The transmission of May 13 of “Smoking Gun” presents the episode entitled “I Will Go Finishing alone – why did the father killed his son?”.
On a torrid summer day of 1762, a man’s body was found inside a wooden chest placed in the center of a domestic courtyard. The box had been closed with boards nailed and tied with a thick rope. Inside, the man slowly met his end: this man was the hereditary prince Sado, son of King Yeongjo, the 21st monarch of the Joseon dynasty. Sado died in an unimaginably horrible way, according to reports because he had killed over 100 people for a period of five years and even planned to assassinate his father.
As a child, the hereditary prince Sado was exceptionally brilliant and earned great expectations from his father. But at some point, he began to exhibit bizarre behavior. According to reports, he killed up to six people in a single day and engaged in obscene acts with courtesans and Buddhist nuns day and night. One of the strangest aspects was his aversion to wear clothes. If he liked the clothes brought to him, he would have killed the servant on the spot.
Kim Chang-Yoon, emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Ulsan, diagnosed Sado’s conditions as a bipolar disorder, stating that his irregular and violent behavior was probably intensified by the excessive expectations of the Yeongjo king and strong education.
The commentator Ahn Hyun -mo complained: “Although he suffered immensely during his life because of his father, in the end, he had no one to lean on.” Lee Ji-Hye added: “The way in which King Yeongjo has imposed an intense and standard study unreachable to his young son does not seem very different from today. What I really needed was a warm look and some kind words from his father.”
“Smoking Gun” continues to shed light on historical events through a psychological lens, offering spectators a deeper understanding of human factors behind the key moments of Korean history.
