From True Crime Fan to Felon: The Chilling Tale of Jung Yoo Jung

It was dead in the night at 3AM in South Korea. A taxi driver was doing his rounds, expecting to pick up half-drunken passengers when a young girl with a trolley suitcase hailed his taxi.

He popped open his car trunk and offered to help her, but she declined and did it herself. An uneasy feeling lingered in his mind as he drove. It was odd - for a young girl to be alone in the dead of night with a suitcase and her destination was not to an airport or a residential area, but to a park near the river.

Nevertheless, he complied. As she disappeared into the park, he decided to take a smoke break. Twenty minutes later, the same young girl emerged and asked for a ride back. Unable to shake the uneasiness away this time around, he decided to call the police.

Thankfully, he did.

In that bloody suitcase lay parts of a girl in her university years. She had been stabbed over 111 times, before her body being dismembered.

All that for "curiousity."

The 'Perfect' Murder

The passenger/ murderer was Jung Yoo Jung. Friends of Yoo Jung shared she was on a quieter side and avoided socializing. Soon after graduating from high school, the twenty-three-year-old continued to keep to herself, but without an institution that forced a degree of interaction, Yoo Jung ended up truly isolating in her room. She convinced her grandfather that she was always busy studying for an entrance exam. Education being one of the biggest checkmarks in Korea's culture, it didn't raise too big of an alarm to the grandfather.

The murderous intent likely to stem from frustration due to continued failures in education, securing employment and family issues. She was abandoned by her mother when she was only one years old and by her father when she was six. Her father was getting remaried, but she, on the other hand, had to live with her grandfather, whom she disliked. Three days before the murder, she called her father,

"I will do something bad, then you (father) will suffer. After I commit something bad, I will commit suicide."

Coupled with frustration and an obsession over true crime, Yoo Jung set out to plot the "perfect murder". Her digital trail showed search history on true crime materials and ways to conceal a body. Records later showed that Yoo Jung had checked out books from the library to find out more on how to hide a body.

For months, Yoo Jung searched for her victim on online tutoring mobile app, posing as a mother of a 9th grader who needed English lessons for her child. She contacted over 50 people, preferring females who conducted the lesson in their homes.

In May, she finally found the 26-year-old victim. Yoo Jung arrived at the tutor's place in Busan, posing as the child who needed the tutoring lessons. Yoo Jung looked young and she came prepared, dressed in a school uniform which made the tutor let her guard down, allowing Yoo Jung into her apartment.

Once inside, Yoo Jung brutally stabbed the tutor over 100 times. Even after the victim had passed, she continued to attack her body. She then left to purchase trash bags and bleach for the body disposal. She dismembered the body, removing her fingers to make identification difficult. She also made sure to keep the victim's mobile phone, ID and wallet to make investigations difficult.

She then stuffed parts of the body into the luggage and proceeded to dispose of it in the remote park where the taxi driver got suspicious and tipped off the police.

Clearly, she had a plan in mind, but she was also careless, with multiple CCTVs catching her entering and leaving the victim's house. In a chilling footage, she can be seen strutting with the luggage bag.

When caught, her story was inconsistent. Initially, she said she only moved the body, but was not one who killed the victim. Later, she confessed to the murder as a result of an argument. Finally, she confessed that the murder was incited by her interest in crime shows and books.

When she confessed, she also pleaded for leniency, claiming that she had hallucinations and other mental disorders. However, this was rejected by the court, as evidence showed that Yoo Jung has been planning for many months before carrying out the crime. Yoo Jung did score high on psychopath tests, but those tests do not prove her mental health. Instead, they prove that she has a high tendency to be a cold-hearted and manipulative. Psychopathy does not turn one into a murderer, but is an additional factor that can contribute.

A prosecution official stated,

"Jung Yoo Jung seemingly sought an outlet for the deep-seated anger accumulated throughout her troubled upbringing, strained family relationships, educational and employment failures. It is believed that her psychopathic tendencies influenced the commission of the crime."

In November 2023, Jung Yoo Jung was convicted or murder, desecration and abandonment of a corpse, and sentenced to life in prison. She will be eligible to apply for parole after 20 years in prison.

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