Squid Game ‘played for real’ in South Korea
The wealthy family of a sadistic overlord behind South Korea’s real-life Squid Game has been discovered living in Australia.
The wealthy family of a sadistic overlord behind South Korea’s real-life Squid Game – a house of horrors where people kidnapped off the streets fought against each other to survive – has been discovered living in Australia.
At least 500 inmates are known to have died at the sinister facility in the port city of Busan, where brutal punishments – called “games” by overseers – included savage beatings and being made to hang upside down from bunk beds.
The family of the now-dead camp dictator are fighting demands to return to South Korea to face questioning about the source of its wealth, including the ownership of a $15m golf driving range and sports complex in Sydney.
The story of the man’s escape and the family’s rise to riches and power in Australia has been unearthed by journalists Mary Ann Jolley and Susan Kim, whose documentary airs on Al Jazeera.
Survivors of horrific abuse at the so-called “Brothers Home” have told the filmmakers they want family members to face questions over their assets and knowledge of what occurred.
The facility operated from 1976 to 1987 under a government policy of “purifying” the streets to keep vagrants out of sight in the lead-up to the 1988 Seoul Olympics. But hundreds of people who were simply impoverished or drunk in public were rounded up.
The more people the “home” took in, the more subsidies it received from the government and the more money the family pocketed for itself.
Former inmates told Jolley they were starved and used as slave labour.
Survivor Choi Seung-woo was just 14 when he was taken to the compound, where he alleges he was enslaved, raped and brutally beaten for five years.
“The mental and physical damage that was inflicted on me was something I never imagined,” Choi tells the program. “Everything I dreamt of, was destroyed.”
A former soldier and boxer, Park In-keun, headed up Brothers Home and ruled with an iron fist, forming “platoons” in which inmates were forced to compete against and abuse other inmates to survive.
Punishments included “the motor vehicle game” where the torturer would yell ‘left indicator’ and then hit them in the eye until it was bruised and red; and the “Hiroshima game” where victims were forced to hang upside down for long periods from the rails of their bunk beds.
Those who fought against their incarceration were forced to take antipsychotic medication, viciously bashed, kicked, and even killed.
Many have drawn parallels with Squid Game, the smash hit Netflix series in which homeless and out-of-luck South Koreans are plucked from the street to risk their lives competing in a series of deadly games.
Officially 551 people died at Brothers Home, but it is widely believed the true number is far higher
Park In-keun surrounded himself with loyal family members. Brother-in-law Lim Young-soon was a director of the home. All claimed to be devout Christians.
At the pinnacle of Brothers Home was a church where Park and others allegedly held “people’s trials” where those who tried to escape were savagely beaten in front of thousands of inmates.
Park was arrested in 1987 and charged with embezzlement and illegal confinement, but was acquitted of the illegal confinement and never held to account for the human rights abuses at Brothers Home.
Two years later he was making a new life in Australia with his family, establishing its own church in Sydney, and in 1995 bought a golf driving range and sports complex in the outer suburb of Milperra for $1.4m.
It even imported its own labour from South Korea.
Former Brothers Home inmate Lim Bong-keun was brought to Sydney on non-work visitor visas to work at the driving range. He tells Jolley he worked from before dawn till after midnight, six days a week, only to be beaten by Park when he visited.
“He used a golf club to ruthlessly beat me,” he says, “But if I left this place, I had no money to go anywhere. Where would I go?”
The former worker claims he only ever received $160 for eight years of work.
Park was again charged in 2014, along with his son Park Chun-kwang, for embezzling money from one of the family’s social welfare centres in South Korea. His son was imprisoned for three years, but Park’s charges were suspended because he had dementia. He died two years later.
After decades in which survivors battled for justice, in May South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission began four years of hearings into the home.
Survivors want Lim Young-soon to answer questions in South Korea over the atrocities.
“When we started to delve into the documents from the original 1987 investigation into the home and talk to survivors it became clear that Lim Young-soon had played a critical role at the home as both a director and pastor,” says Jolley.
When the Al Jazeera team first contacted Lim Young-soon at his Sydney headquarters, he agreed to an interview but then cancelled. His excuse: he was worried about the impact the interview would have on the family’s church.
He scoffed at the idea that there were any victims of abuse at the Brothers Home and denied he was ever a director of the home, despite being listed on official documents and minutes from numerous board meetings listing him as attending as a director.
When Jolley and her crew approached Lim Young-soon at the family’s church after a Saturday dawn service, he refused to respond to survivors’ allegations, slamming the car door and speeding away.
Park Jee-hee, Park In-keun’s youngest daughter, who now along with her husband, Alex Min Kyung-woo, own the Milperra golf driving range and sports complex, also refused to talk to Jolley.
The family’s assets are in survivors’ sights, especially the golf driving range and sports complex. Still held under the family company, Job’s Town, the couple are now the sole directors of the company and, therefore, the sole owners of the asset. Listed for sale since 2019 for $15m, it brings them a rental income of more than $400,000 a year.
For decades, survivors have fought for justice. Most struggle emotionally, physically and financially. Many like Choi Seung-woo’s younger brother, who was also incarcerated at the home, have taken their own lives.
“The government, as well as those who ran the facility all need to be punished. How could they do this?” Choi asks.
The Weekend Australian requested interviews with the family but received no response.
South Korea’s House of Horrors can be seen on Al Jazeera’s 101 East.
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