Korean True Crime Fan Who Killed Stranger Out of Curiosity, Dismembered Body, Jailed for Life – News18

A South Korean true crime fan was jailed for life after she confessed to the police that she murdered a stranger “out of curiosity”, according to a report by the BBC.

True crime refers to non-fictional stories, typically in non-fiction literature, podcasts, documentaries, or other media like films, that detail real criminal events and investigations.

Jung Yoo-jung, 23, the South Korean woman who confessed to the police, was obsessed with crime shows and novels. She also scored high marks on psychopath tests.

The entire nation is in a state of shock over Jung’s actions. Jung was obsessed with the idea of “trying out a murder”, so she used a tutoring app to meet an English-language teacher. After meeting the woman, she stabbed her to death at her home in May.

She was looking for victims using the tutoring app and contacted more than 50 men and women, but she favoured women more, the BBC said in its report.

The unemployed loner who lived with her grandfather posed as mother of a high school student who needed English lessons, and met the lady who is from the South Korean city of Busan.

She showed up at the woman tutor’s house dressed in a school uniform and then once she was let in, she stabbed the woman more than 100 times and then stabbed her lifeless body several times more.

Jung then dismembered the woman’s body and took a taxi ride to dump some of the remains in a remote area near a river in Busan. But the taxi driver who took her to the area informed the police about a woman travelling with a blood-soaked suitcase which was dumped in the woods, leading to her arrest.

Police checked Jung’s online browsing history which showed she researched how to kill, and how to get rid of a body. She was careless, the police added, pointing to how she took no efforts to avoid CCTV cameras which recorded her entering the tutor’s home and also exiting it several times.

“(The murder has) spread fear in society that one can become a victim for no reason. (This has) incited a general distrust among the community,” a sentencing judge in the Busan District Court said.

Jung initially said she suffered from hallucinations and other mental disorders at the time. “(The crime was) carefully planned and carried out, and it is difficult to accept her claim of mental and physical disorder,” the court said in response. She also claimed that she only moved the body and that someone else had killed her and also said that there was an argument.

Later Jung accepted that her interest in committing a murder was aroused by crime shows and TV programmes.

Prosecutors have demanded the death penalty for Jung.