Episode 100:
The Twisted Family Secret: Why Did They Favor Only the Second Daughter?

Standing over their seven-year-old son's corpse, the parents say, "We can't ruin our lives because of him." The wife nods frantically in agreement. "Of course. What about our daughter? Hurry and deal with him. He's disgusting and I don't want to see it."

You'd think they'd dispose of the body. But no. Moments later, they were tearing into fried chicken. They were so full, they just fell asleep. Their dead son was left in the tub.

In December 2015, South Korea was gripped by an unusually high number of child abuse cases, most notably one in Incheon where an eleven-year-old girl had been held captive and abused in her own home for two years by her father, his girlfriend, and the girlfriend's friends. The case only came to light after the girl escaped barefoot down a gas pipe — investigators later discovered that her teacher had tried to report her disappearance from school months earlier, but was turned away for not being her legal guardian, a gap in Korean law that let parents pull children from school with no oversight whatsoever. In the fallout, the Ministry of Education launched a nationwide investigation into every child with a long-term school absence — and that search surfaced an even darker case.

A Boy Erased

In mid-January 2016, Bucheon police received a call asking them to locate a boy named Choi, missing for four years. He had last been enrolled in first grade in March 2012, at age seven, when he stabbed a classmate with a pencil and scribbled on her clothes — an incident his parents, Choi Kyungwon and Han Soyoung, both thirty at the time, responded to with total indifference, skipping the disciplinary meeting entirely. By the end of April 2012 they'd pulled him from school altogether, claiming they would homeschool him; his teacher visited the house twice and was never able to see him or speak with his parents, and official letters urging his return went unanswered. By August 2012, he was placed on a watch list and, for four years, essentially forgotten.

When a school supervisor finally followed up, Han Soyoung's response was chilling in its blankness: she couldn't recall when her son had left, or even his current age. Police requested a welfare check and discovered the family had relocated from Bucheon to Bupyeong, Incheon, back in March 2013. When officers searched the new home, there was no trace of the boy anywhere — not even in the memories of neighbors, several of whom said they had no idea the couple had a son at all.

What Was in the Freezer

A search of the house turned up nothing suspicious until an investigator opened the refrigerator and found something wrapped tightly in a pillowcase — the severed head of the missing boy, his eyes sealed shut with tape. The case instantly became a homicide investigation. A full search of the property never turned up the rest of his body — it had been disposed of elsewhere.

Arrested initially for violating the Child Welfare Act, the couple offered an account they'd clearly rehearsed: they claimed their son, diagnosed with ADHD, had fallen and struck his head during a bathtime struggle in October 2012, lost consciousness with no visible injury, and simply never recovered despite their "care" over the following month before dying of what they described as natural causes. Terrified of losing custody of their five-year-old daughter if arrested for the death, they said, they panicked and covered it up — buying a knife, an electric saw, and a blender, dismembering the body, and storing the pieces in the freezer for four years, carrying the remains with them even through their move to Bupyeong. When a caller finally asked after the boy's whereabouts, they moved most of the remains into duffel bags left at an acquaintance's house under the guise of moving supplies, keeping only the head — apparently judged the most incriminating piece — back in the freezer.

The Autopsy That Broke the Story

Investigators didn't buy it. If the boy had died from a single head injury, they reasoned, autopsy findings should show a concentrated brain hemorrhage — instead, the bleeding was diffuse and located beneath the scalp rather than in the brain itself, consistent with repeated blunt trauma rather than one fall. Worse, none of his internal organs were recovered at all; his body had been cut open and his organs removed entirely, a detail that enraged even the lead detective. Under sustained pressure, the couple's story finally collapsed.

Choi Kyungwon and Han Soyoung had married in 2005 after two years together, both carrying deep psychological damage from abusive childhoods of their own — he struggled with anger and impulse control, she with limited communication and cognitive ability. He spent his days playing video games and drinking, occasionally selling game currency and running a fraudulent website advertising illegal goods like homemade explosives and cyanide; she worked at a call center. Their son, conceived before the marriage, was neglected from infancy — left untreated through a severe ear infection as a baby, and reported by a daycare director for scavenging food from the trash, a report police dismissed as a private family matter. By first grade he weighed just 18 kilograms, the average weight of a four-year-old, regularly beaten by his father for over an hour at a stretch and neglected by his mother throughout.

One Child Favored, One Erased

Strikingly, the couple doted on their younger daughter — funding her education despite financial hardship, taking her to indoor playgrounds, rushing her to the doctor for minor illnesses, all while their son lay dying, untreated, in the next room.

Credit card records eventually pinned the boy's death to November 3, 2012. The night before, Choi Kyungwon came home drunk and beat his son for two hours before calling his wife in to look at their collapsed child — the couple reportedly laughed at the sight, then shared a bottle of soju and went to sleep as if nothing had happened. The next morning, with the boy unconscious and barely breathing, Han Soyoung got dressed, took their daughter out for a meal, and posed for photos, while Choi Kyungwon beat the boy again — this time, fatally.

Fried Chicken and a Blender

That evening the couple discussed the practical fallout of getting caught for child abuse, agreed they "couldn't ruin their lives" over it, and sent their daughter to stay with Han Soyoung's parents so they could deal with the body alone. Before starting, they ordered fried chicken and ate, deciding they were too tired to begin that night and putting it off until the next day — when their shopping list for dismemberment tools also included kimbap, coffee, snacks, and gum for themselves.

Choi Kyungwon dragged the body to the bathtub and dismembered it, pausing only to tape his son's half-open eyes shut — not out of guilt, by his own account, but discomfort. Han Soyoung boiled a strong-smelling stew all day to mask the odor while the pieces were bagged and frozen; scraps too small to bag were mixed into kitchen waste and thrown out. Worried the organs would decompose fastest, the couple cut the body open, removed every organ including the heart, ground them by hand in a blender, and flushed the remains down toilets at home and at a public restroom.

Final Thoughts

For four months they lived alongside the frozen remains, using the same freezer for food, before hiring a full-service moving company for their relocation to Bupyeong — professional movers who unknowingly transferred the freezer's contents, including hidden body parts, without ever suspecting anything, reassured by Choi Kyungwon's confidence that "they'll just think it was an accident." After the move, the couple never mentioned their son again, and Han Soyoung told her daughter's new elementary school teacher she was their only child. Psychological evaluations of both parents came back normal. Their younger daughter, referred to here as Ga-on, was placed in a child protection facility rather than with relatives once her parents were arrested — raising its own painful question about whether the "favoritism" she'd received had ever really been safety at all.

At trial, prosecutors charged both parents with murder, desecration of a corpse, and child abuse; the couple submitted 14 letters of apology in hopes of leniency, none of which reportedly expressed genuine remorse for their son. Choi Kyungwon was sentenced to 30 years in prison as the primary perpetrator, and Han Soyoung to 20 years as an accomplice. Both appealed, but the Supreme Court upheld the verdicts, finalizing their sentences.