Rotten Mango
The Real Life "Squid Game" - Thousands Of Koreans Forced To Play Children's Games To NOT Be Killed
Wed, 8 Jan
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They’re all wearing the same blue tracksuit. Thousands of them standing out in the middle of the woods wearing the same thing. What is this place? They’re out in the middle of the woods - in what appears to be a small secretive city? A military base? How did they get 60+ buildings out here in the middle of the forest? And that giant wall… it’s 30 feet tall. Tall enough to keep people out. Or keep them in. The guards are watching each of the track suit wearing people with precision. One wrong move and you get beat. That’s when they hear it… The man starts running up onto the roof of one of the buildings - and there he goes. He flies off the top and lands in front of everyone. On his head. Someone standing right there says - “honestly, I didn’t know the sound of someone’s head exploding could make such a loud splitting sound. I saw his skull explode open.” A guard member walks out and sweeps up his brains and bones as if nothing happened. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? It kind of sounds like the plot of one of the most famous series on Netflix, Squid Game. But it’s not. This is the real life case of the Brother’s Home in South Korea. The true story behind Squid Game. Full source note: rottenmangopodcast.com
Chapter 1: What are the eerie similarities between real life and Squid Game?
The locks come off these big heavy doors. Interestingly enough, the locks are on the outside. Hundreds of these doors, they open in unison. They open at the same time. And thousands, a thousand, two thousand, it feels more like four thousand people. They walk out of these different doors that have now just been unlocked.
They're walking out into the sun and a lot of them are squinting because they've been inside all night long. They've been trapped. essentially padlocked from the outside. And now they're walking into what feels like a massive atrium. They're staring up at the sky. They're doing circles. They're doing like a 360 turn. And all you see around you are these buildings, buildings.
And then beyond those buildings, woods, It's so strange. It feels like its own secret country in the middle of the woods. There's 60 something buildings. They're all this brutalist style cement blocks. Very unwelcoming. The scale of this place is massive. How do you even build infrastructure like this in the middle of the woods? It's dense woods.
Dozens of dozens of buildings just circling the center field where they're all standing. And there's also these walls. There are some walls that are built to keep people out and there are some walls built to keep people in. This is one of those walls. Because how do you climb 30 feet up with no grip, no help?
Beyond that, beyond the wall centering this field, there's a fence just as tall, potentially taller. And even if you get beyond that, what do you do? You don't even know where you are. You're in the middle of nowhere. Which way do you run? What if you run deeper into the woods or you run straight off a cliff or you run and run and run until you circle back to whatever this place is?
Regardless, it would be impossible to get past all the guards. The guards are holding these wooden bats and they're shuffling all these people to the center of this field. Every single one of the 3,500 something people are wearing identical tracksuits. Blue tracksuits. Think of like the Adidas jumpsuits. Their heads are shaved, but it's clear whoever shaved their heads did not care.
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Chapter 2: What was the Brothers Home facility?
They did not pay attention. There's scars all over their scalp. And behind these people, the rooms that they just came out of is even more bizarre. Every single room is occupied by stacks and stacks of bunk beds, just rows of bunk beds. Practically on top of each other. One of the people in the blue tracksuits blinks. What the hell is this place? A lot of the people gathered are minors.
Some are young as four years old, but there seems to be no consistent pattern to even the people that are there. There are children, there's teenagers, adults, elderly people. Everybody is wearing the appropriate sized blue tracksuit without distinction. How do you even get a four-year-old size tracksuit? And pinned to each tracksuit are numbers. That's what they're known by here.
Nobody goes by names, they just go by numbers. Most of the people in the tracksuits, they look scared. Some of them remember the first words the guards said when they were brought here. This is a quote. From today, you will abandon your rotten mentality and be born as a new human. And then there's a scream. Hey, get down from there.
Everybody's whipping around trying to see what the guards are yelling about until they see it. Over there, there is a man in a blue tracksuit climbing up one of the buildings onto the and lands straight on his head on the ground. One person who was standing right there says, honestly, I didn't know the sound of someone's head exploding could make such a loud splitting sound.
I saw his skull explode open. A guard member just walks over and sweeps up the brains and bones as if nothing has happened. And everything goes back to normal. Nobody screams, nobody cries, nobody reacts because it's going to be them next. All of this sounds pretty familiar, no? One could sensibly say that it does sound like the plot of one of the most famous series on Netflix, The Squid Games.
But it's not. This is the real-life case of the brothers' home in South Korea, the true story behind Squid Games. The Squid Games We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to directly support a survivor of today's episode. The episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team.
And we'd also like to thank you guys, our listeners, for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates. As always, full show notes are available at rottenmingopodcast.com. With that being said, today's case involves mentions of internment, essay, trafficking, torture. So please take a break if it gets to be too much. It is on the heavier side.
But I do think it's important to know, especially with the Olympics coming up in L.A. in 2028, This is going to be very important. Another thing to note is this is something that happens all over the world, including in America. There have been recent cases, potentially not to this scale, but this is not an episode to point fingers at one country and throw stones from our glass homes.
Another note, South Korea at the time that this took place was not a democracy. It was run by a dictator. So clearly times have changed. Times are different. I mean, I don't know how different considering the recent president was just impeached.
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Chapter 3: How are the children treated at the Brothers Home?
He does not give anyone who loses the lottery a piece of bread. Did anyone choose bread? One person. Most people chose lottery. And you see most of them even almost hesitating to grab the bread. But ultimately, at the end, they choose the lottery ticket. Interesting. Yeah. Just squigging, right? Everyone wants to.
a chance at money. He approaches. And then once he's through with all of them, he goes to the center of the park and he still has two full bags of bread and a much lower stack of lottery tickets. And he spills, throws all the bread onto the ground. They're packaged in plastic from the bakery. So all the park goers, they start approaching him. They're confused. They want that bread.
Why are you throwing away such good pieces of bread? You could give it to us. The soup man smiles and he stomps on a piece of bread before the man can reach for it. I gave you a chance and you made your choice. Listen, everyone, I am not the one who threw this bread away. It is you, ladies and gentlemen. And with that, he starts stomping all over the bread in the middle of the park. He's grunting.
He's stomping with both of his pristine loafers till the bread explodes out of the plastic packaging and just splatters onto the ground. Then very calmly, he tucks his tie back in, fixes his lapel, smiles and walks off. It all starts with bread in real life as well in South Korea. 14-year-old Choi is walking home from school when this big hand just grips his shoulder, drags him into the alleyway.
And there's a man staring at him, a middle-aged man. Did you steal a piece of bread? What? Did you steal the piece of bread from the store? The adult man rips the backpack off of Troy, rips it open, and there's a piece of bread in there. It's just leftovers I had from school. I didn't steal any bread. Leftovers from school? Where the hell did you get this piece of bread? Tell me the truth.
By the way, this is from Troy's account, firsthand account. Like I said, I had leftovers at school. You're lying to me. Where the fuck did you get this, you little punk? Where did you steal it from? Which store? 14 year old Choi is too ashamed to tell him, sir, I'm poor. Okay. I take home the bread from school so that I can eat it for dinner.
But also why do I need to explain that to this random man in the alleyway? This back and forth goes on for what feels like forever. And this man just keeps smoking cigarettes. He's lighting the cigarette, blowing it in Choi's face, lighting another one. Where did you get the bread? Lighting it, blowing it. Where did you get the bread? Over and over and over again.
Why is this man stopping him out of nowhere, screaming at him about a random piece of half-eaten bread? Things start blurring together, but Choi says he will never forget that moment where he is standing in front of this strange man, fully naked, and there's a cigarette in that man's mouth, and the man grabs his lighter, holds Choi's private parts, and starts holding the lighter underneath it.
What? In the alleyway?
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Chapter 4: What games are played at the Brothers Home?
It's even blocked from the driver's side. They can't see anything. He's panicking. He's trying to ask, hello, is anybody there? Where am I? You can't just do this. Nobody responds. He says he waits until his eyes are adjusted to the dim light and he's rubbing them. And then he sees like a glowing orb, like a tiny little marble, just like glowing. Then another one.
He's squinting and his eyes slowly adjust and he said, children's eyes floating, staring at him. At least a dozen kids slammed into the back of this freezer truck. If you are kidnapped in a windowless van, it is very important that you listen and you try to figure out where they're taking you.
The 20 pairs of what looks like floating eyeballs now, they seem to be arranged by height, but that doesn't make sense because why would the kidnappers kidnap from shortest to tallest? I mean, why would they do that? No, it's because they're going up a hill, a steep hill, and they've been going up it for the past 30 minutes.
It's not even clear if this is an authorized road that they should be driving on. It sounds like branches are hitting and scraping the sides of the van in another 10 minutes, give or take. It's been 30 already. The floating eyes, they slide to one side and the, the truck slams to a halt. The door slams open and the flashlight is shining in directly. Everybody's trying to block it.
It's nighttime outside. They're so confused. And there's a handful of men holding large wooden clubs and They're reminiscent of baseball bats, but they're not. They're more primitive. They look more painful. There's little spots of red on them, like blood. They're solid and they're massive. According to one victim, the men scream, hey, you bastards, what are you fucking waiting for?
Get out and get down now. One by one, they jump out of the white truck, and they're so confused at what they're staring at. It's nighttime, but they know that they're in the middle of the woods. There's trees everywhere. It's dense. It's not even the kind of forest that you do a little hike in. It's very unkept. But that's not even the alarming part.
It's the fact that they're in the middle of the woods. And they're standing in this massive structure, a compound. There's rows and rows of cement buildings, all uniform, uninviting. It feels like some sort of camp with 60 or so buildings. And they're all tiered. It's kind of like a hole in the center. And all the buildings go up around it.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of the blue tracksuits?
There's this little open field in the center that they're getting ushered into. It's like a stadium, right? Yes, like a stadium set up. But instead of bleachers and chairs for you to sit and watch sports, buildings. So think of the scale of this. It's like a military base. That's what they said it feels like in the middle of nowhere. Where is the actual location of this? Busan. Train to Busan?
Yes. The water side city? Yes, it's on the very southern part of South Korea. I actually have family from Busan, yeah. Wow, okay.
Now, the setup of this massive compound is similar to that of an arena which gladiators would fight. So they're all getting ushered into the center field, which is just like flat, sandy land. And the kids that are quick enough to try and plot an escape, they're like, yeah, it's not happening. The walls around this place, around the buildings even, are 30 feet tall.
there's no grip there's nothing that you can hold on to to climb 30 feet tall walls and on top of that there's guards with wooden sticks posted around the perimeter of this place wait so there's it like a circle wall on the very outside so there's a circular flat field and then around it are buildings that go up about 60 different buildings and they go up and up and up and then around those buildings are another 30 foot wall
You're just trapped. It's really like the opening scene of Squid Games where they open the top and you're just stuck in the hole in the middle of the woods. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It feels like that. The kids who aren't quick enough to plot an escape, they don't even know what's happened when they're all dragged to the center and their hair is just getting chopped off. It's the first thing they do. It feels random. It doesn't matter if you have this neat bowl cut or long hair that goes to your waist.
They're grabbing chunks and cutting it almost intentionally to make it look bad. It's weird. It doesn't feel utilitarian because if you have long hair, the best, fastest way to cut it would be to grab it in a ponytail and then chop, right? But they're taking chunks and cutting it at varying heights. It's very weird.
Once the kid's hair looks like they've been run through a cheese grater, they make the kid stand at attention. Stand up, back straight, look here.
there's a bright flash they're taking pictures just like in squid games each person that enters just like in squid games takes a picture that looks more like a mug shot the children are forced to hold a plaque with individualized numbers it'll say like 82 9 21 67 from then on nobody is referred to by their real names when you say children like like how old are they only taking children's their
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Chapter 6: What do survivors say about their experiences?
Then once your platoon is called, you have to March in sync to this one building called the washrooms. So this is, you got seven year olds that have never done this before. They don't know why they're here, where their parents are and they have to March in sync. Otherwise they get beat. In the washroom, you get three seconds of water. Your face wash, salt. Your toothpaste, salt.
Your toothbrush, your finger. Three seconds of wash time? Three seconds of water. So you scrub the salt all over your skin and you use your index finger to rub your teeth and gums with salt. And then they will only turn on the water for three seconds per group. To wash your face, mouth, and everything in three seconds.
Yes. But if one child falls behind, even if they were just brought in last night, they get dragged to the corner of the cold washroom and they're beaten with sticks. And nobody says anything. Nobody tries to stop the guards from beating the new kid because they don't know what's going on. They get beaten until they're in a fetal position on the cold washroom floor begging for mercy.
And it's very clear why nobody stops them. Because if you look at anybody in a blue suit, all of them have pestering wounds everywhere. So it's very clear to them, hey, if I try to stop you from getting beat, nothing changes. The only thing that changes is that instead of you getting beat, we'll both get beat. That's it. That's the way of life in this compound.
One survivor says, violence always comes first. Words are unnecessary, even if they say, stand up straight. They don't mean stand up straight like a normal citizen. They want military-level attention from a five-year-old. How many of us would know how to do that? If we're even a little bit slow to react, they kick and hit us.
Every day, the guards will ask the terrified tracksuit wearers something along the lines of, Okay, now do you want to play a game? What? They have games at brother's home. They're forced to play it?
yes now squid games the premise of the show is everyone in the game will participate in six different games over six days those who win all six games will receive a handsome cash prize interestingly enough like i said all the games are childhood games they're not particularly the most mentally or physically taxing at least not on the surface but sometimes it's luck like the dalgona game where you have to cut out the figure in the hard candy
Or theoretically, you have some very simple games like red light, green light, where you have to run or walk towards this finish line when the doll in front of you is screaming green light. And then it turns around and says red light. And you better stop moving because you will get shot if you're still moving. If you lose your balance, if you trip, if you fall, you're going to get shot.
Or recently in season two, they have this one game where the contestants get teamed up into groups of five. They have to run across a track and play five separate mini games that have to be completed before going on to the next mini game. So it's mini game, you run, run, run, mini game, run, run, run. And you have to complete this whole track within five minutes.
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Chapter 7: How does this real-life story reflect societal issues?
Now, the premise of this though, the hard part is that they're all tied together. The five people, your right leg is gonna be tied to your partner's left leg and your left leg to the other partner's right leg. And if one of you trips, you're all gonna trip. And it's all about being physically connected because if you trip, you lose so much time and you're gonna die.
The games in the brothers home are just as intense. And I would say just as high stakes, if not more so than Squid Games. Obviously, if you don't even factor in the fact that Squid Games is fictional. But the guards, they instruct the children and others at the compound, all 3,500 of them create the Han river bridge right now.
Each 50 people are told to line up side by side and then they have to turn. So now your face is facing the back of somebody's head and someone's looking at the back of your head. Then you get down onto a pushup position and And then in unison, each person has to lift their legs and rest them on the shoulders and back of the person behind them.
So your legs are being supported by the persons behind you. And then your hands are on the ground. It's maybe three people. It's easy. I don't even know if it's easy with three people. Maybe 10. It's easy, but it's 50, a human centipede formed by 50 humans, all leaning on top of each other.
And the bridge has to be held for at least like half an hour long enough for all the guards to take turns walking across the quote unquote Han river bridge. What? Is that something that just a guard made up?
It's like a childhood game. But you don't do it with 50 people. You do it with a few people. And the stakes of the game are if you fall, you all giggle. But if you fall here, you get beat and sometimes to the point of death. And this is something that created by the guards or by the higher up for entertainment? It seems like the guards. For fun?
Yes, for fun. The survivor, Han, who authored the book, says, we had to use all of our strength in our arms and waist to maintain balance so the team leaders, the guards, wouldn't fall. If they fell, everybody goes down. Onto the floor, they're just laying there stomped on, beaten with wooden bats. I mean, none of these activities are real games.
They're technically games because a lot of them are childhood games. But other than that, it's not a game. A game would imply there's a winner and a loser. In Squid Games, sure, it could be argued that most games don't have a clear winner. But at the very end, the winner walks away with tens of millions of dollars.
The game stakes at Brothers Home is if you win, you get out with maybe just a few wounds from that game. If you lose, you could lose your life. The so-called games are just straight up punishments. The guards would ask everyone if they wanted to play games, but like I said, they're not games. They'll stand and gather everybody in the bunk rooms and scream, Hiroshima.
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