Pastor Kim, who embezzled 1 billion won from North Korean defectors… Kim Poong laments, “Lost humanity” (Detectives’ Trade Secret)

A sad story that sent a family into hell has been revealed.

On the episode of ‘Detectives’ Trade Secret’ that aired on the 3rd, this request that made even the ‘veteran detectives’ Baekho Detective Team stick out their tongues, calling it a ‘shocking case’ was introduced. The client said, “I want to find my son from whom I was separated 25 years ago, but I don’t even know his name or what his face is,” and asked us to help find his son. In order to extract as much information as possible, the detective team looked into the client’s life story.

First, the client opened up about his life as an orphan when he was young. After his parents passed away at a young age, the client, who was left alone at the age of 12, lived in a sewing factory, a restaurant kitchen, and a teahouse kitchen, suffering from all kinds of violence and poverty. Then, she was introduced to a man through a matchmaker, and the client, who wanted to start a family, decided to meet him. However, after only meeting him three times, she was forced to register her marriage, and her hellish married life began.

According to the client, her mother-in-law had already paid the matchmaker a referral fee, so she took the client to the matchmaker and forced her to register her marriage in order to get the marriage done quickly. After that, the client said, “Everything I did, from the moment I slept, was monitored by my in-laws, and after I got pregnant, I was threatened with ‘get an abortion’ because I suspected that she was having an affair.” In the end, she was forcibly taken away by her mother-in-law when she was nine months pregnant and got a divorce. The client recalled the painful memory of giving birth to a child through induced labor a week later, whom her in-laws had tried to have erased.

After regaining consciousness after giving birth, the client searched for the child, but the hospital staff only told her that the child was a son, and answered that they “didn’t know” about his whereabouts. Even when they went to her in-laws, the child was nowhere to be seen, and she didn‘t even hear him crying. 25 years had passed, but the client was heartbroken, saying she had never forgotten her child for even a moment. The client, who was diagnosed with very poor health, asked for help before she died, saying, “I really wanted to protect him, but I couldn’t, so I feel resentful. I just want to see how he‘s living.”

The Baekho Detectives went on an investigation following the information about her ex-husband in her divorce documents. First, the detectives searched the port area based on a clue that her ex-husband had worked on a ship in the past. As a result, they obtained new information that her ex-husband was still working on a ship and had remarried and then divorced. In addition, they captured information that the eldest of his two sons was similar in age to the son the client was looking for. The Baekho Detectives’ ‘Finding the Son Lost 25 Years Ago’ case continues, where they solve the mystery with a single clue.

Meanwhile, the ‘Case Note - Marriage is Crazy’ corner of the true story reconstruction, ‘Brainy Sexy Man’ and pop columnist Kim Tae-hoon, has appeared.

The client in this story maintained a happy married life thanks to his devoted wife. The wife was so devoted to the client‘s family that she even volunteered to take care of her sick mother-in-law. However, one day, the client suddenly lost consciousness and collapsed, and when she came to, she had wounds all over her body that she didn’t know about. The wife reported her husband‘s drunken violence and mental disorder.

In the end, the client was diagnosed with depression, alcoholism, and a high-risk group for self-harm impulses and was involuntarily hospitalized. Then one day, the client was able to return home thanks to the wife’s request for discharge. However, the wife had already taken the client‘s ID, cash, bankbook, and seal and disappeared. The client asked the detective agency to find out why this happened and where his wife was.

After tracking it down, the detective found out that the wife was giving all the money she had embezzled from her husband to someone called ‘Pastor Kim’. As suspicions grew that the wife had fallen into a cult, it was revealed that Pastor Kim was a ‘broker’ who helped defectors and that the wife was also a defector.

The wife was defrauded by the broker when she defected from North Korea and left her three-year-old daughter in China, and they were separated forever. The wife, who was trying to live with her daughter in her heart, heard news of her daughter through her close defector sister and Pastor Kim. And in order to raise the 100 million won to bring her daughter to Korea, the client manipulated the situation and embezzled the assets like a madman.

However, the daughter they had found was actually a completely unrelated child. The two were vicious scammers who had already defrauded 1 billion won worth of defectors by deceiving them in the same way they had done to the wife. When the wife found out about this, the scammers had already disappeared. In the end, both the wife and the client were left in their own hell.

Kim Poong was horrified by the vicious scammers, saying, “Humanity is disappearing.” Kim Tae-hoon said, “There are many people who risk their lives to rescue and help North Korean defectors. They say, ‘Don’t give them money if they suddenly ask for a lot of money.’” He advised, “There are cases where people abandon or report their families in North Korea in order to get a lot of money, so it can actually be dangerous.”

The real-life detective drama, ‘Detectives’ Trade Secrets,’ airs every Monday at 9:30 p.m. on Channel A.

Jung Hee-yeon, Donga.com reporter shine2562@donga.com

This article is automatically translated using Google AI. If you notice any inaccuracies, please let us know at allkstar@donga.com.