my closet, or it's in my usual rotation almost every single week. And that's really what Quince is all about. Quality luxury products made sustainably and affordably priced, not to mention, they only partner with factories who meet or exceed global guidelines for workplace safety and equitable wages. Quince is your one stop shop for timeless luxury essentials at transparent prices. Quince has these 100% European linen wide leg pants. So good, they feel like pajamas. It's perfect. And then if I get a little bit chilly at night, I love their Mongolian cashmere sweaters. I'm actually wearing one right now because it's a little chilly inside. Refresh your spring wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com/rotten for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. Go to quince.com/rotten for free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com/rotten. Picture this. It is the end of a long week. You're unwinding in the tub listening to your favorite true crime podcast. And then chronic hives come back. Again, in the middle of the episode. What a wet blanket. Looks like another spell of itchy, swollen, red or skin colored hives. If you have chronic, spontaneous, urticaria or CSU, there may be a different treatment option. Worried about your chronic hives interrupting our next episode? Learn more at treatmyhives.com/rotten. Some of the best things come in layers. A cute haircut, wrapped presents, and our sponsor, New Tide Evo. The Moment Tide Evo hits water. It instantly activates six concentrated cleaning layers to fight 100% of common stains, including grass and dirt. Each layer has a job tackling the mess from a different angle with scrubbers, pre-treaters, brighteners, and freshners. Toss one in with your load, and that's it. No scooping, no spilling, no squinting at a fill line, and no mess, just clean clothes. And I haven't even told you about my favorite part. Tide Evo is an easy swap you can make if you're trying to cut down on household waste. There are no fillers, no extra water, and no large plastic jugs. Tide Evo is lightweight, and it comes ready for the wash in a fully recyclable box. I've officially switched over to Tide Evo for my laundry routine, and my clothes smell fresh. It's great with my sensitive skin. I've even been able to do a few loads with my whites and a little bleach, and my white towels that survived a dog bath or two came out refreshed. When all those layers work together the way they're supposed to, there's nothing left to question. It's the same feeling as a case with no loose ends where every detail has done its job. Try new Tide Evo, real laundry magic. But even with all this information, there are some netizens who believe that she can't be evil, because look at her Instagram pictures, and she's only 20, why would she need to be a serial killer? Netizens started holding onto Dear Life on the one statement that she made to the police that she wanted to avoid confrontation with men. So some people are like, maybe the men were asking for it.

Speaker 2:
[48:33] So, okay, a couple questions, right? Is she just a liar? Why is she lying about making her age older and shorter?

Speaker 1:
[48:41] Yeah, I think she's a pathological liar.

Speaker 2:
[48:45] And then you're saying that the journal, she's writing, oh, this didn't kill him. Are there more?

Speaker 1:
[48:50] Yeah, she's just talking about dosages, but nothing else in her journal.

Speaker 2:
[48:55] Okay, so that's the only information we have. She didn't write after she killed someone, she didn't write, oh, that worked or whatever.

Speaker 1:
[49:01] I think she did, but it was very simple. Like it worked doubling dosage next time. Some people are saying maybe she genuinely thought maybe these guys were being sexually pushy. And she just thought that she could make them pass out so that she wouldn't have to be pressured to have intimate relations with them after the date. Comments read, he was a stranger that followed her. You know, he kind of asked for it. The guy must have been acting up for her to want to sedate him. She takes the same pills herself, she probably didn't think that he would die. She said she was just trying to put him to sleep. There must have been a reason, like I'm curious about her past. But the doctor who worked on this case, they state, even if she only wanted to sedate these men, she would have only needed one sleeping pill. Why was there a cocktail of antidepressants and other drugs on top of that? The combination clearly goes beyond what's needed for sleep. Little by little, people start putting in tips and more information about Kim Soyoung's entire family and childhood start coming out. Her dad was violent. He would come home drunk, assault their mother, urinate and defecate everywhere in the house. She seems to have some level of PTSD as described by her doctor. Dad leaves, mom works through the night to support two kids. But that doesn't mean that she can just go kill people. And on top of that, there's just a lot of alarming stories coming out. She dropped out of middle school, later was expelled from high school. Even part-time jobs, a lot of her former employees and bosses, like coworkers and bosses would come out. And they said she got fired and couldn't hold down a job for such a long time. She would consistently manipulate coworkers against each other and just cause so much dysfunction in the workplace. It was impossible. She suffered from physical and verbal abuse from her childhood, but that doesn't really negate any of the things that she did. Stories from her childhood just start piling on, and people say if she's around, your glasses, your wallet, your lipstick that you've been using for three years, like it doesn't matter how old or useless these items were, they would just disappear. Like this girl has sticky fingers. One girl got her AirPods stolen in middle school, and she goes on to Carat, which is like eBay, but or like Facebook Marketplace to just buy another pair of used ones because she's like, I don't want to buy new AirPods. She goes on there and someone is selling one that looks exactly like hers. I don't know if she had like a sticker on there, but what are the odds? So the girl goes to her homeroom teacher in middle school, and she's like, I want to do a sting operation. I'm pissed off. I want to go and act like I'm buying these used AirPods, and I want to see who's selling my stolen AirPods. They arrive to the meeting spot, and guess who it is? Middle school year old Kim Soyoung. And they're asking her, like, how could you do something like this? And her reaction is so blank. She just says, yeah, whatever. You want it back or not. And hands the AirPods back. Speaking of resale, people found her Carat website, like her account. She has over 100 items listed on sale for Carat, and suspiciously, they're all men's clothes, and it's not even that expensive. It would be like a $56 blazer, a $19 button up, a $23 shirt. There's a lot of interesting things happening there. But the one thing about the middle school, the AirPods, is she distinctly remembers her AirPods got stolen, Soyoung is caught selling them, she gets expelled from middle school, kicked out, transferred. And Soyoung is the one that goes and unfollows everyone from middle school on social media. Not only that, she blocks them, she mass blocks them as if they all stole from her. Another story comes out about a girl that went to a club with Kim Soyoung and she said, I immediately just got a really bad vibe from her. She was always asking me really invasive questions like, I'm so jealous you have your own place. How much money do you have? Why can't I just come live with you? Why don't you introduce me to a boyfriend? Later at a youth facility, Kim Soyoung meets this unni, which is like an older sister figure. And one day the unni's wallet and AirPods go missing. And she tells Kim Soyoung about it. And Kim Soyoung has this really bun bun an attitude. It's I guess audacious would be a similar word. Not really. There's a little more nuance to the Korean word, but perhaps. And she would just look at the unni and say, that sucks. I'm so sorry. If I even had a dollar to my name, I would offer it to you. What? It's just like a really weird, it's just like a really weird thing to say. Like, what do you mean if even if I had a dollar to my name, I would offer it to you? But not as weird as when they check the cameras and they realize Kim Soyoung is the one that stole from her. The wallet, she returns. And then the unni is like, well, my AirPods, you took my AirPods too. I don't have them anymore. What did you do with them? Did you sell them? No, I crushed them up and I flushed them down the toilet. That's not the only thing that she would steal. She would steal straight up pictures, photos of other people hanging out and then pretend that they were her own and post them on her own Instagram. One other girl says, she would literally screenshot every story that I posted and then repost it as if it were her Instagram story. When confronted about it, Soyoung would tell her that she's doing it to get revenge on an ex-boyfriend. And then she just went and blocked everybody. Sometimes she would unblock the girls that she hates, and then write in their comments, fuck off, you piece of shit. And it's like, you unblock me. Sometimes she would write, God, you look so sleazy, so fucking sleazy. Another comment is, quote, your face has some fat in it, and all your features are buried in the fat. But with that, there are still comments supporting Soyoung. Some people are saying, she just wants to meet her boyfriend, and dating is so hard in this day and age. She just felt used by men. She just wanted real, genuine connection. Comments about the way she looks reads, she's like really pretty. She looks, I mean, I would drink the drink immediately too. She has genuinely beautiful eyes, like they're sharp and yet beautiful, and just like breathtaking. In a world where everyone kills each other, she just happened to get caught. I don't really think we should think much into it. Pretty face, well put together. She's got interest, just wanting love. I mean, she looks exactly like a typical girl her age. Looking through all her social media posts, it's sad that there's not a single picture with another person. It seems like maybe she's lonely. I mean, she's got to serve her time, but I hope she gets to live a second life in genuine reflection. She's a true beauty. The meme in Korea suddenly became, if she's pretty, she must be forgiven. There is a checkpoint in Korea that has to be met for the identity of a perpetrator to be disclosed. The method of the crime has to be brutal. There has to be significant harm caused. There must be sufficient evidence to believe the suspect committed the crime, and there must be public interest, which there's enough information that she definitely committed these crimes. There is public interest. It's significant harm. She killed two people, but the brutal part, the prosecutors state the manner of the death and the killings was not brutal. They think, you know, you got to behead someone in order for that to be considered brutal. There's a lot of cases where someone was dismembered and that was up for debate about whether the perpetrator's identity should be released. That type of statement, the victim's families were besides themselves. They exploded the internet rally behind them. Like, how dare you decide if something is brutal or not? These people were killed and their families are now, they have to watch everybody say, look how pretty she is, look how pretty she is. There's no accountability. Like, what the hell are you guys doing? Police, they won't release it. So the public are like, we gotta do something. This causes a whole stir. And finally, because you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, everybody's already seen her pictures on social media, victim's family are upset. Under that pressure, the prosecutors released Kim Soyoung's name, age and her mugshot photos. And there is almost a collective silence in South Korea. The comments read, I think they arrested the wrong person. Are we sure these aren't two different suspects? Other people are commenting, this level of editing she does for her photos would bankrupt AI. It would use too many resources to sustain that just for her Instagram page. Others are saying, so everybody looks like a supermodel on Instagram and I don't see a single one of them on the street. The retouching on her photos must be insane. People went from defending her because she was the prettiest killer alive to now hating her because she's quite ugly in her mugshots.

Speaker 2:
[57:08] Really?

Speaker 1:
[57:09] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[57:09] Like she looks completely different?

Speaker 1:
[57:11] Completely different. And if you put her Instagram photo in her mugshot photos, I would say absolutely not. They're not even related. They're not even sisters.

Speaker 2:
[57:18] So she's catfishing people too, right? Basically.

Speaker 1:
[57:21] Netizens decide that Kim Soyoung, and this is where it gets crazy, okay? A lot of male netizens created a ranking of all the recent female killers in South Korea, their Instagram picture, and then their real mugshot. And people decide that Kim Soyoung is actually ranked on the uglier side of the female killers in South Korea. Yeah, I don't know why they made that ranking, but one person comments, we were tricked by the photofillers. Looks completely different from her Instagram. I take everything I said about her back. Others say she looks way older than 20. Another comment reads, and this got a lot of likes, add some fraud charges too. And a lot of women were very upset, rightfully, and they were commenting, Korean men cannot go a single day without writing a woman's looks. But Kim Soyoung is not going down without a fight. She starts releasing, and the trial is happening this month for this case in Korea. She starts releasing letters in prison to journalists, begging journalists to air her words. A lot of people believe that she's manipulative and she's writing some crazy things. Every single letter reminds me of that very narcissistic person that you probably have encountered in your life at some point or another. You tell them, Hey, narcissistic person, I didn't really enjoy it when you called me really ugly and disgusting to look at and then punched me in the face and then tried to ruin my life. So like, maybe you cannot do that ever again. And they go, oh, sorry, I'll just go kill myself. And you're like, OK, well, that's not what I said at all. Is that all of her letters are written like this? This is direct quotes. I should have died just when my dad was beating me. I should have just died then. I should have self-exited. Even when I took those online depression tests, it put me at the death stage, the most severe level. Why did I call my mom asking help for surviving? When I fell into the ocean as a kid, I should have just drowned. I should have just disappeared where nobody could have ever found me. Even then, my mom pulled me out of the water thinking that I was going to drown deep and submerged like that. But I survived. When I choked on that piece of candy as a kid and couldn't breathe, I should have just died. Even then...

Speaker 2:
[59:30] Really? Candy?

Speaker 1:
[59:31] Yeah. Even then, if my mom hadn't done the Heimlich maneuver, the candy would have stayed stuck and I would have died without being able to breathe. But I survived.

Speaker 3:
[59:40] What the...

Speaker 1:
[59:42] Like what? She starts describing how she used to try and self-exit and how she's annoyed that it didn't succeed. And like coming from someone who has been in dark places in her life, like this, I don't see this to be true at all. Like the fact that she's like, when I choked on a piece of candy when I was a kid, I should have just died then, it's so manipulative. She continues, I should have just let myself get stabbed by the knife that my dad threw at me. I should have just run into it. Then my mom wouldn't have to stay up all night blocking the door with her body all night to protect my sister and me, putting herself through all of that. If I had just been stabbed by his knife back then, there would have been none of this pain now, it would have been so much easier for me. Then my mom and sister could live better lives and I couldn't protect them. Everyone probably wants me dead anyway. If I'm going to get life in prison anyway, if I'm going to spend my whole life without my family, I would rather die. Living scares me. If I had died back then, would I have been at peace? Would my mother and sister have had life a bit easier? Then she writes another letter to the journalist and she's like, you got to air these letters by the way. The journalist is like, okay, I will. I think she genuinely thinks that she is manipulating the public. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[60:47] But nobody's buying it.

Speaker 1:
[60:48] No. Everyone's like, are you dumb? Yeah. What's happening? Another letter reads, I miss my mom. I'm scared. I want to be next to her. I want her to hold me. Please don't abandon me. I'm desperately, gut-wrenchingly regretful. I will faithfully accept punishment for what I did wrong. I'm sorry for shattering everyone's ordinary lives. Right now, I have two feelings fighting inside of me, wanting to die because it's all so hard, and wanting to live. Mom, I need to eat your cooking one more time before I die. No one believes me, and I have no one in my corner. I know y'all all probably just hear it as excuses, but I'll write down the general gist of what I want to say. Even when I try to hold back tears, every single day is hard and terrifying. I'm crying all the time. I'm drained and exhausted. I don't want to live anymore. I'm someone with a lot of questions, and this is my first time inside a detention center, and there's so much I want to ask, but everyone is busy, and I can't even get anyone to answer. It's so suffocating. It's hard. I ask, and then I get no response. Being separated from my family in a place I've never been before, my heart just rots and tears apart every day, every single day. The fact that the garbage who calls himself my dad is watching my face in this case play out in the media makes me feel sick. All this media coverage is torture. My identity being made public and everybody recognize me is just so hard. Just being separated from my mom is devastating and I can't sleep. I cry every day. I'm so worn out from crying.

Speaker 2:
[62:02] It's like gibberish.

Speaker 1:
[62:03] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[62:03] It's like she couldn't make up what she wanted to say. Like one point she wanted to play sad, one point she wanted to play this and then she was like complaining about this.

Speaker 1:
[62:11] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[62:12] It's like gibberish.

Speaker 1:
[62:13] Yeah. Because I think she's trying so hard to not write down her real thoughts.

Speaker 2:
[62:18] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[62:19] She's like, there's no one to open up to, no place to talk about the pain I'm carrying as a suspect. I wish they would expand the counseling services inside detention centers. It's just so hard. Then she writes, the journalist is like, okay, enough, like enough about this. I'm not going to air any more letters like this. Can you tell me why you did what you did? They just tell me that. And she writes, I'm not denying that I didn't give him the drugs, but I want to properly explain why I did it. Because I was scared of being essayed. No one ever listens to my side and it's so hard. I never thought and wanted to kill someone. I was just so scared that they would essay me and keep me there and not let me go. And in a moment of poor judgment, I mixed the drug into a hangover drink, gave it to them, put them to sleep. I was so traumatized and scared. I just wanted them to fall asleep so I could leave. And then once they were snoring, I would just leave. I had absolutely no idea that they would die. I had no plan. I had no intention to kill. I brought these hangover drinks with me to protect myself just in case. I had absolutely no idea that it would end up killing someone. I just wish that I had ended up as nothing more than a victim. That none of this would have blown up like this. Like no one would be suffering like this. I'm so sorry for the victims and their families and to my own family. I was so scared and terrified. I should have just been the victim and nothing more. She's like, I should have just been essayed by them. Which by the way, none of these men, and I am the last person to like root for men and going on dates with people that you've never met before. Like trust me, none of these men were trying to essay her evidenced by the text messages. She is the one begging them to get a motel room because the restaurant that she wants to try is delivery only. It's not like she goes on a date and they spend all this money and then they're like, let's go to a motel.

Speaker 2:
[63:53] So premeditated, try to kill them in a motel room.

Speaker 1:
[63:57] Premeditated, she's always asking for a motel. Always. She's the one that brings it up repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly. And it's not this spur of the moment where she carries her sleeping pills with her because that's her prescription medication. She grinds them up, puts them in the hangover drink. And not only that, you know how they're in one of the motel rooms, there's a hangover drink on the side. That gets tested, it comes back clean, no drugs. She carries multiple bottles, one with drugs and one that's clean. She pours out the clean one and leaves it so that when police test it later, it comes back clean.

Speaker 2:
[64:30] Whoa, okay.

Speaker 1:
[64:32] And you're telling me there's no premeditation. She's writing in her journal that the dosage didn't knock him out. It was only a nuisance because he kept waking up.

Speaker 2:
[64:41] But do we know her motive? Is it money? Is it?

Speaker 1:
[64:45] Money.

Speaker 2:
[64:45] It's pretty much money and stealing.

Speaker 1:
[64:47] Yeah. The reporter sends her another letter asking, what thoughts take up most of your time inside prison? Like how has your outlook on life changed since the incident? And she rambles briefly about her sister and mom before responding. Why are so many strangers sending me letters? Honestly, these people are really weird. Why has my life been so rough? I think about that. If I could turn back time, I would. Does everyone want me dead? Can I survive inside of here? I'm just so exhausted. When I was little, if I had just let my dad stab me with that knife, none of this would have happened. No one would be suffering. Media coverage is truly terrifying. Like I get it now why people would self-exit from it. Nobody's on my side. Nobody's going to help me. Am I a psychopath? I'm going to die in here without seeing my family. Why is my mom not visiting? This is so hard. Why did I do that? I'm scared. I miss my mom. She continues to rant. Mental health treatment for suspects needs to be expanded. Counseling inside detention centers should be available all the time, as often as needed. Please listen to what suspects have to say. The media reports so much without actually knowing the facts. I think that kind of reporting can kill people, can kill suspects. What the? Yeah, I don't know what to say even. The top comments about her strange letters read, she seems like she has very low IQ based on how she writes, and it looks like she also has some sort of victim complex too. Going to have a rough time in that prison, that one. Another one reads, she'll probably try the same routine in prison, playing the victim, crying poor me, trying to turn people against each other, and she'll get dealt with accordingly. Another reads, hey, if there's one person out there reading this letter thinking, wait, could she be telling the truth? You got to be careful because people like her, everything that comes out of her mouth is a lie, except when she's breathing. Some people are defending her writing, saying she didn't want to get assaulted. She just wanted to hang out, put them to sleep and leave. That doesn't qualify as premeditated murder. Maybe she's just dumb and didn't realize 50 pills was going to kill them.

Speaker 2:
[66:49] They wrote 50 pills?

Speaker 1:
[66:51] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[66:51] 50 pills.

Speaker 1:
[66:52] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[66:53] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[66:53] But that is also not applicable because there are other ChatGPT questions that she had asked, where she writes, what happens when you take sleeping pills and drink alcohol at the same time? If someone takes a lot of sleeping pills, will they die? Chat GPT, in the police report, they included the exact response that she received, and they were like, yeah, you can die. You cannot do that. And the worst part is there is a lot of anger with the police right now. Between the 11 days of, so her very first killing was 11 days before her second killing. After the very first killing, they were able to find the motel CCTV footage and they found that it's Kim Soyoung linked to the incident. They called Kim Soyoung and they were going to arrange for a time for her to come in for a police interview.

Speaker 2:
[67:42] And during that time, she killed another person.

Speaker 1:
[67:44] Yeah. I guess they thought it was, oh, there's no way that she killed him. Maybe he was doing drugs. They were thinking of all these things and they didn't think that it would be that pertinent to go investigate immediately, but they could have very easily prevented the second death. And they didn't. And then on top of that, the victim's families are upset because all this rhetoric online is, oh, well, the men were asking for it because they were probably going to essay her. And it's like, no, they weren't. They weren't even the ones that wanted to get a motel. She specifically, there's so many messages between the two victims where she's like, you get the motel room, you get the motel room. Oh, my favorite restaurant only delivers. They don't do eat-in. They don't do dine-in. You have to get a motel room, get this motel room. A lot of people are confused about the motive. I think the motive is money, but it's a small amount of money and food that it's puzzling to people. But experts say that she treated victims like a test subject. They're not human beings to her. They're just objects and she controls them, studies them, experiments, and then just discards at her own will. That's it. She's gonna be on trial for two counts of murder, aggravated assault and violation of the Narcotics Control Act. Kim Soyoung has written to a very close source in jail that she's scared of getting life in prison and the fact that people are calling her a psychopath.

Speaker 2:
[69:04] Psychopath, huh?

Speaker 1:
[69:05] Yeah. And then she told this insider that she's really upset about the food in prison. She says, sometimes I eat it, sometimes I don't because it's not very good.

Speaker 2:
[69:14] Interesting. The food obsession.

Speaker 1:
[69:16] Yeah. And that is where we are with this case. One netizen comment reads, the fact that she killed people over a few chicken dinners, not even millions of dollars is, is disturbing. Other people are saying she killed them so she could eat fried chicken by herself. I'm so confused what this world is turning into. So with that, what are your thoughts on this case? Let me know in the comments and I'll see you in the next one. Stay safe.

Speaker 3:
[69:42] Breathe in, feel the sense of calm that comes from having up to $300 in overdraft protection with GoToBank.

Speaker 4:
[69:49] Now, did you say $300?

Speaker 3:
[69:50] Yes. Now back to our breathing.

Speaker 4:
[69:53] So if I overspend my balance, GoToBank has my back up to $300.

Speaker 3:
[69:57] Yes. Can we breathe out now? Less worries, more Zen. With over $300 in overdraft protection, tap to open an account today. Eligible direct deposits and opt-in required for overdraft protection. Fees, terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 5:
[70:11] You wouldn't take financial advice from a 72 hours in a single day alpha influencer, would you? Same goes if you're in a car accident or any accident. Who you choose matters. That's why Morgan & Morgan exists. They're the largest injury law firm in America, and they've built a reputation by actually winning cases, not just talking about it. Over a thousand lawyers across all 50 states and $30 billion recovered. Injured? Go to forthepeople.com/podcast. That's forthepeople.com/podcast.