← Back to the front page

Wild Kinks and Perversions of 20 Influential Historical Figures

Khalid Elhassan July 15, 2019 25 min

Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky - 1706 — Benjamin Franklin. New York Post

9. The Monstrous Prince of Korea

Crown Prince Sado (1735 – 1762) was the son and heir of Korean king Yeongjo. His father took little part in raising Sado, seldom seeing his son, and leaving his upbringing to courtiers who spoiled Sado rotten. On the few times the king visited his son, he demonstrated no affection, and berated him nonstop for his shortcomings. As a result, Sado grew up with serious Daddy issues, wildly swinging between desperation to please his father, and palpable terror of meeting him. Along the way, something broke inside the prince, and he turned into a world-class fiend.

Sado had extreme mood swings between dignity and probity one moment and turning serial murderer and rapist the next. When he got depressed, killing servants cheered him up, and on many a day, several dead bodies were carried out of the palace. He also enjoyed raping court ladies, and after murdering his favorite concubine in a fit of rage, he turned his sick attention to his own sister. Eventually, his father had enough, and decided he could not inflict his monstrous son upon his subjects. Executing a royal was taboo, so in 1762, the king had Sado locked up inside a heavy chest used for grain storage, and left him there to starve to death.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.