Korea’s King Yeongjo Raised a Sex Fiend
Eighteenth-century Korean king Yeongjo had a problem with his son and heir, Crown Prince Sado (1735 – 1762). For years, the king’s wives and concubines had given him only daughters, and he despaired of ever getting a male heir, so when Sado arrived in 1735, his birth was cause for great joy. In accordance with royal tradition, the infant was set up in his own palace with an army of maids and governesses and servants. However, the king did not oversee his son’s upbringing, and Sado was spoiled rotten.
On the rare occasions when the king stopped by, he was highly irritable with even minor missteps by his son. Sado thus ended up fearing his father, while desperately trying to please him. It was not easy, and whenever the two met, the king was far more critical than affectionate. So Sado grew up feeling unloved and resentful. Between the lack of affection, lack of fatherly supervision, indulgence by courtiers, and other deep-seated neuroses, something went wrong with Sado, and he became a fiend.
Growing up, the prince was given to sudden and violent mood swings. One day, he would carry himself with decorum and dignity, the model of all that his father had ever wanted in his son and heir. The next day, he would explode into violence, and become a murderous rapist. Scholars are unsure what was wrong with him, but many today suspect that he was schizophrenic.
Sado became a raging alcoholic, even though alcohol was forbidden at court. When he became depressed nothing cheered him up like murdering servants, and on many a day, several of his victims’ bodies were carried out of the palace. The Crown Prince also liked raping court ladies, and after murdering his concubine, he started sexually harassing his own sister. He soon became feared throughout Korea as a serial rapist, serial killer, and all-around psychopath.
His father eventually decided that he could not, in good conscience, inflict his deranged son upon his subjects as their next king. So on July 4th, 1762, Sado was summoned by his father, who declared the Crown Prince deposed. Sado’s outright execution was prohibited by taboos, so he was locked inside a big wooden container for storing grain, where he starved to death.