Unsolved cases

Frog boys

The frog boys were a group of five boys who disappeared in Daegu, South Korea on March 26, 1991.

The five boys were between 9 and 13 years old.

Woo Cheol-won (aged 13)
Jo Ho-Yeon (aged 12)
Kim Young-Gyu (aged 11)
Park Chan-in (aged 10)
Kim Jong-Sik (aged 9)

All five boys were from the Dalseo District of Daegu and attended the same elementary school. A sixth child, 10-year-old Kim Tae-ryong, left the group to go home and eat, having missed breakfast that morning.

March 26, 1991, was a public holiday in South Korea for local elections, and the boys decided to spend the day searching for salamander eggs in the streams of Mount Waryong in Dalseo on the western outskirts of Daegu.

The boys never went home, and after they were reported missing, their story made national headlines. President Roh Tae-woo sent 300,000 police and military troops to search for the boys, with the searches shown on live TV. Several of the boys' parents quit their jobs to look for their children around the country. Mount Waryong was searched over 500 times.

On September 26, 2002, a man searching for acorns discovered their bodies on Mount Waryong in an area that had been searched. He first reported the remains via an anonymous phone call. Initially, the police said they thought the boys had died of hypothermia. But their parents rejected that conclusion and demanded a full investigation.
The families questioned the conclusion that the boys had simply died after getting lost due to the oddities of their clothes being found tied in knots and the discovery of their bodies a short distance from the village in an area the boys knew well.

Forensic experts found the skulls of three of the children showed blunt-force trauma, possibly from metal tools. Police said the children could have been killed by someone who "may have flown into a rage."

In 2006, the statute of limitations expired on the case. But police said they will continue their investigation to get answers.

The police said that they are looking into the possibility that the boys were killed by bullies, possibly around their own age.

The Frog Boys incident has been the subject of two films: Come Back, Frog Boys (1992), and Children (2011). Several songs also refer to the case.

Unfortunately, this case remains,

Unsolved