Episode 144:
Currently Shocking Korea! Psycho Killer Took a Selfie After 50 Stabs to His Best Friend
At 3:40 a.m. on July 4, 2026, a 24-year-old man in Daegu known here as Mr. A was jolted awake by a video call from his close friend Gyeongjun Park — someone considerate enough that a call at this hour meant something was seriously wrong. The moment he answered, he saw Gyeongjun covered in blood and crying: "Jae-hwan — he's drunk and keeps hitting me. It's getting really bad, I can't stop him. Please, come help me." The attacker was Jae-hwan Jeong, 24, Gyeongjun's best friend of ten years since middle school. Mr. A grabbed other friends and raced toward the apartment in Hayang Township, 40 minutes away, calling back partway through the drive only to hear Gyeongjun screaming and pleading before the line filled with something far more disturbing: Jae-hwan laughing and asking, "Aren't I just so cute? Tell me, how cute am I?"
By the time Mr. A and his friends reached the apartment at 4:20 a.m., bloody footprints already led from the entrance to the door. Forcing their way inside, they found Gyeongjun in the middle of a blood-soaked living room, stabbed in the abdomen with his organs exposed, flesh torn from his neck, cheeks, and arms as though bitten away. A second friend, referred to as B, was found unconscious in another room covered in bite marks. Standing at the door behind them, naked and drenched in blood, was Jae-hwan Jeong — who broke free from the friends restraining him and tried to flee before police arriving on scene tackled and arrested him. Gyeongjun could not be saved.
A Childhood That Built a Monster
Jae-hwan left home in seventh grade after a falling-out with his father, supporting himself through restaurant and delivery jobs with no real adult guidance. His anger calcified into violence early — at fourteen, he was caught assaulting a bus driver for no reason — and by adulthood he'd built an identity around being a so-called "Gen Z gangster," a modern take on organized crime built through social media rather than territory, complete with tattoos, luxury branding, and income from illegal gambling sites, where Jae-hwan worked as a cash-out man. Experts believe his need to belong curdled into using violence to control the people around him: three months before the murder, he smashed up a friend's house while drunk and held a shard of glass to his throat, always with the same catchphrase — "You think I'm a joke?" He reportedly couldn't stand the people he hurt walking away either, sometimes bursting into tears if someone fought back instead of submitting, a possessiveness that also showed up in his romantic relationships, one ex-girlfriend having sought help from Gyeongjun over the abuse she suffered.
The One Friend He Couldn't Control
Gyeongjun was the opposite of Jae-hwan in almost every way: a former marine with a strong build, so good-natured that friends called him a living saint, and for a decade the one person capable of managing Jae-hwan's temper. When fights broke out, Gyeongjun would offer his own cheek and tell Jae-hwan to hit him until he settled down. But to Jae-hwan, dominance was purely a matter of who was hitting and who was getting hit — and no matter how hard he struck Gyeongjun, his friend never submitted, which only made Jae-hwan feel smaller. Gyeongjun, the one person who'd stayed by his side the longest, had become in Jae-hwan's mind the single person he had no real power over.
Fifty Stab Wounds and a Selfie
On the night of the murder, Jae-hwan invited Gyeongjun and B over to drink, and at some point the conversation turned to his history of abusing past girlfriends. What exactly was said remains unclear, since both surviving witnesses say they were too drunk to remember, but a fight broke out between Jae-hwan and B that escalated into Jae-hwan biting him across his face and body. When Gyeongjun tried to intervene, Jae-hwan turned on him instead, biting him before grabbing kitchen knives and stabbing him more than fifty times across his body — not aiming for vital organs, but inflicting shallow wounds meant to prolong his suffering, according to the autopsy. Even as he was dying, Gyeongjun used his phone to call Mr. A and asked him to help B first. After Gyeongjun lost consciousness, Jae-hwan slit his throat to make sure he was dead, then tried unsuccessfully to dismember the body at the joints before photographing his dying friend, smearing himself in the blood, stripping naked, and walking out into the street — where he threatened a store clerk, stole milk cartons, and even waved at a passing police patrol car that inexplicably let him walk away.
Final Thoughts
Gyeongjun spent his final fourteen minutes alone in the apartment while his friends were still racing to reach him, dying before they could return. When Jae-hwan eventually came back to the apartment, he walked past Gyeongjun's body without reaction, retrieved his friend's Rolex watch, and told the others, "Take this. There's 15 grand in cash in my car. Give it all to my mom" — reportedly still performing toughness even after the adrenaline wore off. Jae-hwan has claimed he was too drunk to remember the attack, but Gyeongjun's wounds, the recorded phone call, and B's testimony leave little room for that defense; his first trial began on August 26, 2026, and is ongoing. In perhaps the case's most telling coda, Jae-hwan's mother's first words to his friends after his arrest weren't an apology — they were a demand to know where the Rolex and the cash had gone.
For ten years, Gyeongjun kept the peace between Jae-hwan and their friend group by literally offering his own face to be hit rather than fighting back, believing that was the only way to calm him down. Do you think Gyeongjun's approach ever had a chance of working long-term, or was a decade of absorbing violence without consequence always going to end in something like this?
WE DOCUMENT.
YOU DECIDE.
Our interpretation is only one possible perspective.
