January 29, 2014 • 32 mins
Crown Prince Sado of Korea -- sometimes called Korea's "Coffin King" -- has been described as insane, depraved and sadistic, but when you examine his short life, it's more complicated than a list of acts of savagery (though there are plenty of those).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Uh and
today will be fulfilling the wishes of people who have
written us requesting more sad royal stories. We got one
(00:23):
of those just yesterday and uh and this one is
um comes from Us, comes to us from Korea, and
it's another episode of royal madness. Uh. And it's quite
sad and interesting, particularly as viewed through the modern lens.
But in the seventeen hundreds, for context, Korea was ruled
at the time by the Chose chose On dynasty. May
(00:46):
or may not be butchering that. I will do my
very best. I do not speak Korean. Surprise, yea. We
have consulted with native Korean speakers, but again what comes
out of our mouth may not be properly paraded. We're
doing every and I always kind of want to have
this disclaimer about like physically, when you learn to pronounce
phonemes as a child, your brain loses that ability to
(01:08):
make your mouth make phonemes that aren't part of languages
you learn as a child, and so it's not just
a matter of it being difficult, like your mouth doesn't
move that way. And I have the um the thing
of my secondary language, which I am not fluent in
anymore but was very close to you when I was younger,
was French, and so even when I'm tackling Asian languages,
(01:30):
that kind of comes in. It's very strange, and I apologize.
So in any case, that dynasty had been in power
since thet since so it was a very long lasting dynasty.
But today's topic sits right in the mid seventeen hundreds,
and it covers the story of a man who is
often called Korea's coffin king, and you will find out
(01:52):
why as we go on. It's uh, quite interesting slash horrifying.
Crown Prince Sado of Korea has been described as insane, depraved, sadistic,
But when you really examine his short life, it's much
more complicated than a list of acts of savagery, even
though there are plenty of really horrifying events. So, starting
(02:17):
at the very beginning, he was born on February seventeen
thirty five, so his birthday is coming up, uh, and
he was the second son of King Yong Joe, and
Sado's mother was the King's favorite concubine, Lady Sonui. King Yan.
Joe's first son, Crown Prince Hyo Jang, had died seven
(02:37):
years before Soto was born at the age of nine.
The King's concerts had given birth to other children, but
they were all girls. So when Sado came into the world,
he filled the empty air slot. Yeah, that was a
big concern as you, as often happened, understand, there's a
lot of panic, and so there had been no air
(02:57):
for a little bit of time, uh, and so there
there was much rejoicing when Soto was born. However, it
said that the king had a little bit of a
temper uh, and that Soto was quite afraid of him
from the time that the prince was very very tiny,
and it made him be behave in a sort of
timid and awkward way when he was in his father's presence.
(03:18):
But unfortunately that just made Young Joe kind of resentful
of his son and kind of short, especially short tempered
with him, and by all accounts, the relationship between the
two really did not have any sort of nurturing element. However,
Soto was completely devoted to young Joe, and you know,
really revered his father. He apparently didn't have a much
(03:41):
better relationship with his mother either. Lady Sannui was so
focused on keeping his upbringing in line with what the
king wanted that even though she spent a lot of
time with her son, he continued to be kind of
fearful of her too. Yeah, he was also very devoted
to his mother, but she really was rules first mothering
second with him is how you'll often hear her described, uh,
(04:04):
and then we're gonna jump. It sounds like we're jumping,
but we're not. It's not. Yes. Uh so on a
seventeen forty four. And it's interesting because even though we
have the dates of his marriage and his birth, the
age he was when he got married is reported differently
as eight, nine or ten. But as we know with history,
(04:26):
sometimes dates aren't always correct either. So he was still
very very young. He was eight years old, uh. And
he was betrothed and married to a girl his same age, uh,
Lady Hong from the Hong family, And she was the
daughter of a scholar who had impressed who had an
impressive royal lineage but no money to speak of. Uh.
(04:48):
But he had really impressed the King with his his
knowledge and his ability to teach. And in her memoir,
Lady Hong describes being chosen as the Prince's wife as
being a really the anxiety ridden experience, and she ponders
whether she hadn't had a premonition of the myriad trials
and tribulations I would go through in the palace. Her
(05:10):
parents actually hoped that she would not be chosen. Uh,
And even though she describes the Queen and the consorts
and princesses as being extremely kind and welcoming to her,
she was completely overwhelmed by the whole process, as you
can imagine a child would be when they suddenly become
betrothed to a future king. Yes, and while they were
(05:30):
married at this point, their relationship was really more like
that of being childhood playmates at first, given their very
young age, they didn't even live in the same house.
After seeing how seriously the new bride took her role
in serving the royal family, Lady Sandwi encouraged Lady Hyagion,
which became her name once she joined the royal family
(05:51):
to behave more like a child and less concerned with
all these rules and palace propriety and that sort of
thing and of note from Lady hig Young's memoirs is
the relationship between her father and the Crown Prince. So,
because he was a scholar, that was fairly welcome in
(06:12):
the court. Although he didn't spend a lot of time there,
he did, especially once he became the father in law
to the future king, spent some time with Sado, and
they apparently were extremely fond of one another, and in
some ways, uh, Lady hig Young's father seemed to fill
the fatherly role that was missing in Sado's relationship with
(06:33):
his own father, the king. So they really, uh had
a pretty in depth and very uh real connection. It
wasn't just a matter of you know, yes, I serve
you you're a future king. They really connected on an
emotional level. A year and a half after he got married,
Sado got really seriously ill, and shortly after that, in
(06:56):
January of seventy six, the Prince and his wife were
to a palace closer to his mother, Lady Son, who
he's home. Even after his illness, which was never clearly identified,
even after that had passed, he had this unusual and
peculiar behavior. Yeah, there's not a lot of knowledge about
(07:16):
what this illness was except that it was very serious
and he began to act very strangely after during it
and then afterwards. But as he approached his teenage years,
he really became very serious about his studies. He also
became adept at swordsmanship and archery, and he loved to read.
So part of that is his connection with his father
(07:37):
in law. So he got along well with his sisters.
He was particularly close to the sister that was least
favored by the king, probably because they had kind of
this mutual thing that they bonded over, and he was
very close to the Queen dowager, still very devoted to
his mother, even though their relationship wasn't exactly treadly, but
things would appear to have been on a pretty good
(07:58):
track at this point. However, Sado's continued awkwardness around the
king led to the prince and his bride being moved
from the place they were living to be further away
from the family, because the king presumably was not terribly
fond of seeing him all that often, uh, And that
happened in April of seventy seven, and as a consequence,
(08:18):
they were kind of isolated. So he would see his family,
but not nearly so often, and he was missing out
on kind of some of the social interaction that he
had been really kind of warming up to and enjoying
up to that point. At the age of fourteen, after
the Prince's coming of age ceremony, it was decided that
the marriage of Sato and Lady Hya Young should take
(08:39):
on a more adult nature and stop being so childlike.
So it's really here that they started to live as
husband and wife and the relationship took on a sexual context.
And the following year, Sato and Lady h Young had
their first child, Louizo, but the baby lived only to
the age of two UH, and the royal family grieved
(09:02):
really deeply over the loss of this child, and Soto's wife,
is a consequence, felt a great deal of guilt over
the matter. She felt like she had failed the royal family.
Less than a year after the baby's death, Prince Stong
Joe was born in seventeen fifty two, and around this time,
and possibly triggered by a case of the measles UH,
(09:22):
the odd behavior that Soto had exhibited since his illness
as a young child took on a much more serious
and a much darker tone. He started having terrible nightmares.
He believed he could see apparitions, including the god of
thunder Uh. He became fearful of the sky and of
the weather at this point, Uh, and he thought that
(09:44):
his father was going to blame him and be angry
with him anytime there was a thunderstorm or other inclement weather.
During this time, the king, who was getting on in years,
also started to act pretty strangely. He would wash his
ear years after he heard something unpleasant. He'd wash his
mouth and ears and change his clothes after talking to
(10:05):
his son, And he became kind of obsessed with what
door he used when he was coming and going, based
on whether he thought the duties he was going to
or coming from were pleasant or unpleasant. Possibly to the
detriment of Sado's mental health, King Young Joe started sending
Sado on in his place to the more unpleasant duties
(10:27):
that he didn't want to do himself, like watching the
torture of criminals. Yeah. So the king, presumably in part
because he was getting older uh, was having these sort
of strange behaviors. But as a consequence, Sado, who already
had all manner of strange behaviors, was then getting exposed
to a lot of unpleasant and very stressful events. And
(10:49):
then several events happened beginning around seventeen fifty three that
further eroded the already really strained relationship between the father
and the son. First, both of the men had affairs
with court ladies beginning in seventeen fifty three, and these
affairs resulted in pregnancies. The woman who Sado fathered children
with had two sons, while the king's concubine had two
(11:12):
daughters uh and because sons were seen as more important
than daughters, King Young Joe was furious about Sato's new children,
and to further complicate matters, the brother of the king's
concubine was feeding the king regular reports about Sado's ongoing
bizarre behavior. When Sado's mother, Lady Sanui, fell ill in
(11:34):
late seventeen fifty five, the prince went to her bedside,
only to be greeted by the King, who was just bellowing.
Sado is so frightened by his father's rage that he
jumped out a window and ran back to his palace.
And around this time Sado developed a stammer uh and
the stress of his strained relationship with his father was
(11:54):
the likely cause of it. When King Yan Joe made
a visit to the Prince in the summer of seventeen
fifty six, his stammering and his confused behavior led his
father to think that he was drunk, so he yelled
at Satto and left him so upset that the Prince
became violent and started chasing the servants. During his fit,
the palace caught fire, and the prince's wife, who at
(12:16):
this point was very pregnant, barely managed to escape with
their young son. So that's really when things start getting
kind of violent and scary, and then it escalates from there.
So from this point on, the Prince's behavior became increasingly disturbing,
and to deal with any negative emotion he turned to
(12:36):
beating the servants as an outlet. And meanwhile, his wife
was struggling with her own depression after the births of
two daughters, her last isolation period that was normal for
um her to have after a pregnancy, she really never
came out of that quite the same. She really had
(12:57):
a pretty severe what some would say at this point
is probably postpartum depression. When the Queen and the Queen
dowager died one right after the other several eunuchs of
the palace were just beaten mercilessly by Prince Sado, And
after he attended these women's funerals, his apparent madness just escalated. Uh.
(13:17):
So we're going to do a brief list of some
of his horrible acts. We could really go on for hours,
but we're going to hit the high points. They're not
really high points. Now. This is the part of the
outline where I am Holly and said, I feel like
he's the inspiration for Geoffrey Barrathian. Uh And there's I
(13:39):
don't know if there's merit to that in terms of
him actually being the inspiration, but there's certainly merit to
that connection. So early on in his descent into madness,
he murdered a palace eunuch and he impaled the head
on a stick, and then he carried this horrible monstrosity
around the palace and showed it off to ladies of
(14:01):
the court, presumably because he enjoyed their response. You don't know.
He also murdered maids kind of on a whim, and
did so often, and he became increasingly sexually aggressive with
court ladies, and if they denied his advances, he would
force himself upon them and became uh really a serial rapist.
(14:25):
He took a new mistress. He was a seamstress, and
he paid for her to live in lavishly appointed apartments,
which infuriated his father. The seamstress bore him a son,
but he badly injured her during an episode of just
kind of madness, and she wound up dying from her wounds.
He would also leave the palace in disguise and walk
(14:46):
among the commoners. And we really don't know what happened
during these walkabouts because we only know it from the
side of his wife's memoirs, where she just found out
that he was leaving the palace, but she nobody was
following him or taking account of what he was doing
while he was out. Anytime there was a death in
the family or some kind of stressful event, it just
(15:08):
became expected that there would be a trail of bodies afterwards.
And he's actually quoted by his wife as saying, it
relieves my pent up anger to kill people or animals
when I'm feeling depressed or on edge. Just I mean,
you can't get more clear and admission of what you're doing.
And another manifestation of his his mental illness was this
(15:32):
full on obsession with clothes. He would demand to see
dozens of new sets of clothing in order to choose
just one outfit. But that's the mild end of it. Yeah,
he would sometimes burn outfits as a spirit offering. Again,
he was still having these visions that various specters and
spirits were coming to him, and if his attendant made
(15:54):
any error while he was dressing him, Sato would become
deeply upset and have to remove every piece of thing
he was wearing and start over. And he came to
believe that his clothes would please or displease the spirits
and cause good or bad weather. Accordingly, so he still
had this weird connection to the weather, and he thought
that he was somehow causing it based on whether he
(16:18):
pleased the spirits with his choices. As his obsession with
clothing got stronger and stronger, so did other aspects of
his mental illness. He was seeing people who weren't there.
His manners, which used to be impeccable, fell away completely,
and he started swearing at his mother and in public,
and becoming verbally abusive to children. He also became began
(16:40):
drinking heavily, and alcohol was forbidden in Korean court, so
this was really a serious break from acceptable behavior. Sexually,
he became increasingly voracious, and he was organizing orgies. He
even started pursuing one of his sisters, although she continually
rebuked his advances and cursed him and being. In seventeen
sixty two, things got really really bad. Basically every servant
(17:05):
or non royal in the palace was in constant danger. Uh.
It's said that several bodies had to be carried away
every single day. Uh So physicians, translators, maids, workmen, eunuchs.
There is no clear account of how many people were killed,
but he killed or maimed in some cases, basically anyone
(17:25):
he wanted to. During this time, he also was apparently
not lucid. He appeared to be almost unconscious of the
violent behavior that was going on, and unaware of his
wife and children. He would have moments of clarity though,
where he seemed genuinely devoted to them. Yeah, and he
was aware that he had done these things. But in
those fits of insanity, it was like that all fell
(17:49):
away and all he could focus on was the violence. Uh.
There were accusations of innumerable inappropriate behaviors, of course, But
the thing that really seemed to put his behavior passed
the point of tolerability for the King and the Queen
was his ceaseless stalking of his younger sister. He continued
(18:09):
to try to seduce her. He even tried to break
into her apartments to get to her when she was
trying to stay away from him. And this, combined with
the ever growing pile of bodies and more and more
accusations and word of his behavior getting out among the people,
finally meant that the royal family had had enough. Uh.
(18:29):
And before we get to this next bit, we're gonna
pause and have a word from our sponsor. Okay, now
we're going to get back to uh kind of grim territory.
How all of this horrible gore and aim to a close.
So on July four sixty two, King Young Joe summoned
(18:51):
to the prince, and when the prince arrived before his father,
the King stripped him of his title and his crown
and brought out a heavy rice storage box. Sato was
put in the box and the lid was shut, and
that is the last anyone saw him alive. He stayed there, Uh,
and on July twelfth, which was eight days after he
(19:13):
was put in, Sado died at the age of seven.
His servants and his attendants were also put to death,
and I feel like we should briefly mention that depending
on the translation you read of his wife's memoirs, some
say that he was buried, some that's a little less clear.
Some suggest that he sat in a courtyard. Either way,
(19:33):
it's pretty horrifying. It's a he did many horrible things,
but that's also a very horrible thing. And this extreme
act was according to the prince's widow, the idea of
the king's wife, so Sato's own mother, and she is
quoted as saying the following to King Young Joe. Since
the prince's illness has become quite critical and his case
(19:54):
is hopeless, it is only proper that you should protect
yourself and the royal grandson in order to keep the
kingdom at peace. I request that you eliminate the prince,
even though such a suggestion is outrageous and ascend against humanity.
It would be terrible for a father to do this
in view of the bond of affection between father and son.
(20:14):
But it is his illness which is to be blamed
for this disaster, and not the prince himself. Though you
eliminate him, please exert your benevolence to save the royal
grandson and allow him and his mother to live in peace.
And as for Stado's wife, Uh, while she wished to die,
she did not commit suicide, which was not entirely uncommon
(20:36):
at this point. There were other members of their family
where a man had been put to death and the
wife would starve herself to death uh, because that was
considered in some ways to be the completion of her
duties as a wife. But UH, he had young chose
instead to hang on in support of her son, and
she had been put in a terrible position because if
(20:58):
she killed herself, it could perceived as some sort of
admittance that her husband was guilty of something rather than
this sort of mental illness issue. Or it could also
be perceived that she was protesting the King's handling of
the matter. So either of those UH assessments of her suicide,
(21:19):
if she had committed suicide, could have deeply, deeply damaged
her son's reputation. And this whole thing was really an
attempt to kind of keep her son safe in terms
of the royal lineage. This event, as you can imagine,
was quite controversial. Under court custom, a criminal execution of
(21:39):
Sato would have meant that the whole family would be punished.
King Yan Joe's hands off execution was intended as kind
of a loophole, so that even though the king had
put his son in a box, it wasn't the king
who killed him. It was starvation, Yes, starvation. Sometimes you'll
see it listed as suffocation. They're caught exact cause of death. Yeah,
(22:02):
it seems like suffocation would have happened much sooner. Well,
there wasn't Rice in the box. It was just him too,
it appears, uh, to the best of my knowledge. But yeah,
you're still not uh you're not getting what you need
is a human at that point. Uh. And furthermore, there
was actually some turmoil about Sotto's son being the heir
(22:23):
to the throne when his father had never ruled and
in fact had behaved so shamefully. And to come back
this problem, King Young Joe did an interesting sort of
legal maneuver. He made Sado's air Chong Joe, a posthumously
adopted son of the long deceased brother that Sotto had
had Prince Ho Jang that had died before Sotto was
(22:44):
even born, and this movement that there were no legal
ties technically between Prince Chong Joe and his biological father Satto.
And while this smooth things out on paper politically, it
caused a great deal of strife and it caused so
many problems that it actually became taboo to even discuss
Chong Joe's paternity, so his biological father discussion was completely
(23:09):
off limits. When the king died in seventeen seventy six,
Cheng Joe did wind up taking his grandfather's throne. And
the major source that we have for Soto's tragic and
horrifying story and the events the events surrounding it are
the memoirs, as I've said earlier, of Soto's wife, and
these memoirs were written many years after the fact. The
(23:31):
first of the four memoirs that she wrote was written
in sevent so we're already three decades out, and she,
even though it was many decades out, she really recorded
his descent into madness in great detail. And this was
a very unusual move for a woman at the time,
uh particularly in Korean culture, but really worldwide to write memoirs,
(23:54):
and it was absolutely unheard of at this point, uh,
for someone of the Korean court to openly discuss royal misconduct.
What's really interesting is that she writes about both her
husband and her father in law with a lot of compassion.
It's clear that she wants the people who were reading
to have a clearer picture of this complex web of
(24:14):
events that was playing out, so she doesn't make a
pure villain out of either of them. Even though she
describes all of the horrific things that were going on,
she seems to recognize that he was mentally ill and
not in control of his impulses. So she paints this
picture of a sensitive, thoughtful boy who grew up in
an environment that didn't handle him with care. Uh. And
(24:36):
you know, had had had had things gone differently, he
would have been able to flourish. Yeah. It's a very
uh interesting read. And allegedly she wrote some of these
memoirs for her son's benefit. Uh. There had at one
point been a a rumor that Sotto had in fact
(24:56):
not been mentally ill, but had been framed in a
bigger political plot. And it's extremely clear in her narrative
and her description of how he went crazy, that his
actions are those of a very damaged man. And it's
interesting to keep in mind that she knew him in
a way that no one else would have known him,
(25:17):
not just from being his wife, but she became his
wife when they were both still tiny kids, and so
she really and especially once they were isolated and kind
of sent away because his father didn't like to be
around him, she saw him more than anyone else in
the royal family would have. And really, you know, got
to witness this person that she cared for a great
(25:38):
deal go from being that kind of you know, I'm
really interested in learning, I'm you know, thoughtful. He loved
her father because he was a scholar and he was
really into learning and kind of slowly becoming a monster. Really,
because what she perceives is um his mistreatment, whether it
(25:59):
was intentional or not, just poor choices made in terms
of the upbringing of that person. And her four memoirs
don't center exclusively on Sido and his father, although their
conflict is of course present throughout all of it. She
also writes about, and similarly contextualizes and defends other relatives
as well. Yeah, she's so uh, I don't want to say,
(26:22):
even handed, because she clearly has some bias, and she's
pretty open about saying like this was my favorite brother,
this is you know, but she really does want people
to have all of the information and understand the base
beginnings of how this you know, these events that you
can see from the outside, that from the inside there
was a lot more going on than a simple list
(26:43):
of horrible things that somebody did and the horrible thing
that was done to him. Yeah, it's really hard not
to wonder how someone like him would have fared in
a time when mental illness could have been diagnosed and
treated and handled much differently than it was at the time.
Prince Sodo was originally buried in Mountain bebong Song in
Young Jew, but when his son Chongjo took the throne
(27:05):
after his grandfather's death, he actually had his biological father
exhumed and moved to Mount Huazon in Suan. Uh Young
Jusah Temple was built nearby, and the seat of government
was also shifted to Suan and a fortress was built
around the area and uh This site, which is now
known as Suezong Fortress, became a UNESCO Heritage Site and
(27:28):
now with some history on and I think people kind
of do acknowledge that this is a person that didn't
necessarily have to be terrible. He was like someone that
just killed because he thought it was fun, although he
did say it brought him great relief. Yeah, he eventually
seemed to think it was fun. That that he didn't
start out that way well, and I don't even know
(27:50):
that he ever thought it was fun, but he it
was the only way he knew to relieve stress, which
is really scary to think about, like where your brain
gets to where you're like, the only way I'm gonna
get through this day, I'm gonna have to kill some people.
Like that's a strange place if you think about that
moment where somebody's having it. Yeah, now that's the thing
that people say and they don't mean it. Yeah, I don't.
(28:13):
I don't know whatever means it's Do you also have
some listener mail? I do? This is listener mail that
made me smile? Should I always love? I'm glad we're
ending this episode with something that will make it so sad,
And it's I was texting with my best friend yesterday
while I was going over these notes, and and as
I mentioned in our f a Q episode. I sometimes
(28:35):
like kind of data dump on people and see where
I haven't added information that that would be interesting because
I see what they ask about. But we were talking
about it and I was saying, I feel so bad
for this man. Is that weird? He was a serial killer? Basically,
I don't know. Yeah, people on the internet will get
super mad at people who express empathy for I just
(28:57):
everybody involved, I think, no, when they probably all had
the best of intentions and it just fell apart so
kind of and especially someone who is clearly mentally ill.
I mean, I'm no clinician, so I would not be
able to diagnose what particular illness he, you know, was
I was struggling with but clearly mental illness, and there
(29:21):
was no way to treat it, which is heartbreaking. So
onto happy email. This comes from our listener Joshua, and
he says, good morning. I hope you're both doing well.
He's been listening for years to various stuff podcasts. He says,
I've just finished watching a Nova special that made me
think of YouTube three D spies in World War Two.
It was about the use of spitfires as spy planes
(29:42):
to take recon photos and how they used the stereoscope
to view three D images using the photos, and how
they used what was called a wild machine to get
approximations of distances in the photos accurate enough to create
scale models of target bomb sites, and how this all
came together to stop a Nazi rocket program. As if
all of this technology and brilliance isn't enough and it's
(30:05):
really cool. Uh, that's my interjection. By the way. Uh,
there was one name mentioned that really rang a bell,
Disney imagineer Xavier Atencio, if I remember correctly, He was
a major player in the creation of Disney's Haunt imagine
You do remember correctly, Joshua. Uh. They said that the
Brits needed not only academic types, but creative types as
(30:25):
well to pour over the photos and make sense of them.
And due to this, one of the places that they
tapped for their photo interpreters was Hollywood, and Xavier Atencio
was one of the photo interpreters that was used during
World War Two and it was one of the people
interviewed for this Nova episode. I found this video and
it's tied to one of your episodes, rather interesting, and
I thought I would share that is really interesting and
(30:46):
really cool. I looked it up. I think it was
between forty five he was doing this work, which should
mean that he got pulled off of his work on
Fantasia to go do that, uh, which is really cool
and fascinating. And I had never that about Excedencio, so
that was super cool. Uh. Now I'm gonna go watch
that Nova special on my lunch. If you would like
(31:10):
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(31:31):
would like to learn a little bit more about what
we talked about today, you can go to our website
and type in the words mental illness and you'll get
a bunch of articles, including one called what don't we
know about mental illness? That answer is probably would have
done a lot of good in the Korean court when
Prince Otto was struggling with his problems. If you'd like
(31:52):
to learn about mental illness, or almost any other thing
that your mind can conjure. You can do that at
our website, which is how stuff Works dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics because at
housecoff works dot com. M
Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Uh and
today will be fulfilling the wishes of people who have
written us requesting more sad royal stories. We got one
(00:23):
of those just yesterday and uh and this one is
um comes from Us, comes to us from Korea, and
it's another episode of royal madness. Uh. And it's quite
sad and interesting, particularly as viewed through the modern lens.
But in the seventeen hundreds, for context, Korea was ruled
at the time by the Chose chose On dynasty. May
(00:46):
or may not be butchering that. I will do my
very best. I do not speak Korean. Surprise, yea. We
have consulted with native Korean speakers, but again what comes
out of our mouth may not be properly paraded. We're
doing every and I always kind of want to have
this disclaimer about like physically, when you learn to pronounce
phonemes as a child, your brain loses that ability to
(01:08):
make your mouth make phonemes that aren't part of languages
you learn as a child, and so it's not just
a matter of it being difficult, like your mouth doesn't
move that way. And I have the um the thing
of my secondary language, which I am not fluent in
anymore but was very close to you when I was younger,
was French, and so even when I'm tackling Asian languages,
(01:30):
that kind of comes in. It's very strange, and I apologize.
So in any case, that dynasty had been in power
since thet since so it was a very long lasting dynasty.
But today's topic sits right in the mid seventeen hundreds,
and it covers the story of a man who is
often called Korea's coffin king, and you will find out
(01:52):
why as we go on. It's uh, quite interesting slash horrifying.
Crown Prince Sado of Korea has been described as insane, depraved, sadistic,
But when you really examine his short life, it's much
more complicated than a list of acts of savagery, even
though there are plenty of really horrifying events. So, starting
(02:17):
at the very beginning, he was born on February seventeen
thirty five, so his birthday is coming up, uh, and
he was the second son of King Yong Joe, and
Sado's mother was the King's favorite concubine, Lady Sonui. King Yan.
Joe's first son, Crown Prince Hyo Jang, had died seven
(02:37):
years before Soto was born at the age of nine.
The King's concerts had given birth to other children, but
they were all girls. So when Sado came into the world,
he filled the empty air slot. Yeah, that was a
big concern as you, as often happened, understand, there's a
lot of panic, and so there had been no air
(02:57):
for a little bit of time, uh, and so there
there was much rejoicing when Soto was born. However, it
said that the king had a little bit of a
temper uh, and that Soto was quite afraid of him
from the time that the prince was very very tiny,
and it made him be behave in a sort of
timid and awkward way when he was in his father's presence.
(03:18):
But unfortunately that just made Young Joe kind of resentful
of his son and kind of short, especially short tempered
with him, and by all accounts, the relationship between the
two really did not have any sort of nurturing element. However,
Soto was completely devoted to young Joe, and you know,
really revered his father. He apparently didn't have a much
(03:41):
better relationship with his mother either. Lady Sannui was so
focused on keeping his upbringing in line with what the
king wanted that even though she spent a lot of
time with her son, he continued to be kind of
fearful of her too. Yeah, he was also very devoted
to his mother, but she really was rules first mothering
second with him is how you'll often hear her described, uh,
(04:04):
and then we're gonna jump. It sounds like we're jumping,
but we're not. It's not. Yes. Uh so on a
seventeen forty four. And it's interesting because even though we
have the dates of his marriage and his birth, the
age he was when he got married is reported differently
as eight, nine or ten. But as we know with history,
(04:26):
sometimes dates aren't always correct either. So he was still
very very young. He was eight years old, uh. And
he was betrothed and married to a girl his same age, uh,
Lady Hong from the Hong family, And she was the
daughter of a scholar who had impressed who had an
impressive royal lineage but no money to speak of. Uh.
(04:48):
But he had really impressed the King with his his
knowledge and his ability to teach. And in her memoir,
Lady Hong describes being chosen as the Prince's wife as
being a really the anxiety ridden experience, and she ponders
whether she hadn't had a premonition of the myriad trials
and tribulations I would go through in the palace. Her
(05:10):
parents actually hoped that she would not be chosen. Uh,
And even though she describes the Queen and the consorts
and princesses as being extremely kind and welcoming to her,
she was completely overwhelmed by the whole process, as you
can imagine a child would be when they suddenly become
betrothed to a future king. Yes, and while they were
(05:30):
married at this point, their relationship was really more like
that of being childhood playmates at first, given their very
young age, they didn't even live in the same house.
After seeing how seriously the new bride took her role
in serving the royal family, Lady Sandwi encouraged Lady Hyagion,
which became her name once she joined the royal family
(05:51):
to behave more like a child and less concerned with
all these rules and palace propriety and that sort of
thing and of note from Lady hig Young's memoirs is
the relationship between her father and the Crown Prince. So,
because he was a scholar, that was fairly welcome in
(06:12):
the court. Although he didn't spend a lot of time there,
he did, especially once he became the father in law
to the future king, spent some time with Sado, and
they apparently were extremely fond of one another, and in
some ways, uh, Lady hig Young's father seemed to fill
the fatherly role that was missing in Sado's relationship with
(06:33):
his own father, the king. So they really, uh had
a pretty in depth and very uh real connection. It
wasn't just a matter of you know, yes, I serve
you you're a future king. They really connected on an
emotional level. A year and a half after he got married,
Sado got really seriously ill, and shortly after that, in
(06:56):
January of seventy six, the Prince and his wife were
to a palace closer to his mother, Lady Son, who
he's home. Even after his illness, which was never clearly identified,
even after that had passed, he had this unusual and
peculiar behavior. Yeah, there's not a lot of knowledge about
(07:16):
what this illness was except that it was very serious
and he began to act very strangely after during it
and then afterwards. But as he approached his teenage years,
he really became very serious about his studies. He also
became adept at swordsmanship and archery, and he loved to read.
So part of that is his connection with his father
(07:37):
in law. So he got along well with his sisters.
He was particularly close to the sister that was least
favored by the king, probably because they had kind of
this mutual thing that they bonded over, and he was
very close to the Queen dowager, still very devoted to
his mother, even though their relationship wasn't exactly treadly, but
things would appear to have been on a pretty good
(07:58):
track at this point. However, Sado's continued awkwardness around the
king led to the prince and his bride being moved
from the place they were living to be further away
from the family, because the king presumably was not terribly
fond of seeing him all that often, uh, And that
happened in April of seventy seven, and as a consequence,
(08:18):
they were kind of isolated. So he would see his family,
but not nearly so often, and he was missing out
on kind of some of the social interaction that he
had been really kind of warming up to and enjoying
up to that point. At the age of fourteen, after
the Prince's coming of age ceremony, it was decided that
the marriage of Sato and Lady Hya Young should take
(08:39):
on a more adult nature and stop being so childlike.
So it's really here that they started to live as
husband and wife and the relationship took on a sexual context.
And the following year, Sato and Lady h Young had
their first child, Louizo, but the baby lived only to
the age of two UH, and the royal family grieved
(09:02):
really deeply over the loss of this child, and Soto's wife,
is a consequence, felt a great deal of guilt over
the matter. She felt like she had failed the royal family.
Less than a year after the baby's death, Prince Stong
Joe was born in seventeen fifty two, and around this time,
and possibly triggered by a case of the measles UH,
(09:22):
the odd behavior that Soto had exhibited since his illness
as a young child took on a much more serious
and a much darker tone. He started having terrible nightmares.
He believed he could see apparitions, including the god of
thunder Uh. He became fearful of the sky and of
the weather at this point, Uh, and he thought that
(09:44):
his father was going to blame him and be angry
with him anytime there was a thunderstorm or other inclement weather.
During this time, the king, who was getting on in years,
also started to act pretty strangely. He would wash his
ear years after he heard something unpleasant. He'd wash his
mouth and ears and change his clothes after talking to
(10:05):
his son, And he became kind of obsessed with what
door he used when he was coming and going, based
on whether he thought the duties he was going to
or coming from were pleasant or unpleasant. Possibly to the
detriment of Sado's mental health, King Young Joe started sending
Sado on in his place to the more unpleasant duties
(10:27):
that he didn't want to do himself, like watching the
torture of criminals. Yeah. So the king, presumably in part
because he was getting older uh, was having these sort
of strange behaviors. But as a consequence, Sado, who already
had all manner of strange behaviors, was then getting exposed
to a lot of unpleasant and very stressful events. And
(10:49):
then several events happened beginning around seventeen fifty three that
further eroded the already really strained relationship between the father
and the son. First, both of the men had affairs
with court ladies beginning in seventeen fifty three, and these
affairs resulted in pregnancies. The woman who Sado fathered children
with had two sons, while the king's concubine had two
(11:12):
daughters uh and because sons were seen as more important
than daughters, King Young Joe was furious about Sato's new children,
and to further complicate matters, the brother of the king's
concubine was feeding the king regular reports about Sado's ongoing
bizarre behavior. When Sado's mother, Lady Sanui, fell ill in
(11:34):
late seventeen fifty five, the prince went to her bedside,
only to be greeted by the King, who was just bellowing.
Sado is so frightened by his father's rage that he
jumped out a window and ran back to his palace.
And around this time Sado developed a stammer uh and
the stress of his strained relationship with his father was
(11:54):
the likely cause of it. When King Yan Joe made
a visit to the Prince in the summer of seventeen
fifty six, his stammering and his confused behavior led his
father to think that he was drunk, so he yelled
at Satto and left him so upset that the Prince
became violent and started chasing the servants. During his fit,
the palace caught fire, and the prince's wife, who at
(12:16):
this point was very pregnant, barely managed to escape with
their young son. So that's really when things start getting
kind of violent and scary, and then it escalates from there.
So from this point on, the Prince's behavior became increasingly disturbing,
and to deal with any negative emotion he turned to
(12:36):
beating the servants as an outlet. And meanwhile, his wife
was struggling with her own depression after the births of
two daughters, her last isolation period that was normal for
um her to have after a pregnancy, she really never
came out of that quite the same. She really had
(12:57):
a pretty severe what some would say at this point
is probably postpartum depression. When the Queen and the Queen
dowager died one right after the other several eunuchs of
the palace were just beaten mercilessly by Prince Sado, And
after he attended these women's funerals, his apparent madness just escalated. Uh.
(13:17):
So we're going to do a brief list of some
of his horrible acts. We could really go on for hours,
but we're going to hit the high points. They're not
really high points. Now. This is the part of the
outline where I am Holly and said, I feel like
he's the inspiration for Geoffrey Barrathian. Uh And there's I
(13:39):
don't know if there's merit to that in terms of
him actually being the inspiration, but there's certainly merit to
that connection. So early on in his descent into madness,
he murdered a palace eunuch and he impaled the head
on a stick, and then he carried this horrible monstrosity
around the palace and showed it off to ladies of
(14:01):
the court, presumably because he enjoyed their response. You don't know.
He also murdered maids kind of on a whim, and
did so often, and he became increasingly sexually aggressive with
court ladies, and if they denied his advances, he would
force himself upon them and became uh really a serial rapist.
(14:25):
He took a new mistress. He was a seamstress, and
he paid for her to live in lavishly appointed apartments,
which infuriated his father. The seamstress bore him a son,
but he badly injured her during an episode of just
kind of madness, and she wound up dying from her wounds.
He would also leave the palace in disguise and walk
(14:46):
among the commoners. And we really don't know what happened
during these walkabouts because we only know it from the
side of his wife's memoirs, where she just found out
that he was leaving the palace, but she nobody was
following him or taking account of what he was doing
while he was out. Anytime there was a death in
the family or some kind of stressful event, it just
(15:08):
became expected that there would be a trail of bodies afterwards.
And he's actually quoted by his wife as saying, it
relieves my pent up anger to kill people or animals
when I'm feeling depressed or on edge. Just I mean,
you can't get more clear and admission of what you're doing.
And another manifestation of his his mental illness was this
(15:32):
full on obsession with clothes. He would demand to see
dozens of new sets of clothing in order to choose
just one outfit. But that's the mild end of it. Yeah,
he would sometimes burn outfits as a spirit offering. Again,
he was still having these visions that various specters and
spirits were coming to him, and if his attendant made
(15:54):
any error while he was dressing him, Sato would become
deeply upset and have to remove every piece of thing
he was wearing and start over. And he came to
believe that his clothes would please or displease the spirits
and cause good or bad weather. Accordingly, so he still
had this weird connection to the weather, and he thought
that he was somehow causing it based on whether he
(16:18):
pleased the spirits with his choices. As his obsession with
clothing got stronger and stronger, so did other aspects of
his mental illness. He was seeing people who weren't there.
His manners, which used to be impeccable, fell away completely,
and he started swearing at his mother and in public,
and becoming verbally abusive to children. He also became began
(16:40):
drinking heavily, and alcohol was forbidden in Korean court, so
this was really a serious break from acceptable behavior. Sexually,
he became increasingly voracious, and he was organizing orgies. He
even started pursuing one of his sisters, although she continually
rebuked his advances and cursed him and being. In seventeen
sixty two, things got really really bad. Basically every servant
(17:05):
or non royal in the palace was in constant danger. Uh.
It's said that several bodies had to be carried away
every single day. Uh So physicians, translators, maids, workmen, eunuchs.
There is no clear account of how many people were killed,
but he killed or maimed in some cases, basically anyone
(17:25):
he wanted to. During this time, he also was apparently
not lucid. He appeared to be almost unconscious of the
violent behavior that was going on, and unaware of his
wife and children. He would have moments of clarity though,
where he seemed genuinely devoted to them. Yeah, and he
was aware that he had done these things. But in
those fits of insanity, it was like that all fell
(17:49):
away and all he could focus on was the violence. Uh.
There were accusations of innumerable inappropriate behaviors, of course, But
the thing that really seemed to put his behavior passed
the point of tolerability for the King and the Queen
was his ceaseless stalking of his younger sister. He continued
(18:09):
to try to seduce her. He even tried to break
into her apartments to get to her when she was
trying to stay away from him. And this, combined with
the ever growing pile of bodies and more and more
accusations and word of his behavior getting out among the people,
finally meant that the royal family had had enough. Uh.
(18:29):
And before we get to this next bit, we're gonna
pause and have a word from our sponsor. Okay, now
we're going to get back to uh kind of grim territory.
How all of this horrible gore and aim to a close.
So on July four sixty two, King Young Joe summoned
(18:51):
to the prince, and when the prince arrived before his father,
the King stripped him of his title and his crown
and brought out a heavy rice storage box. Sato was
put in the box and the lid was shut, and
that is the last anyone saw him alive. He stayed there, Uh,
and on July twelfth, which was eight days after he
(19:13):
was put in, Sado died at the age of seven.
His servants and his attendants were also put to death,
and I feel like we should briefly mention that depending
on the translation you read of his wife's memoirs, some
say that he was buried, some that's a little less clear.
Some suggest that he sat in a courtyard. Either way,
(19:33):
it's pretty horrifying. It's a he did many horrible things,
but that's also a very horrible thing. And this extreme
act was according to the prince's widow, the idea of
the king's wife, so Sato's own mother, and she is
quoted as saying the following to King Young Joe. Since
the prince's illness has become quite critical and his case
(19:54):
is hopeless, it is only proper that you should protect
yourself and the royal grandson in order to keep the
kingdom at peace. I request that you eliminate the prince,
even though such a suggestion is outrageous and ascend against humanity.
It would be terrible for a father to do this
in view of the bond of affection between father and son.
(20:14):
But it is his illness which is to be blamed
for this disaster, and not the prince himself. Though you
eliminate him, please exert your benevolence to save the royal
grandson and allow him and his mother to live in peace.
And as for Stado's wife, Uh, while she wished to die,
she did not commit suicide, which was not entirely uncommon
(20:36):
at this point. There were other members of their family
where a man had been put to death and the
wife would starve herself to death uh, because that was
considered in some ways to be the completion of her
duties as a wife. But UH, he had young chose
instead to hang on in support of her son, and
she had been put in a terrible position because if
(20:58):
she killed herself, it could perceived as some sort of
admittance that her husband was guilty of something rather than
this sort of mental illness issue. Or it could also
be perceived that she was protesting the King's handling of
the matter. So either of those UH assessments of her suicide,
(21:19):
if she had committed suicide, could have deeply, deeply damaged
her son's reputation. And this whole thing was really an
attempt to kind of keep her son safe in terms
of the royal lineage. This event, as you can imagine,
was quite controversial. Under court custom, a criminal execution of
(21:39):
Sato would have meant that the whole family would be punished.
King Yan Joe's hands off execution was intended as kind
of a loophole, so that even though the king had
put his son in a box, it wasn't the king
who killed him. It was starvation, Yes, starvation. Sometimes you'll
see it listed as suffocation. They're caught exact cause of death. Yeah,
(22:02):
it seems like suffocation would have happened much sooner. Well,
there wasn't Rice in the box. It was just him too,
it appears, uh, to the best of my knowledge. But yeah,
you're still not uh you're not getting what you need
is a human at that point. Uh. And furthermore, there
was actually some turmoil about Sotto's son being the heir
(22:23):
to the throne when his father had never ruled and
in fact had behaved so shamefully. And to come back
this problem, King Young Joe did an interesting sort of
legal maneuver. He made Sado's air Chong Joe, a posthumously
adopted son of the long deceased brother that Sotto had
had Prince Ho Jang that had died before Sotto was
(22:44):
even born, and this movement that there were no legal
ties technically between Prince Chong Joe and his biological father Satto.
And while this smooth things out on paper politically, it
caused a great deal of strife and it caused so
many problems that it actually became taboo to even discuss
Chong Joe's paternity, so his biological father discussion was completely
(23:09):
off limits. When the king died in seventeen seventy six,
Cheng Joe did wind up taking his grandfather's throne. And
the major source that we have for Soto's tragic and
horrifying story and the events the events surrounding it are
the memoirs, as I've said earlier, of Soto's wife, and
these memoirs were written many years after the fact. The
(23:31):
first of the four memoirs that she wrote was written
in sevent so we're already three decades out, and she,
even though it was many decades out, she really recorded
his descent into madness in great detail. And this was
a very unusual move for a woman at the time,
uh particularly in Korean culture, but really worldwide to write memoirs,
(23:54):
and it was absolutely unheard of at this point, uh,
for someone of the Korean court to openly discuss royal misconduct.
What's really interesting is that she writes about both her
husband and her father in law with a lot of compassion.
It's clear that she wants the people who were reading
to have a clearer picture of this complex web of
(24:14):
events that was playing out, so she doesn't make a
pure villain out of either of them. Even though she
describes all of the horrific things that were going on,
she seems to recognize that he was mentally ill and
not in control of his impulses. So she paints this
picture of a sensitive, thoughtful boy who grew up in
an environment that didn't handle him with care. Uh. And
(24:36):
you know, had had had had things gone differently, he
would have been able to flourish. Yeah. It's a very
uh interesting read. And allegedly she wrote some of these
memoirs for her son's benefit. Uh. There had at one
point been a a rumor that Sotto had in fact
(24:56):
not been mentally ill, but had been framed in a
bigger political plot. And it's extremely clear in her narrative
and her description of how he went crazy, that his
actions are those of a very damaged man. And it's
interesting to keep in mind that she knew him in
a way that no one else would have known him,
(25:17):
not just from being his wife, but she became his
wife when they were both still tiny kids, and so
she really and especially once they were isolated and kind
of sent away because his father didn't like to be
around him, she saw him more than anyone else in
the royal family would have. And really, you know, got
to witness this person that she cared for a great
(25:38):
deal go from being that kind of you know, I'm
really interested in learning, I'm you know, thoughtful. He loved
her father because he was a scholar and he was
really into learning and kind of slowly becoming a monster. Really,
because what she perceives is um his mistreatment, whether it
(25:59):
was intentional or not, just poor choices made in terms
of the upbringing of that person. And her four memoirs
don't center exclusively on Sido and his father, although their
conflict is of course present throughout all of it. She
also writes about, and similarly contextualizes and defends other relatives
as well. Yeah, she's so uh, I don't want to say,
(26:22):
even handed, because she clearly has some bias, and she's
pretty open about saying like this was my favorite brother,
this is you know, but she really does want people
to have all of the information and understand the base
beginnings of how this you know, these events that you
can see from the outside, that from the inside there
was a lot more going on than a simple list
(26:43):
of horrible things that somebody did and the horrible thing
that was done to him. Yeah, it's really hard not
to wonder how someone like him would have fared in
a time when mental illness could have been diagnosed and
treated and handled much differently than it was at the time.
Prince Sodo was originally buried in Mountain bebong Song in
Young Jew, but when his son Chongjo took the throne
(27:05):
after his grandfather's death, he actually had his biological father
exhumed and moved to Mount Huazon in Suan. Uh Young
Jusah Temple was built nearby, and the seat of government
was also shifted to Suan and a fortress was built
around the area and uh This site, which is now
known as Suezong Fortress, became a UNESCO Heritage Site and
(27:28):
now with some history on and I think people kind
of do acknowledge that this is a person that didn't
necessarily have to be terrible. He was like someone that
just killed because he thought it was fun, although he
did say it brought him great relief. Yeah, he eventually
seemed to think it was fun. That that he didn't
start out that way well, and I don't even know
(27:50):
that he ever thought it was fun, but he it
was the only way he knew to relieve stress, which
is really scary to think about, like where your brain
gets to where you're like, the only way I'm gonna
get through this day, I'm gonna have to kill some people.
Like that's a strange place if you think about that
moment where somebody's having it. Yeah, now that's the thing
that people say and they don't mean it. Yeah, I don't.
(28:13):
I don't know whatever means it's Do you also have
some listener mail? I do? This is listener mail that
made me smile? Should I always love? I'm glad we're
ending this episode with something that will make it so sad,
And it's I was texting with my best friend yesterday
while I was going over these notes, and and as
I mentioned in our f a Q episode. I sometimes
(28:35):
like kind of data dump on people and see where
I haven't added information that that would be interesting because
I see what they ask about. But we were talking
about it and I was saying, I feel so bad
for this man. Is that weird? He was a serial killer? Basically,
I don't know. Yeah, people on the internet will get
super mad at people who express empathy for I just
(28:57):
everybody involved, I think, no, when they probably all had
the best of intentions and it just fell apart so
kind of and especially someone who is clearly mentally ill.
I mean, I'm no clinician, so I would not be
able to diagnose what particular illness he, you know, was
I was struggling with but clearly mental illness, and there
(29:21):
was no way to treat it, which is heartbreaking. So
onto happy email. This comes from our listener Joshua, and
he says, good morning. I hope you're both doing well.
He's been listening for years to various stuff podcasts. He says,
I've just finished watching a Nova special that made me
think of YouTube three D spies in World War Two.
It was about the use of spitfires as spy planes
(29:42):
to take recon photos and how they used the stereoscope
to view three D images using the photos, and how
they used what was called a wild machine to get
approximations of distances in the photos accurate enough to create
scale models of target bomb sites, and how this all
came together to stop a Nazi rocket program. As if
all of this technology and brilliance isn't enough and it's
(30:05):
really cool. Uh, that's my interjection. By the way. Uh,
there was one name mentioned that really rang a bell,
Disney imagineer Xavier Atencio, if I remember correctly, He was
a major player in the creation of Disney's Haunt imagine
You do remember correctly, Joshua. Uh. They said that the
Brits needed not only academic types, but creative types as
(30:25):
well to pour over the photos and make sense of them.
And due to this, one of the places that they
tapped for their photo interpreters was Hollywood, and Xavier Atencio
was one of the photo interpreters that was used during
World War Two and it was one of the people
interviewed for this Nova episode. I found this video and
it's tied to one of your episodes, rather interesting, and
I thought I would share that is really interesting and
(30:46):
really cool. I looked it up. I think it was
between forty five he was doing this work, which should
mean that he got pulled off of his work on
Fantasia to go do that, uh, which is really cool
and fascinating. And I had never that about Excedencio, so
that was super cool. Uh. Now I'm gonna go watch
that Nova special on my lunch. If you would like
(31:10):
to write to us and share your thoughts, you can
do so at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You
can connect with us on Facebook at Facebook dot com,
slash missed in History, on Twitter at missed in History,
or on Tumbler at missed in History dot tumbler dot com.
And you can find lots of interesting visuals on Pinterest
at pinterest dot com slash missed in History. If you
(31:31):
would like to learn a little bit more about what
we talked about today, you can go to our website
and type in the words mental illness and you'll get
a bunch of articles, including one called what don't we
know about mental illness? That answer is probably would have
done a lot of good in the Korean court when
Prince Otto was struggling with his problems. If you'd like
(31:52):
to learn about mental illness, or almost any other thing
that your mind can conjure. You can do that at
our website, which is how stuff Works dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics because at
housecoff works dot com. M
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