The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of the Myeongdong Gangsters

I apologize for the large gap , but when I started getting into this section , it's very dense and it's very difficult to find what's true and what's not And coming up with a tight narrative , so I was originally dividing it into different eras , but now , at this point , i think it's better to tell it through by focusing on actual figures and telling the history

through those figures . Does that work for you , sean ?

If you're willing to pay a little extra , we can look into that if you want it faster and with tracking . But the gap between what we're charging and what between the two rates the other rates is very large . So you might be spending like $20 , $30 for delivery for one or two comic books . Yeah , i apologize , because some people yeah , it takes around .

It's like what they used to say in those commercials in the 70s and 80s . It was like taking six to eight weeks for delivery . That's kind of how it is . That's how we keep our costs low . So it's not Amazon speed . We're so sorry for that . I'll work on solutions whenever I can to make it faster .

I'll look , i'll research , but this is the best we can for right now . But you can also get the electronic version . That's instant , or get it over the Dice Latte in Seoul .

Then in the 50s it was Kim Doohan Sean's favorite character , kim Doohan who took control of Jongno , the Jongno area , and that was in the 50s .

And now we're going to I'm going to concentrate today on who's known as the mega godfather , shin Sang-hyun and the Shin Sang-sa Pa , the gang , the family , and he dominated Myungdong with the Shin Sang-sa Pa from around the 1950s to the 1990s , so he's known as the Emperor of Myungdong .

He was a former sergeant in the Korean army and he was known as a new sergeant Shin Sang-sa And yeah , that's how they got their name , the Shin Sang-sa Pa . Quick bio Shin Sang-hyun was born in 1932 over in Gwangsudong in Jongno-gu .

His father was a tailor , so during the Japanese colonial period that was a good profession to have , so they had like a middle class life . Shin , he liked sports , especially boxing , judo and kendo , but in high school he was severely punished by his teachers for not speaking Japanese , which was required in schools at that time , and so he failed to graduate .

To make up for that , at the age of 17 in 1949 , he enlisted in the army . During that time he was part of a subjugating pro-north Korea guerrillas over in Jirisan , which I'm trying to find some more info on . This . I have to look deeper for that one dead incident , because this is before the Korean War . You know more about this ?

You go through the trails where they were hiding and stuff like that . It's fascinating And there's a little cave there where they printed , they hand printed their newspapers , where they secretly were passing out among the community of guerrillas and stuff like that It's amazing , jared Ranbarale .

So they say , like he instantly in that one year , that when he got to Degu he just knocked out all the local fists and then he created his organization , shinsang Sapa . It's hard to say really fast , shinsang Sapa .

This is how you get ahead . You just beat up everyone . It's like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat , i don't know what it is It's like or Mike Tyson's punch out , you just beat up all the other leaders and you move up , or higher and higher and higher in the ranks .

And he had his sights on the then Myeongdong Emperor , yi Hua Yong , which he talked about before And so he's the new kid in town and he didn't really know much . He was just trying to make his name . He beat up a guy he thought was Yi Hua Yong at the Ujuro Taeyang Coffee Shop Was the wrong guy . This guy was the president of a radio company . Yeah .

So Yi Yongbok , who is the designated successor to Yi Hua Yong , heard about this And he's like okay , we need to teach this guy a lesson . So he led 60 gang members and they stormed Shin Sanghyun's office in Myeongdong And Shin retaliated by getting a group of six men together and raided Lee Youngbok's house And so another protégé of Yi Hua , yong Park Ilgap .

He went in and mediated and helped the two reconcile And Shin became the leader of , like this , pen Myeongdong faction . So he was able to get everyone together . This is how it works . I mean , it's like Game of Thrones . It's hard to keep track of what everyone's doing . You know , it's very similar to Korea in the late 19th century .

It's so hard to find out who what faction is is aligned with who , because they change so much and they combine and they split . So Korean history is all about factions , cell division , mitosis . Green history is all about mitosis , love , splitting up , getting together and splitting up .

Fall of Chosun , which is hundreds of years ago , and then the gangster era gangster era as a gangster , gangster era , which was , you know , less than 100 years ago . We'll return to the podcast after this message .

And so Shinsangsa Pa heard AOMAS was dancing at the National Museum of Korea because I guess that's what you do at the National Museum of Korea and set up an ambush . Aomas was able to escape by jumping out the second story window where he broke his leg , and it was very shameful that this all happened because a junior like Shinsanghyun bested him .

Yeah , at the time Shinsanghyun was only 23 at the time . So 1956 is the famous Golden Carriage raid . So at the time the Dongdaemun faction and the Myungdong factions were at odds And Golden Carriage , which in Korean was called Hwangum Macha , was a cabaret that was cone by Yi Hsueh Young in Gwancheol-dong , which is Kim Doohan's Jungno territory .

Now we talked about the Sam-Uhe , which is kind of a paramilitary gangster group , thug Terrorist Organization that did a lot of Shingmenry's dirty work And there was a combination of the Sodaemun Jungno and Yi Jungjae's Dongdaemun factions . They used this Golden Carriage cabaret as an excuse to show their strength . They weren't really that upset .

It wasn't really that they were upset that it opened in Jungno territory . They were just using it as an excuse to show that they put Shin in his place . So Myungdong heard that they were going to go up and they were going to trash the Golden Carriage . So they got wind in front of the Golden Carriage and they lay in wait And they were greatly outnumbered .

But the thing is , a lot of the Myungdong gang were veterans of the Northwest Youth League and were experienced fighters . And the Sam-Uhe well , they had just finished the ceremony where they all got smashed , drunk and they had no structure command system .

So the Myungdong gang just used catapults That's why I keep reading is catapults , catapults of bricks and stones at the Sam-Uhe as they approached and drove them off . Now I have links to this and our notes on our website . I found clips from the Korean drama Savage Age , which I think was done in the 90s .

You can tell it was done on video , not on digital video , and I found a clip with English subtitles that depicts this . Now this is very romanticized And the more I keep reading about this is they really played fast and loose with the history on this , so don't use Savage Age as your guide . Nonetheless , very fun 10 minute video to watch .

In this one they confront the Myungdong gang in front of the Golden Carriage And there were a few individual fights . And , oh my goodness , these are , like I want to say , kung Fu fighting , but it is not Kung Fu , but it is very . It's good martial arts action going on here In classic Hong Kong style zooms and cuts and everything . It's really fun to watch .

Bunch of yeah so a bunch of guys fighting . Then they will break it out and the police break it up , so , yeah . So after they drove them off , sam-uhe stormed the Myungdong faction , but the Myungdong faction fled in advance to avoid police intervention . This all deepens their conflict And this leads to the Chung Chung Chung Chung , no X incident .

Now , this is why I say Savage Age isn't that accurate , because in that the the , the accident , the Chung Chung Chung , no X incident , happens right after the Golden Carriage raid , when actually there's a two year gap between the two .

So there's two years of fighting between the Myungdong and Dongdaemun since then And actually the Myungdong faction was starting to fall , apart from financial and political troubles And public opinion was also against the Dongdaemun faction after the Jang Chung Dang simply a obstruction , which I talked a little bit before in the last one , but I'll go over it again And

the Dan Song Sa sniper incident and various political terrorist acts . So , jang Chung Dang , what happened in 1957 . The National Southern Committee of the Opposition Party the ones that were against Singman Rhee held a lecture on state affairs at Jang Chung Dang Park , which you can go to today , and this was meant to condemn Singman Rhee's liberal party .

Now it is estimated that 200,000 citizens attended this and they were fed up with Singman Rhee's party And Joe Byung-ok , who was the Democratic Party's presidential candidate .

He was coming up to the microphone when he was booed at by youths , presumably the Dongdaemun gang , and Joe Byung-ok made the mistake of telling them to come up to the mic if they had anything to say , and that was the cue for 50 Dongdaemun members to storm the podium with clubs .

Now Kim Doohun , who was there and he was trying to get into politics , tried to calm the mob , but it failed . Dongdaemun gang doused the amp with gasoline and set it on fire and they assaulted the cameraman filming the proceedings And coincidentally , the police didn't show up until the gangsters were gone . That was strange , wow .

And when the police showed up , they just dispersed the lecture . You notice that this is the typical Korean thing You know I talk about . You know the Korean government deals with conflicts is kind of like the dad driving the car and the kids arguing in the back . They don't care who started it , they just want to stop .

So they just said just to disperse the lecture , just like okay , whatever , you're all bad , go home . Pissed people off . So it made it made . It did not make Simunri look any better , it just made Korea look even less democratic . I'm not going to reiterate , i'm just going to review the 1955 Dangtsung Sass sniper incident .

This guy named Kim Dong-jin was planning to expose a lot of political assassinations that the Dongdaemun game were doing And the Dongdaemun gang decided to . Uh , uh , he decided to wait on exposing them and he went into hiding .

And then he , jung Jae , the head of the Dongdaemun game , put a head on him And in Hwasoo , uh , one of the members , uh , remember that Kim Jong-jin , kim Dong-jin , loved movies , especially Westerns , and so stagecoach was um going to premiere over at the Dan Song-sa Theater , which was the theater in Korea And , um , uh , they went and ambushed them and Lee

Seok-jae shot Kim Dong-jin . He survived , um and um , yeah , we said that before . Lee Seok-jae said that he meant to wound Kim , not kill him , because , uh , uh , and he was smiling when he said that . And the judge asked why they were smiling and he said , well , if you know how , uh , he could prove what a good shot he was .

And he , he , he shot three cigarettes in front of the police , which I think is a myth , because you know we talked about that before That that really they would end in a courtroom . All right , anyway , so this is all happening in the in between these two years .

Uh , in the meantime , uh , another uh capo over the Myeongdong , uh , jong Bong-gu , defects to Dongdaemun Makes it worse , and so , um , uh , so also , some thugs entered Myeongdong and shot off a gun and fled , and each he , hwa Yong uh , the Myeongdong emperor , assumed it was Lee Jong-jae , and so they got axes , rented a Jeep because you could do that then and

attacked Lee Jong-jae's stronghold . And uh , now it looks like the reporters were there waiting . Lee Jong-jae knew it was going to happen , and so they had already . Lee Jong-jae had already fled and had these reporters there , and and only the police and the reporters were there And um , they threatened the police with axes but then dropped them and fled .

As a result of this , yihua Yong and his men were arrested And part of the Dongdaemun Gang , yi Zhongjie's subordinate , yu Jiguang . He was arrested as well And he himself was sentenced to eight months in prison . The Myeongdong Gang totally disintegrates after many members were sent to prison , including Xin Sanghyun .

Xin Sanghyun was sentenced to three years , but he served one year and six months based on appeals , and when he left he went out and rebuilt the Myeongdong organization , and after he did that , it is said that he pacified the whole fist world in Seoul . By then this was 1960s . Pak Chung he was in power .

He cracked down , executed Yi Zhongjie of Dongdaemun , so Dongdaemun was gone . The Jongno faction didn't get strong after Kim Dae-hoon left and went into politics , so Myeongdong was the king of the gangsters , and so he set everything up to make money One thing that Yi Hua Yong was really bad at . So he set it up to make money .

And remember the original , original , original Myeongdong faction was started by Hayashi , who was part of the Yakuza , so Myeongdong has always had a little bit of a relationship with Yakuza in Japan , especially with Inagawa Kai . Inagawa Kai I need to practice this before I In my brain I can hear it , but I don't speak it out loud Tongue doesn't hear it .

Yeah , inagawa Kai , which is one of the three Yakuza , and so he had a good relationship with middle manager So Sun-jung , who was a Zainichi Korean Japanese . His Japanese name was Nishi Yama Minoru . Good relationship with them . He had a good . They were able to work together , yakuza and the Myeongdong gang . They went into the boxing and entertainment businesses .

So Sun-jung of the Inagawa Kai , he managed Korea's first boxing champion , kim Ki-soo , and other boxing champions , so they made a lot of money through the boxing business .

And Shin , he made a new assistant , gu Da-ung , who became acting boss to handle the dirty work , and from then Shin was only involved with big things after that , like partnering with local organizations or with Yakuza organizations Very Don Corleone things . See you in the next video .

He just stayed in his office and just only bothered with things whenever they really needed some big guns . And you know what I'm just going to say here to be continued , because I think that was a lot of information to throw at you . We will continue this with the next iteration of the gangster series .

We're going to explore a little more of the 60s and some other characters of this time There we go .

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It was like because we were pressured so much by our patrons like do this , Yeah , And then serial killer episode .

Yeah , That talks about the more deeply about the how the cops goofed that up .