Busan Peer Female Murder Case

The Busan peer female murder case is a case in which Jeong Yu-jeong (born 1999, female) killed a woman in her twenties, a peer she had met through an online tutoring app, and then mutilated and abandoned the body.¹ It is commonly referred to as the Jeong Yu-jeong case.

Incident

Jeong Yu-jeong (born 1999, female) killed the woman in her twenties, whom she had met through an online tutoring app, with a knife at the victim's home in Geumjeong-gu, Busan, at around 5:30 p.m. on 26 May 2023, and then abandoned the body.

At around 3:15 a.m. the next day (27 May), the police received a report from a taxi driver stating, "I picked up a young woman carrying a travel bag, and she went into the bushes, which seemed suspicious."²

On 8 June 2023, the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency presented a commendation and a reward to the taxi driver who had made the report.³

Investigation

Jeong Yu-jeong returned to her own home after killing the victim, took a travel bag, and then went back to the victim's home.⁴ According to investigation results, she had purchased plastic bags and bleach at a mart. That morning, she took a taxi to the riverside of the Nakdong River in Dongmyeon, Yangsan, South Gyeongsang Province, an area with few people, and abandoned the victim's body there. She was arrested by the police after the taxi driver, who found the suspect's behavior suspicious, reported it. During a forensic examination of her mobile phone by investigators, it was found that the suspect had searched for terms such as "Busan murder without a body" and "criminal investigation programs," and that she had borrowed many crime-related novels from a library.⁵⁶