25th October 2026 – (Daegu) A Chinese university lecturer accused of murdering a Chinese master’s student, mutilating her body and scattering the remains across South Korea has appeared for the opening of his criminal trial.
Daegu District Court’s 13th Criminal Division is hearing the case against Zheng Changsheng, 31, who faces charges of murder, damaging, abandoning and concealing a corpse, and obstructing official duties by deceit. His defence lawyers reserved their position on the indictment, saying they had not yet finished reviewing the case files and would set out their stance and evidence arguments at the next hearing.
Prosecutors allege Zheng had previously harassed several female international students and was reported to the university, after which other professors warned him. Fearing that relationships with students would damage his position if exposed, he is said to have begun dating Wen Wen — a 25-year-old Chinese master’s student at the same campus, named only by that pseudonym in reporting — in March while already seeing another female student. Investigators say he hid each woman’s existence from the other and tried to keep both relationships out of public view.
According to the indictment outline reported from the hearing, a quarrel broke out at about 5.30am on 20th August inside Zheng’s apartment in Hayang-eup, Gyeongsan. Wen Wen said she would expose their relationship to the university at her graduation ceremony. Prosecutors say Zheng, afraid of losing his teaching post, then killed her. He had taught rehabilitation therapy and neuroanatomy the previous term; Wen Wen had taken courses he delivered.
To cover up the killing and stop the victim being identified, prosecutors allege Zheng used a weapon to damage the body in six separate acts over two days from 21st August. Between 21st and 24th August he is said to have dumped remains in seven trips at rubbish tips, hillsides and roadsides around Gyeongsan, Gyeongju and Sangju in North Gyeongsang Province, Mount Palgong in Daegu, and Gunpo in Gyeonggi Province. On 24th August he allegedly also hid body parts on his balcony and in a kitchen cupboard.
On the day of the killing, investigators say, Zheng put on the victim’s clothes, disguised himself as a woman and took a taxi to Dongdaegu Station so that closed-circuit cameras would capture a figure resembling her leaving — staging a disappearance before he returned home. Police announced a formal arrest in late August and on 1st September the Gyeongbuk provincial police published his identity and photograph. A psychopathy checklist (PCL-R) score fell short of the 25-point threshold used locally, though officers had also discussed further psychiatric assessment given the cruelty of the alleged method.
The prosecution further says Zheng had used his lecturer status to press another Chinese female student after she rejected him, with word passed that he could delay her graduation or stop her graduating at all. That student and other Chinese women later reported him to the university — a backdrop prosecutors link to his fear of exposure when Wen Wen threatened to speak out.