What Are All These? Tied Mouths and Feet, Hidden Inside Underwear Near Elementary School

Plastic baskets are tightly stacked on the shelves of a small gosiwon room.

When the baskets are opened, lizards and various reptiles emerge, along with several endangered pythons found everywhere.

In another villa adjacent to an elementary school, large reticulated pythons as well as the critically endangered Yangtze alligator, a Class 1 international endangered species, were discovered.

Cobras, which are venomous species, were also found in a nearby apartment.

Prosecutors have apprehended a ring that illegally smuggled and sold 200 wild animals 14 times from Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand between November 2023 and August of the following year.

They brought them in using methods such as tightly packing alligators with their mouths and feet bound, putting baby turtles in iron snack tins, and hiding some inside underwear.

Prosecutors believe that a large number of endangered animals died during this process.

They sold them on internet reptile communities using secret terms like dolls and figures, with prices ranging from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of won per animal.

In August two years ago, a saltwater crocodile carcass was found in Sacheon, causing controversy, and this smuggling ring was behind the incident.

[Kim Dong-won / Prosecutor, Criminal Division 2, Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors Office: Recently, there have been incidents of wild animal sightings, such as an alligator being found in the Soyang River in Yeoju and a snake invading a home in Yangju, and we confirmed that a smuggling ring is behind these events...]

[Yoo Su-hwan / Reporter: The 95 wild animals seized by the prosecutors are all under protection at the National Institute of Ecology in Seocheon, South Chungcheong Province. As you can see, 40 endangered species such as the Yangtze alligator are included.]

Prosecutors detained the 20-something mastermind and indicted four accomplices.

Suspicious Code Word Dolls... Discovered Near Elementary School with Mouths and Feet Tied (August 6, 2026, 8 News)

(Reported by Yoo Su-hwan | Produced by Bae Jun-hwi | Filmed by Joo Beom | Video Edited by Jung Sung-hun | Footage provided by Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors Office | Produced by SBS Digital News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.