Rotten Mango - #272: Korean True Crime Fan Commits Murder To Know “What It Feels Like”

Episode Date: June 25, 2023

May 27, 2023. 3AM. South Korea. A taxi driver pulled over to put up a young girl and her suitcase. He watched her struggle to load it into his trunk, but when he offered to help she refused. They got in the car and silently drove towards the park near the river. How odd, he thought. The park at this hour? With a heavy suitcase? And she looks as young as a middle schooler - what could she be doing? Because of what he does next - she is arrested for murder. This is the recent viral case of a South Korean woman who posed as a middle schooler to get away with murder. She said she did it - because she was curious. She wanted to know what it felt like… Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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in all states or situations, prices vary based on how you buy. Better being better. It's 3am in South Korea. May 27th of 2023, so literally like a month ago. A taxi driver pulls over to pick up a young girl in her suitcase. He pops open the trunk. He even offers to help her put it into the trunk, but she's like, no, I'm good, don't worry, it's not a big deal, I can do it by myself. She puts it in the trunk, closes it, slides into the back seat, and he glances at her in his rearview mirror.

It's kind of late to be going on vacation and on top of that her destination isn't even to an airport or a bus terminal or anything like that. It's to the local park near the river. But who is he to judge? What time was it? 3am. Oh yeah. I mean he was just thankful that it was a pleasant polite nice young lady rather than a drunk businessman which is typically the clientele at 3am. He drives quietly to the park.

She directs him where to stop the car, and she pays him. She slides out of the back seat and hauls her own suitcase out of the back of the trunk. Again, it looks really heavy, really, really heavy. She said, no, don't worry about it sir, I can do it myself. I mean, the physical strength of the youth never sees to amaze this taxi driver. They say they're goodbyes, and he watches with a little bit of curiosity as she practically skips into the park towards the grassy field. What a strange, strange girl.

She looked like what? A middle schooler? A high schooler? Most, she looked really young. I mean, what is she even doing alone at this hour? And where is she going with the suitcase in the park? He decides to take a smoke break right then and there. He honestly thought that she probably would need a ride back.

I mean, no taxi was going to stop in the middle of the park for her to get onto the taxi. It's near the river at 3 a.m. I think nothing good can happen to a young girl roaming around looking for a ride at this time. So he's smoking it up and he looks up, it's about 15-20 minutes, and there she is again. And he's just watching her as she walks out of the park, towards him and her suitcase looks very light all of a sudden. Because you know, earlier it was dragging on the wheels, it was kind of forcing her body

to lean a little bit forward to pull it, and now, now it's practically flying around as she's moving it about. The girl asked him for a ride back. The whole energy seemed strange. It seemed like she didn't even notice that it was the same taxi driver, and he kept glancing at her in the rear view mirror as he drove her to her destination. Something in his gut told him, this isn't right. Like something feels wrong.

I mean, the whole, I mean, where would she have gone with that suitcase, and why would it be lighter coming out of the park? Nobody just throws away their clothes in the park. She might be a middle-schooler, but there is this energy about her. He would alert the police, and they found that she had been transporting a victim's dismembered body from the victim's own apartment to that very park. The taxi driver had unknowingly transported human remains,

dismembered human remains in the trunk of his car. He had sat in the car with a young baby-faced killer not once, but twice. Wait, wait, he called the police just because how suspicious it was? They searched the grassy field in the park. Wow. This case has recently gone viral in Korea. For a number of reasons, I mean, just the brazenness of the crime, the CCTV footage of

the killer looking like a happy person, I'm gonna show this to you. She's just skipping around with this member that remains in her suitcase. Or at least she's got a cute little bob and it's almost bouncing about. People say it's so unsettling because she has this child alike mannerism tour, this energy tour. There's dismembered remains in the suitcase. But also, the fact that the killer was stated to have an unhealthy fascination with serial killers and an obsession with true crime documentaries. She killed dismembered and disposed of a victim because she, quote, just wanted to see what

it feels like to kill. As always, full show notes are available at rottamingopodcast..com, but this is a developing case and as always this is the information that we have as of now. Things could change, they could get worse, but I do think that we I don't know if we'll get too much information considering the privacy laws in South Korea. Also, as per South Korean laws, the victim of this case and her family have chosen to stay anonymous, so throughout this case we will refer to her with the alias of Hannah. And with all foreign cases, we had our Korean researchers work on this case to get as much of what we could that's out there and compile it in this video for you guys. So let's get into it.

The victim Hannah was a young woman in her 20s. She was tutoring high schoolers in English. I would not say tutoring is an easy job in South Korea. It's a very serious job. Parents are picky, over-involved, very diligent in picking the absolute perfect tutor for their perfect children whom they believe are entitled to be the next Einstein's. So it's a difficult job, but Hannah liked it. She was a university student at a prestigious school. It worked well with her schedule and it made it easier for her to get a tutoring position to begin with. And she liked being able to help these great schoolers get interested in English. She made the whole process fun for them and just wanted to be like a cool tutor. That was her genuine vibe. That's her goal. So in 2023, with all of the available apps out there, there is a platform for tutors. Tutors will sign up and they will be verified by the platform for having the specific

credentials. They will verify with the school that their student, they will verify their transcripts, grades, everything. To make sure that these tutors that are online are being advertised, their background checks, it's basically a tutors securing app that parents are obsessed with. Parents will go on there and they will look for tutors in every single subject for their elementary, middle school, and high school kids. The demand for English tutors was actually pretty high and the pay was fairly good. So Hannah had a lot of parents messaging her, inquiring about her services, including the mom of a middle school student, who was um, this mom was very adamant about hiring Hannah. Originally, Hannah declined this mother's

offer because her house was so far away from Hannah's, I mean, she naturally wanted something closer because why commute if you don't have to? So she said, thank you so much, like I'm sure that your middle schooler will find a great tutor, but it's just too far for me. This mom really seemed to like Hannah, though. She even offered to send her daughter to Hannah's house, drop her off for these English sessions. Hannah kind of felt bad. I mean, the mom seemed really desperate for her daughter to have an English tutor. Maybe she had an exam coming up. Maybe she was the only tutor that seemed to fit the mom's profile.

It was strange, but she found it hard to say no. Besides, she really did like tutoring. She really did like helping students. May 26th of 2023, Friday, right around dinner time. So right around 6 p.m. Hannah slowly gets her house ready because this is the first day that their student is going to come over and they're gonna tutor an English together. You're kidding me.

So she's cleaning up? Yeah. Cleaning up, wiping the table down and she hears a knock on the door. She peers through the little camera and she sees a preteen student, a middle schooler. Kind of short bob haircut that's curled outwards like how middle schoolers do it. It kind of stopped at her chin. Her glasses would make her cheeks look even rounder. a haircut that's curled outwards like how middle schoolers do it, it kind of stopped at her chin. Her glasses would make her cheeks look even rounder.

And in many situations I think most people would look at this face and think, oh, like what a cute middle schooler, she's got like cute little cheeks. And she's standing there wearing her school uniform. So Hannah opens the door and she's ready to start tutoring. There would have been no way for Hannah to have known that this little middle schooler that she had just let into her home was not actually a middle schooler. What? Chang Yu-jung was her name. She was not a middle schooler. Yu-jung was not 12 or 13 or even 14 or 15 years old, but rather 23 years old, she could have potentially been older than Hannah.

We don't know the victim's precise age. The middle school uniform that she was wearing was purchased at a thrift store, and underneath it, she was hiding a knife. Within minutes of entering, Yu Zhong established that Hannah lived alone. She pulled out her knife and viciously stabbed Hannah. She repeatedly stabbed Hannah in the neck only on like a particular spot, slashed side, that's what a lot of the reports said, which would later indicate to a lot of psychiatrists that she had researched where to stab.

She knew what she was doing. She also stabbed the same area on the neck over 20 times. Once the 23-year-old pretending to be a middle schooler finished killing the victim, she relished in the satisfaction of a job well done. She would spend the greater part of the evening at Hannah's apartment, possibly pretending as if this was her own apartment, even changing into the jacket that Hannah wore. Like, she took a jacket out of Hannah's closet and wore it the rest of the night. The jacket that you see on CCTV camera is Hannah's jacket. CCTV cameras would catch this 23 year old UDunk going in and out of Hannah's apartment,

going back and forth from her own place, hauling clean up tools and other times she would bring a suitcase, which indicates that while everyone believes that this is a premeditated murder, she was under-prepared. But more shocking than that was that she was caught on CCTV looking very relaxed. She's taken taxis to and from Hannah's place to her place to the store to buy supplies. She's bringing around giant suitcases from her house to Hannah's house. She's going to a local store buying bleach, knives, trash bags. See, that's crazy to me, because Korea, you're seeing there's camera every corner.

Korea is like the city. I'm sure it's similar in China and maybe Japan, like the city of CCTV. Yeah, right. Like, what? Yeah, I don't understand either. Yeah. We're going to go down kind of a few conspiracy routes later, but it gets weird. She brings this suitcase and all these supplies back to Hannah's and she gets to dismembering the victim.

She spends the rest of the night and into the early hours of the morning doing this. She then stuffs unspecified parts of the victim's body into a suitcase and hauls a cab. And again, just seeing her with that suitcase out in the streets, just the way that she's walking is so nonchalant. She's almost practically skipping. People say she almost has this child-like demeanor, meaning that if we were to bump into her in the street, we would probably think,

oh my god, I just bumped into like a little high schooler. Oopsie, sorry. Like, oh, she looks cute and innocent. She very much had a girl next door, sweet innocent appearance that had viewers and netizens absolutely floored when they found out what was in that suitcase. Around 3 p.m., she puts the luggage

into the trunk of a taxi, directs the driver to drop her off near a wooded area near Hopo station. This is near like the Nakhdong River, and reportedly the killer Yujung. She loved going on walks in this park. This was her favorite spot. She gets dropped off by the taxi driver, walks into the grassy area, and starts scattering the remains of Hannah. Solar University forensic professor would say that even the grassy location by

the Nakhdong River could have been planned. The tall grass by the water, it holds a lot of insects and disinfectants, like I'm assuming it's like pesticides, that would accelerate the decomposition of the body parts within a week. So if she had not been caught by them, there's a high chance the body would have been hard to recognize or even how to ID the body. Professor Yu is quite certain that she knew about all of this, which is why she chose to go this far with the body and even get in a taxi to scatter the remains at this park. Perhaps her frequent walks around this park made her familiar with the area it made her

want to leave a body here. Now, it's all going according to 23-year-old Yu Zheng's plan. Except, the taxi driver, she believed the taxi driver would not be able to tell the difference between a girl traveling with luggage for vacation at 3am versus a girl traveling with luggage full of body parts. The taxi driver would call the police and it was very quickly traced back to Yuzheng. In a show called We Want to Know in Korea, it was revealed that another bystander actually saw Yujung throw away this huge trash bag of bloody blankets, bloody leggings before she walked away with her rolling suitcase.

Again, just five hours later, she was arrested. Wow, that was fast. Yeah. Now, side note, there was a rumor circulating that the taxi driver had gotten out to help Yujung unload her luggage from the trunk, and as he was trying to help her, he had touched the luggage and felt that it was wet upon impact. The rumor was that he got back into the taxi, and you know how like the car lights turn on when you open the door?

Yeah. And he briefly glanced at his palms and they were dripping with blood. That is a rumor from what I can tell, someone anonymously came out and said that they were a colleague of the taxi driver and that didn't happen. He just noticed that the weight difference and where she was going and all these suspicious things added up for him to call the police, he did not see blood. He did not feel blood. You know, like for him to call the police, he must have some kind of like that gut feeling that you're like, I know I'm not gonna be able to sleep at night

And it must have been so strong and that must be really really bad I wonder if he's actually thinking oh my god. Is this a body? Yes, I did see a lot of netizens say the fact that it's speculated it was a male taxi driver The fact that a male taxi driver that has probably seen so much in South Korea So many bizarre things at 3 a, 4pm, 5am, anytime of the day, but this little girl with luggage unsettled him so much. Because I think it's one thing if a girl is driving

and there's like a creepy man with luggage, we're already on guard. There's always this feeling of like, I always think something is wrong. But for him to be this upset and unsettled by what looks to be a middle school girl, it must have been bad. There must have been some sort of, and I hate to say it, like some sort of energy that she was giving off, like some sort of weirdness that was happening.

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for whatever mood you're in anytime. And plan start at as little as $9.99 a month. Max, the one to watch. Subscription required, visit max.com. So the police rushed to the field where they find this scattered remains, and with the help of the taxi driver describing what she looked like, approximately where he picked her up and where he dropped her off, she was quickly located and arrested. Authorities asked her, why would you do this? How could you do this?

Who did you do this to? Because at this point, they did not have an idea of the victim. Now, upon arrest, Yueng seemed very calm and collected. She was young, just 23 years old, but when the police were questioning her, she didn't seem that alarmed. She just very calmly explained, well, the dismembered remains that you saw,

if you must know, they were my baby. I delivered a baby at home, and I killed it I don't want to be a mom, obviously. I'm young, I was going through a psychotic break and I killed the baby and scattered the remains. I'm not sure how she thought that she could get away with a lie like that because very easily you could pick up some of the remains, I'm sure that there are medical examiners that can give you like a brief, hey, that's not a baby's bone. I'm also not sure how she had so much confidence, even though this is so easily medically debunkable.

I mean, her body doesn't even have evidence that she was even pregnant. So after arresting her, the authorities also found Hannah's ID nearby. This was left near the remains, along with some bloody clothes and other body parts. So now they know who the victim is, they go back to her Hannah's apartment, they find more evidence of the crime, and they tell you

don't like, that's not your baby, we know it's not your baby, give us the real truth. That's when she starts complaining of stomach pain. She's like, oh, my stomach hurts. I, oh my god, I'm gonna die. Because she's in police custody. See, this is where the police are better than me, because if you've committed a blatantly, like a blatant murder and you're telling me that you're stomach hurts, you never told me that. You and your stomach can hurt for the rest of the interrogation you're not gonna die, okay?

Why should I care about you when you don't care about human life? But because she's under police responsibility, they rush her to the hospital and surprise, she's lying. There's nothing wrong with her. So after the hospital debacle, the police bring her back into the interrogation room and they ask her about the events of the previous night. The police also take her phone and they start searching through it and you know they just have so many questions. Did you know the victim? Did you target

this victim? Why would you do this? How long have you been planning this? Are there other victims? Are you working with someone? She clearly was not being the most honest person, so the police they start going through her phone. And we're going to come back to all of her lies. But let's go through the phone first. The police check her phone, hoping to get some answers. They found a colorful search history where she had searched online for tips on how to hide a corpse. She also had watched a ton of true crime documentaries allegedly feeding off on um it's said that she just really wanted to know what it felt like to kill. Yeah we're gonna get back to it but something the police rarely see was that her phone was empty.

Just like everything. Not like she had wiped her phone and deleted everything, but digital forensics revealed that Tongyu-dong, her phone? She was not in contact with a single person. She had no contacts in her cell phone, which I know some people don't save contacts, but she had no messages, no calls coming in or out none, nothing, no friends, no family, no social media interactions, no one was contacting her.

In this day and age of 2023, how nearly impossible is that? She was truly almost like a ghost. Cheng Yu-jung was born in 1999. Very young. She, like a lot of people, was born into a pretty volatile house. Her parents were always busy working. They were too busy to take care of her.

She was sent off to live with her grandfather and he was the exclusive soul guardian throughout her entire childhood. Which I think is interesting. So in a lot of cultures and Korean culture as well, it's common for grandparents to move in and raise the grandchildren while the parents are busy working, but her grandfather was listed as her soul guardian. So I mean, that to me indicates whether her parents were divorced or they were not present at all in her life. If it was to the extent of negligence or abandonment, I'm not sure, but the fact that her grandfather

was listed as her sole guardian, I think something must have happened with her parents. I'm sure it probably impacted her in some way, to not have her parents around, to not having this loving dynamic that a lot of kids have, but I mean it's been proven time and time again that a child's first example of a relationship is with the parent. So we don't know. It's just something to consider. Ultimately, we have no idea what happened if anything, but we know that it wasn't the most stable home.

Regardless, growing up, UDUNG was regarded as a very specific word that I've never really heard in cases. Invisible. Not just quiet, not just shy, not just introverted, but invisible. Not just quiet, not just shy, not just introverted, but invisible. Her former classmates said, if you said hi to Yuzheng in the hallway, like if you waved her in the hallway, she would never say anything back. She wouldn't even smile back, she wouldn't nod in acknowledgement, she wouldn't even way back. She would basically just ignore your existence. They said that Yuzheng never spoke or replied to any of her classmates.

So if you were a classmate and you were asking her a question and she knows you're asking her a question, the room is silent and you go, Hey Yuzheng, can you pass me that? She wouldn't even look at you. She would not respond to you. If it was an elder, like a teacher, authority figure, or even a neighbor,

if they asked her a question, she would avoid eye contact and answer just yes or no. Outside of school, Yujung never even left her home. Neighbors reported almost never seeing her out walking around, hanging out with friends, going on walks with her grandpa, inviting friends over, nothing. It stated, and this is kind of random and super specific, but Yujung hated talking to people, but if she were at the convenience store and she was owed like a penny back in change, most Koreans stated that they just weren't asked

for the change. They'd be like, oh, keep the change, because they don't wanna walk around with this penny. They don't know exactly what to do with this penny. It's just kind of a hassle. Yujung, the person who hates talking would ask for that penny back no matter what. It was like the one time when she was very vocal.

She was like, give me my penny back. Which is fine. She's entitled to it. But people just thought it was kind of interesting to note. Anyway, contrary to a lot of speculation, for my classmates also stated, Yu Jung was absolutely never bullied. So as far as we know, nobody picked on her. Nobody forced her to retreat into her shell and go unnoticed.

Nobody verbally physically hit her. Nobody bothered her because she wouldn't even wave back at you. It's like she would just float through her childhood like a ghost. This seems to be like a choice that she made for whatever reason. She would be so good at being unnoticeable that she could walk into a room and no one would look up or hear anything. Her presence was unknown.

She was unseen. She was unremarkable in almost every way. We have no idea if she desperately desired to talk or to say something or wanted someone to listen to her as if she was invisible and she didn't want to be. She just couldn't stop. Maybe her brain blocked that part of her life or blocked that part of her socialization. I don't know. Or on the flip side you could argue that this was a choice. She didn't like people. This was her own little rebellion to not talk to people. She was deliberately ignoring them. But she did kind of unsettle

her former classmates. So they never bothered to get to know her, but they reported that she would sit behind curtains alone. So like imagine there's a curtain, she would just sit behind it. Just like hiding herself, but not really hiding herself because you would see that there was a human behind the curtain and then you would look at the shoes

and then you'd be like, why is you showing behind the curtain? Sometimes you would hear crunching noises from behind the curtain and she would just be behind the curtain eating snacks. A professor named Yisoo Jung was interviewed about this case and as an expert in teen psychology and behavior they stated that she was very, she had unusual behavior for a teenager. They said that adolescent ages are a time of pure curiosity of your peers.

You want to know what your peers have to think, have to say about everything, how they dress. You want to get to know what your peers have to think, have to say about everything, how they dress. You want to get to know everyone your age. You have this innate desire to understand them because you want to be part of your peers. This is not like anything we've heard. Yeah, this one's very weird. And it's going to get weirder. So far it's weird, but it gets weirder.

The professor stated that if they were to evaluate this type of behavior, they would categorize it as psychopathic tendencies and or behavior that is being displayed at an early age So you don't put in as much effort into her schoolwork as she does getting to know her classmates Another thing that stood out to form her classmates is that you don't was never angry She was never upset. She was never depressed. She never had this like Passion against everyone like oh I don't want to talk to any of you guys because you don't understand me, I stand out, I'm different, she never had that.

She just seemed so utterly neutral about everything, so incredibly passively indifferent. And in hindsight, a lot of people said that might be scarier. But she still managed to graduate in 2018 from the Kyeongi Girls High School. She had no clue what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, which, you know, is very normal. But she also had zero intention of trying to explore things and figure it out. After she graduates high school, Yujung had no social outlet. She had nothing on her schedule that would force her to interact with people, with teachers, like high school did did like she doesn't have college

She has become totally disconnected from society the day she graduates high school She would stay in her room all day no connection with anyone She would tell her grandfather that she was hold up in her room studying for the public government official exam But it is clear you jung use this as a tactic, and excuse to have in her back pocket if her grandfather ever noticed that she has no social life, that she's not getting a job, that she has no plans for her future. She would just milk the crap out of studying for this exam for the next five years. Every day it was, oh you know, grandpa, I'm studying for the entrance exam.

She was receiving financial support from her grandfather while she studied. He expected that she would pass and afterwards she would find a job and she would get paid and hopefully pay him back for all the hard work That he's done because he's a grandfather now and I'm sure that there were even moments that the grandfather was proud of her because She never spent time hanging out with friends or just doing nothing. She was always studying. She seemed so dedicated to her studies. Now, if you think that he's in on it or goalable or that he should have known, it's a different generation. He didn't even know that you needed to have a college level proficiency in English to even qualify to take the exam, which Yu-jung was clearly not proficient and English, and that's kind of something that is pretty easy to tell, and it might be why she chose her victim.

Now, we're going to circle back to that. In 2017, you joined applied multiple times for a job as a golf caddy. She submitted her resume and wrote, after leaving high school, I started preparing for the college entrance exam. I enjoy being active and meeting other people, and I really want to try this role. Thank you. But once she got a call for an interview, she did not say a single word. Even when the interviewer asked her standard interview questions, it was silence on the other line. Silence, she refused to talk. The recruiter was so confused because she's like, you apply for the job. Why won't you talk because you applied for the job?

It didn't look good in the recruiter's eyes and of course she didn't get the job. But when she found out that she was rejected from the position, she went as far as to call them back and curse them out for their decision. She kept demanding to know why, why was I rejected? And they didn't really want to tell her because, well you were strange. You didn't respond to any of the questions. We thought you were a little weird. They didn't want to say that. So they just said, oh well we're looking for an English speaker and you're not proficient in English. It is speculated that you Jung started developing a hatred for those who were good at English.

And maybe this is why she ended up online searching for English tutors to murder. Wow. Her victim Hannah was a young successful accomplished university student at a prestigious school who was also an English tutor. She was everything that Yudong was not and that may have been why she was targeted. Now let's talk about her true crime obsession. But first, why was she even obsessed?

Because of the lack of any contact on Yu Zheng's phone after she was taken in by the police, the word Hikiko Mori has been coming up in discussions about her case. And quick disclaimer, I don't think that Yu Zheng was, but there is a connection. We've talked about this previously on the Japanese serial killer cases that we've covered, but since there's been like over a year, let me give you a refresh. In Japanese culture, there is a phenomenon right now where adolescents and young adults

have become very reclusive. Usually, after graduating high school and into their adult lives, they will live in basically voluntary solitary confinement, usually in their parents' home. Some of them will go years without even talking or running into their own family members that they live with in the same apartment. Not massive white house with a west wing and an east wing. I'm talking a three-bedroom apartment. Many of them stated they will coordinate their comings and goings out of their room to not run into a single human being. Sometimes these people will also go decades without seeing anyone outside of their immediate

family members. Now, according to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, aside, no, there is no good translation of Hikiko Mori, but the Japanese government has defined it as, the state of avoiding social engagement, education, employment, and friendships with generally persistent withdrawal into one's residence for at least six months as a result of various factors. So while it's pretty difficult to get exact numbers, estimates say that there are at least over 1 million hikikomori in Japan alone, probably close to a million in South Korea and potentially millions in China.

Wow. And it's become such a problem for Japan and really everywhere else. But the Japanese government even released a guide for the Hikiko Mori on what to do in the event that their parent passes away. Oh, for them. Yeah. Because there was a case where a Hikiko Mori, his mom had passed away in the house and he did not report her body or do anything.

So I was looking through a Reddit forum to understand the mindset of the community. And I don't think that Yu-jung is one of them. And I want to clarify that Hikiko morey are not dangerous people. Yu-jung is not one of them. I mean, she could go out, she liked to take her little walks in the park. The only same consistency that they have is that they had no social interactions with people. There is a redditor who wrote, if something forced me to go outside like a sudden fire inside my house, I would be unable to step outside into the world. Another redditor said, see, it sneaks upon you. You think it's okay for a month and then

you do it for six months and you think it's not that bad, then you do it for a year and then two years and then you realize that all of your peers are light ears ahead of you economically, socially, mentally. You feel like there's no way you can even try to catch up now. So it's the point. It's been known to psychologists that the more one doesn't socialize, the less they know how. It's something that you can technically forget.

It's like talking. You have to learn to talk again. And it's this vicious cycle of not socializing for even longer because you forget how to do it and then repeat and repeat. It's happening in Japan, China, South Korea, the United States. Some behavioral scientists have credited this retreat from society to the overwhelming pressure of succeeding in Asia's work culture after high school. So in China, some people actually attributed also to the fact that the population has profoundly more men than women saying that this puts so much pressure on men looking for partners whereas women can be a lot more

selective. So these men decide I don't even want to partake in this game that society plays. I want to completely withdraw. So why is this happening all of a sudden in this day and age? Because of technology. So back then there were HIKI KIKO MORI in Japan and most of them would read manga, they would watch like DVDs and stuff. But now with the internet, people feel like they really don't have to go outside. Everything can be done online. They can watch shows, they can watch YouTube videos, they can talk to people anonymously without the threat of feeling exposed or vulnerable, they can go to say forums that they can communicate with.

They can do everything online, especially in places like South Korea, Japan, and China, where everything can be delivered at your fingertips in record time. It's so easy to never leave. I mean, it's gotten so bad. There's actually services where you can hire young, pretty women, and typically they're hired by parents of Hikiko Mori and they'll come and try to talk to the predominantly male community. They'll come and talk to your son and try to lure him out of his room. Yeah. It's estimated that this phenomenon is

affecting millions of people around the world and it's honestly very heartbreaking. It's just, it's very lonely existence, I imagine. And again, I don't think that you don't can be fully categorized as Hikiko Mori, but regardless, she probably felt the effects of the lack of social connection and almost complete social isolation, which risk of that is mental health issues like depression, anxiety, substance abuse. You can even get chronic conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, higher risk of dementia because you're not socializing. And again, just another disclaimer, like most mental illnesses that he can go more

in lifestyle, I mean, this is typically only detrimental to the person themselves and maybe perhaps their family members who have to interact with them and try to provide for them and help them. But most of the time, they are just non-violent, introverted, modern day hermits. There were a lot of e-kiko mooray that were interviewed and they said, you know, it didn't matter because it just started like one or two days. I would just stay in my room and be on the internet and I thought, this is nice, I like it. And then it was a month and then they were thinking, this isn't too bad.

And then six months crept in, a year crept in, two years crept in, and then a lot of them report feeling like it was too late. Like they had already ruined their life. They felt like I already spent the most formative years, the most important years of my career. There's no way I can get a job in the competitive Asian work economy. Like people just out of college, of prestigious colleges, they way I can get a job in the competitive Asian work economy.

Like, people just out of college, prestigious colleges, they can't even get a job. I've been doing nothing for the past five years. How am I going to get a job? A lot of them report deteriorating health, a lot of weight gain, and you know, when you're in your room and eating cup ramen all the time, and just staring at your computer, a lot of them report having a lot of acne, and that would just prevent them from going out even more. They thought awkward around people, they felt like

everyone was staring at them weirdly. They just felt like they didn't fit in and the longer it went on, the harder it was to reintegrate back into society. And so most of them just thought, I'm just going to stay with my computer. That's it. That's what I'm going to do. And Yu-jung was kind of like that in the sense that she was obsessed with her computer, with her electronics, and she was primarily obsessed with consuming true crime documentaries. Now, I know that most of you guys that are listening to this episode because you have an interest in current events and or true crime itself. Now, I can't speak for you guys, but that's how I started. I would watch a true crime documentary, and I had nobody to talk about it with,

and I just wanted to talk to someone about what I had seen, what it made me feel, how it made me think about the world, how it made me think about the justice system, and I wanted to share these thoughts and stories with someone. But I think, I think if I really look back on why I started watching these documentaries years and years ago, it kind of made me feel like I knew what was

out there. Because, like, it makes me feel like I know what kind of evil is lurking in the shadows. I know what kind of people, scary people are out there, so maybe I can prepare myself and understand some of the warning signs. So, it made me feel like I was being proactive in my safety. It felt like it was safer to know than not knowing what kind of evil existed, and it eased a little bit of my anxiety. Like that's kind of how I felt. And I read a lot of comments in here that say very similar things. That is not what you don't got out of it. She fixated on the killers of each documentary and she asked herself,

I wonder how they feel. I wonder how it felt for them to kill. And unlike most of us, she did not have a healthy human level of curiosity where we have other interest in life. You Jung did not care to even watch documentaries about cases of injustice or about all these cases that have gotten solved that need people's attention or to help bring justice to all these victims' families, she literally watched these documentaries for inspiration. How do we know this, though? So they found a bunch of true crime in her phone records, like shows like Digital Footprint and that is what a lot of psychiatrists believe and she said that she wanted to feel what

it felt like to kill. That's another thing. There is a conspiracy that she actually didn't kill because she was obsessed with true crime. Yeah. So I think this is where the whole video games argument kind of comes in. I don't think that there's a single thing in this world, especially a piece of media, like a documentary video game, or a movie, nothing could make me kill someone.

And I'm sure that the same goes for all of you. Psychiatrist have actually come out and said, we don't know for sure if this is her motive. So as of right now, she's being labeled as someone who is so obsessed with true crime that she killed someone, just to feel how it feels to kill. A couple of psychiatrists said, we don't know that for sure. We think that a lot of us are connecting these dots because as a society, we feel better knowing.

Like kind of what I just said about true crime documentaries. We feel better knowing that there's almost a reason. When we don't know, it makes it scarier. So we're going to get into all of that. But anyways, she escaped her reality to exist in relish in the reality of being a murderer. She would eventually become so engrossed allegedly, so obsessed that she had made up her mind and she was going to kill to see how it felt. Why would you break into these apartments? For money, for drugs, whatever was in them. Why aren't you afraid of getting caught at doing this?

No. Who's going to catch us? What a police. It was the height of the crack era, and instead of locking up drug dealers, some New York City cops had become them. I would suit up in my uniform and we're going to want some drug dealers, and I know how to do it really well.

This is the inside story of the biggest police corruption scandal in NYPD history and the investigation that uncovered it all. Did you consider yourself a rat? 100% I saved my soul just like everybody else does. Listen to and follow the set, an Odyssey originals documentary podcast series, available now in the Odyssey app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your shows. I'm not a big guy man, but I love being a dirty mother f***er. So we know how the crime went down.

She was arrested and she tried to lie and said the remains belonged to her baby that she had to kill, and when that lie was exposed, the police found out who the victim was, she changed her story once more. She stated, I did not kill this girl. I was just hired to dispose of her body. I am not the one who killed the victim. Someone else did it and I'm just helping because they promised me something in exchange. What would they promise you?

I was promised Hannah's identity. She's saying, I just wanted to commit identity theft and identity fraud not murder Many psychiatrists would later speculate while this is a blatant lie She is the killer, but it does give insight into her own thoughts and desires She wanted Hannah's life. She was jealous of Hannah's life. She wanted her identity and inside note in his life. She was jealous of Hannah's life. She wanted her identity. Inside note, police found a digital footprint of her watching the South Korean movie helpless multiple times prior to the murder. And this is allegedly one of her favorite movies. It's a Korean thriller. The movie is about a couple who are traveling to meet the husband's

parents in the countryside of Korea. They end up stopping at this rest stop and getting coffee. And when the husband returns to the car, his wife is gone. She's not picking up her phone, she just vanished. He's like searching through the rest stop, he finds a little hairpin in the bathroom, she's not in the bathroom, he drives all the way back into the city, goes to her apartment,

the apartment looks like it's been completely ransacked, so he's like, what the hell is going on? He gets his cousin involved who is a former police officer, and they find out that the wife has been stealing other women's identities and is probably a killer. Hmm. It's like a dark and windy thriller,

but the fact that that's her favorite movie, I don't know. Some people say see like she really wanted someone else's life and maybe she's trying to recreate the movie. Others said, what if she's setting up some twisted alibi? What do you mean? Like some psychiatrists believe we can't trust a single thing that comes out of her mouth. So we don't know the motive. We don't even know if she wanted to take Hannah's life because

she was jealous of Hannah. They said that this could be a well spun fabrication that she was watching this movie to find out her lie. I'm gonna lie and say I was trying to steal her identity. So does that make sense? Yeah, so she's just constantly lying. Yeah, I mean, it's just we don't know at all. Anyway, the police know that this is a lie though, that she did not kill Hannah.

She definitely killed Hannah. So they keep pushing and you don't quickly change her story once more and she stated that she killed Hannah because she got into a fight with Hannah. And the police are fed up. They don't believe this because why would you get into a fight with someone you don't know and why would you trick them into being your English tutor if you don't even know them? Like it doesn't make sense.

So they did not believe this lie either. And while she's being stalled by investigators, the cops were able to look up her family registry in the system and call Grandpa Jung, the man who raised her. He rushes to the police station and his whole universe shattered that day. This was his only family. He raised her like his own daughter and he felt like a complete and utter failure. How could he have failed Korea so badly by raising a killer? grandfather jung rushed to the station and the police asked him to talk to his granddaughter

to get the truth. He cried as he begged his granddaughter to confess to her crimes. He pleaded with her to submit your sins for me. Do it for me and my integrity. And she, I mean she had given her grandfather nothing except a lifetime of pain. And Grandpa Jung had given her absolutely everything. This was the least that he could ask of his granddaughter. And you Jung confessed to her crimes.

I don't know if she did it for love for her grandfather. I don't know if she felt like this is it. I mean, I'm gonna have to fess up. I don't know what it was. Grandpa Jung would later be interviewed as he was hounded by the South Korean media, and he reported, I feel really sorry for the bereaved family because I'm a sinner who raised my granddaughter wrong.

I never expected this situation. I never even imagined this. When Grandpa Jung's neighbors were also interviewed after the fact, one of them reported, I mean, the girl was calm, quiet, and kind, kind of, but the grandpa was a really nice person. So it's safe to assume that Yudong was just a bad apple. Grandpa Jung was potentially just another one of her victims. When Yudong confessed to the police, she cited her motivation as, I just wanted to experience murder.

I just wanted to know what it feels like. She said that she had been planning this murder since February, so a full three to four months. And with a confession and a crime scene full of illuminating evidence, the authorities prepared for her prosecution. She was officially charged with murder, damaging of a body, dismemberment, and a third charge of body abandonment, scattering of the remains. On June 2nd around 9 a.m. before appearing before the prosecution, and a third charge of body abandonment, scattering of the remains.

On June 2nd around 9am before appearing before the prosecution, she said two short sentences as the media questioned her for her crimes. She said in a quote, I was out of my mind. Like I didn't have my right mind. I'm sorry for the victim's family. She also ended her press interview with Thank You, which professionals believe that she copied from past criminals, interviews, behaviors, and attitudes. Yeah, so a lot of killers.

Yeah, like a lot of killers and documentaries they'll give press conferences and like, end it with the Thank You in Korea. And I guess the way she said it didn't feel natural, kind of felt like mocking behavior, not mocking, but copied behavior. So many netizens who followed this case as a blew up have criticized her words here, believing that her apology is this pathetic attempt at appealing for a lower sentence,

they said that she was using her childlike innocence or her youthful facial features to try and get away with murder. However, due to this case blowing up, there's a chance that the high profile nature is going to pressure authorities to sentence her with a much stricter sentence. Yet the length of a sentence doesn't seem to mean much to you, John. According to police, she's doing great in jail. She's calm, and not the least bit scared or anxious, she's eating well, sleeping well, and not feeling much remorse, or at least none that people can see. Side note, netizens were so enraged about this comment that many of them dug into the Pruzahn Prison menu, and they found out that the prisoners were eating better food than

given to the military during their services. The menu is high in quality, lots of healthy options, fresh veggies, and even has dessert options. Netizens were wondering how the food is better than the food that they eat at home, and there were questions of, should our tax money really be used in this way? After her appearance in front of the media on June 2nd, her results from a test that measured psychopathy was released four days later on the 6th.

The psychopath test was created by Canadian psychologist Dr. Robert D. Hare in the 70s. It's called the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, and it asks 20 questions that are supposed to hone in on your true nature. Professionals allegedly use it to assess cases of psychopathy, and it has even been described as the single best predictor of violent behavior currently available. The psychopathy measurement test functions on a scale out of 40. So the lower the score, the least likely you are to have traits of a psychopath. So psychopaths, they typically score on average of 25 that indicates a very likely tendency to be a psychopath.

I think normal people fall around like the five or six range, but some of the prompts or questions like us include, and you answer them yourself. So you would answer like, oh, I strongly disagree. Somewhat disagree. Disagree and then I'm neutral does not apply. Like all these things. And they would say things like, I generally evade responsibility and do not answer to anyone in my life. Yeah. So that's like really easily you can pick whatever you want.

Yeah. So is it in her best interest to fake that she is? I mean, probably not because psychopathy is not related to being in a status psychosis. You are not, like you're still in the right headspace. You're just like empathy and all these other things. But, and they would say things like, I have a grand UI sense of self worth, I have a

history of exhibiting cruelty to others, and the patient rates themselves. On her first evaluation, Ujung scored 15 points out of 40, and even though 15 is higher than the normal range, which is about 5 to 6 for a normal person, it's still below 25 points, which is the threshold for psychopathy. However, on June 7th, she went through a second evaluation and she reportedly received a score of 28 points. Some notable comparable scores include Ted Bundy, who got 39 out of 40, and John Wayne Gacy, the clown killer, got 27 out of 40. So she scored 1 point higher than John Wayne Gacy. She ranked 1 point higher than Kang

Woosoon as well which is a notorious serial killer in Korea. He kidnapped and murdered 8 women. He scored 27 points. She scored 28. I will say though the test has been criticized by some researchers and experts but regardless of what you think a score indicates or doesn't indicate it's clear that Tong Yijong was at least not a normal person and at most a budding serial killer. Police found evidence that she had been contacting multiple tutors. According to a professor Ouyun Song, a specialist in criminal psychology, they said if she hadn't been caught on her first kill, there's almost a hundred percent chance that she would have killed again.

Yeah, I can see that, but the fact that the way she did it for the first time, it's so stupid. Yeah, so I think that's where a lot of people say the grandiose sense of self comes into play. A lot of these psychopaths sometimes overestimate their intelligence and ability to accomplish things. Is this speculation? Because she does, she did seem pretty confident in that CCTV video.

It just, yeah, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. Now, another criminal psychology professor chimed in to state that they believed Tonggyu-jung is a pathological liar. The professor even goes as far to speculate that everything Tonggyu-jung has stated so far, her obsession with true crime, her wanting to feel like what it's like to kill someone, all of that is a lie, all except for the fact that she killed Hannah. That is the only thing that they think we should take as fact.

Nothing else should be considered. The professor claims we might not even know how meticulously she's been planning, or how far in advance, or even what her final goal was. Another criminal psychologist states it's way too early to determine why she even killed. They said that we as a society are quick to believe her reasonings, not because we are gullible, but because otherwise the message would be that no one is safe from such a random type of murder and monster. And that is more terrifying. Now side note, on June 8th, the Pusan police gave an award to the taxi driver who reported

the crime to the police. However, the taxi driver refused to take the prize and he actually quit his job. According to colleagues, media has been looking for this taxi driver, like hounding this man down. People around him said that he's terrified. He has so much trauma from this encounter. He had driven this young woman with dismembered body parts in the trunk of his taxi at 3 a.m. The taxi driver is doing everything that he can to remain out of the public eye.

He has not given any public interviews and some theorize because South Korea is notorious for letting people out. He does not want his name out there because he was that terrified of Jong-un that if she is released he believes that she will track him down and kill him. Is the speculation? Now ask for the tutoring app that Hannah had been utilizing to find clientele. A lot of tutors have deleted their profiles because of how easily accessible the tutor's personal information is. The original purpose of this app is to assure that the parents have tutors that are actually credible, that are going to the schools that they say they are, that are getting the grades

that they say they are. The tutoring app though, they don't background check or verify anything about the parents, just the tutors. And they responded to these concerns and said, yes, okay, yeah, we get it, but because we cannot verify parents of the students in the app, it's, you know, what can we do? So they've done like little to solve this problem and protect the tutors.

And this type of crime is not unheard of in Korea. In 2022, December, one man faked his identity as a high school student and lowered a female university student slash tutor to his house in his attempt to essay her. Reportedly, in 2021, one man also faked his identity, kidnap the university student that was a tutor using a similar app,

keeping her hostage for up to a month and subjecting her to many essays. So this is the case as of right now. I'm sure that there will be more developments, but I don't know. What are your thoughts on this case? I do think, and I'm obviously biased because I'm someone who is deep in this true crime world, but I think it's like the argument of video games.

I don't think that there is any piece of media that can get someone to kill. And I think the way she went about it and just her callous nature in that CCTV footage, even on my happy day, I don't think I skip around town like that. It's just very unsettling to know that she had just killed and dismembered someone. What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments and I will see you guys on Sunday for the main episode. Please be safe. Bye.

and I will see you guys on Sunday for the main episode. Please be safe. Bye.