True crime fanatic arrested in South Korea for killing, dismembering woman ‘out of curiosity’

Police in the South Korean city of Busan have arrested a 23-year-old true crime fanatic woman in connection with the killing and dismembering of another.

Law enforecment authorities said they believe the killing was done out of the suspect’s “curiosity” to experience what murder felt like, according to South Korean outlet The Chosun Ilbo.

Jung Yoo-jung, 23, reportedly confessed to the killing and was indicted for murder on Friday.

The suspect was driven by her desire to kill someone for real after becoming “obsessed with murder from TV programmes and books,” a police spokesperson reportedly said.

Police said Ms Jung’s phone search history revealed three months’ worth of information gathering how to hide a corpse.

She had allegedly watched numerous true crime TV shows and borrowed crime books from a library, the local newspaper, one of the country’s oldest outlets, reported.

While she initially claimed to have killed the unnamed victim after an argument, Ms Jung later admitted that was a lie.

Police said they are conducting tests to see if Ms Jung is a psychopath, according to Insider.

The true crime fanatic found her victim through an app that connects parents with private tutors, and presented herself to the now deceased, posing as the mother of a ninth-grader.

She reportedly went to meet the victim disguised as a student wearing a school uniform and fatally stabbed her, the report says. Then, after dismembering the victim and placing some of her body parts in a suitcase, she took a taxi and dumped rest of it in the Nakdong river to “make it look like the victim had disappeared”, according to the police.

“Jung was a loner and a recluse who has been unemployed since graduating from high school five years ago,” authorities said.