Jung Yoo-jung, 23, is accused of killing a stranger after developing an obsession with true crime books and TV shows.
Busan Metropolitan Police AgencyJung Yoo-jung allegedly decided to murder a perfect stranger just to see how it felt.
People around the world enjoy true crime. But a young South Korean woman’s interest in the subject developed into an obsession and, according to police, led her to murder someone to see how it felt.
As the The Chosun Ilbo reports, 23-year-old Jung Yoo-jung confessed to murdering a tutor she found online “out of curiosity” about murder.
“I think I was out of my mind,” Jung said, according to the The Korea Times.
Obsessed with true crime stories, Jung allegedly set out to commit the perfect murder herself. The Chosun Ilbo reports that she meticulously prepared for her crime by searching the Internet for how to conceal a body, reading crime books, and watching true crime shows on TV.
To find a victim, Jung downloaded an app that connects parents and tutors. She posed as the mother of a ninth-grade girl hoping to improve her English and matched with a tutor, whose name has not been released. Then, Jung set a date a few days later for the tutor to meet her “daughter.”
CCTVJung Yoo Jung with her victim’s dismembered body stuffed in a suitcase.
That day, Jung dressed up in a school uniform she’d found at an online flea market and went to her victim’s home with a knife. “Jung is short, and with the uniform on, the victim probably mistook her for a middle-school student,” a police spokesman said, according to The Chosun Ilbo.
When her victim let her in the door, Jung stabbed her to death with the knife. She then went to a store nearby, bought bleach and trash bags, and returned to the victim’s home to dismember her. Jung also carefully collected the victim’s mobile phone, ID card, and wallet.
But Jung made a critical error. To dispose of the body, Jung hired a taxi to take her to a wooded area near the Nakdong River, where Jung dumped a suitcase full of body parts. Jung’s behavior struck the driver as deeply suspicious, and he reported her to the police.
The police then found bloodstained clothing in bags and some of the victim’s body parts at Jung’s home. The 23-year-old true crime fanatic had hoped to commit the “perfect crime” but was promptly arrested instead.
Though Jung initially claimed that she had killed the woman after they had an argument, she eventually admitted the truth after police found holes in her story, and her family urged her to confess what she’d done.
TwitterJung Yoo-jung’s crime has shocked many in South Korea, and prompted some to delete tutor finding apps from their phones.
“Jung also said she feels sorry for what she did,” a police spokesman said, noting that Jung was a “loner” who had been unemployed since graduating from high school. “We are conducting tests to see if she is a psychopath.”
According to the The Korean Times, news of Jung’s crime shocked people across South Korea because of its impersonal nature. Jung had no reason to kill except to satisfy her own curiosity about murder.
“Jung was found to have premeditated the crime driven by a desire to kill someone after she became obsessed with murder from TV programs and books,” the police said. In this case, her obsession was deadly.
After reading about the South Korean true crime fanatic who killed someone just to see what it would feel like, see how a true crime podcast helped free two men who’d been wrongly imprisoned for murder. Or, learn about the chilling crimes of Yoo Young-chul, South Korea’s terrifying “Raincoat Killer.”
