http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1107522003244970.xml
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1107522003244970.xml
The cut and paste will probably have a large advertisement blocking part of the article, so it is better to just use the threads, but here is part of the story anyway. Part of it might post on here alright, but Iam not sure. I'll know what it looks like after I hit the submit button.
What a weird case this one is!
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Korean Americans overcome cultural barrier to back suspect
Friday, February 04, 2005 BRYAN DENSON and ANGIE CHUANGAs plea-bargain talks broke down this week for serial burglary suspect Sung Koo Kim, supporters have begun to challenge authorities who have labeled him a person of interest in last year's apparent abduction of Brooke Wilberger in Corvallis.
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Kim's family and Korean American community leaders say they believe he's been unjustly linked to the Wilberger case, but at the same time they feel a collective shame as lurid details emerged about this Korean-born son from Tigard.
Authorities accused Kim, a somewhat reclusive 30-year-old who lived with his parents, of traveling to college campuses up and down the Willamette Valley to steal thousands of pairs of panties. The burglaries, they allege, were part of an obsession that left him with a vast collection of pornography depicting violence against women and, in a few cases, images of children.
A police task force investigating Wilberger's May 24 disappearance from a Corvallis apartment complex was intrigued by Kim's links to the apartments. They suspected Kim of stealing panties and lint from a clothes drier in the complex, cyber-stalking an OSU swimmer who resembled Wilberger and searching the Internet for nations without extradition treaties with the United States.
Prosecutors meeting in Portland on Jan. 24 offered Kim's lawyer, Des Connall, a plea deal that would have put Kim behind bars for at least eight years in the panty theft and child-porn cases from four counties. But Kim allowed the offer to expire this week as his family and Korean American leaders worked to get him exonerated in the Wilberger probe.
In interviews with The Oregonian this week, Kim's parents acknowledged that their son is clinically depressed. The Kims said they hope to get their son out of jail and into counseling for an obsession so foreign to them that, upon his arrest, his mother scurried to a medical dictionary to look up the word "fetish."
Joo and Dong Kim maintain that their son was with them on the morning Wilberger disappeared. Court documents tend to back up their assertions that he spent the morning making a stock trade, answering the phone and -- about three hours after Wilberger vanished -- buying a laptop computer in Tigard.
Kim has not been charged in connection with the Wilberger case. The young woman's mother, Cammy Wilberger, said Wednesday that the family keeps in close contact with the task force and has "never really focused on him."
Judges in four counties have set bails too high in the panty theft and child pornography cases for Kim's parents to pay.
On Thursday, Washington County Circuit Judge Donald R. Letourneau dropped Kim's bail from $1.3 million to $480,000, saying the public would still be protected because of the high bail -- now amounting to $15.48 million -- in four counties.
With more than 20 of Kim's friends and relatives packed into the courtroom, defense lawyer Shannon Connall, filling in for Des Connall, her father, argued that her client's aggregate bail in Benton, Multnomah and Yamhill counties was tantamount to no bail at all.
Moved to act
The recent emergence of Korean community leaders behind the Kims is remarkable for an immigrant culture that tends to distance itself from unseemly and criminal behavior, said Ronault Latang Sayang Catalani, a lawyer and family friend.
"We (Asians) don't even openly discuss underwear," Catalani said. Leaders of the Korean American Citizens League and the Korean Society of Oregon overcame that taboo, he said, as they learned more about Kim's alibi and authorities' handling of his case.
"If something has gone wrong and this man needs to be punished, people are all for this," Catalani said. "But they are sensing that this -- the exorbitantly high bail, this 'person of interest' business -- is not justice."
Kim's isolation began the moment he set foot in America at the age of 4.
Joo and Dong Kim had grown up in influential upper-middle-class Seoul families during the Korean War. In 1978, fearful that North Korea would invade the south and uneasy about the southern dictatorship's brutal treatment of pro-democracy activists, the couple immigrated with their two children to the United States.
During their early days in Los Angeles and Beaverton, the couple was drawn to Korean-immigrant Jehovah's Witnesses. Joo eventually became an elder in their congregation.
Sung Koo was sensitive to teasing and bullying about his race and religion in school, Dong said. "He looked different. He didn't celebrate holidays, didn't do sports, didn't date (because of his religion). He so wanted to be accepted, but he never really had close friends."
Later, as a young adult, their son would lash out against the social restrictions of their faith, prompting Joo and Dong Kim to leave the congregation. "Mom," Dong recalled her son telling her, "I feel like I'm chained."
Sung Koo earned a bachelor's degree from Washington State University in 2001. He worked for Intel for a time, but quit and moved in with his parents.
Joo and Dong Kim say that in addition to the financial and emotional toll of their legal battle, they feel they have let down their community. "For Asian people, when someone's face is ruined, the whole family is affected," Dong said. "Face -- it's life. What affects one affects us all."
Characterization questioned
Korean American leaders met Thursday with Mike Schrunk, Multnomah County's district attorney, to share concerns about Kim's treatment by the legal system. They carried an e-mail to Schrunk, obtained from a court file, in which Yamhill County District Attorney Brad Berry characterizes Kim as "extremely dangerous."
"Kim may never be fully tied to the Willberger (sic) abduction, and all of those involved agree that we need to do all we can to get as many burglaries on him as possible to get him off of the streets," Berry wrote. ". . . I'm happy to discuss this by phone to let you know facts sufficient to make you comfortable that this isn't just a panty fetish, but much more."
Schrunk explained to the community leaders that prosecutors felt it was important, at the time of the e-mail exchange, to charge Kim with whatever they could -- in part to find out if he was connected in any way to the Wilberger case.
Schrunk, while unwilling to discuss details of the case, said Kim was not forthcoming when first arrested, his thefts occurred in four counties and the search of his home yielded an intriguing amount of circumstantial evidence in the Wilberger case.
"No one," Schrunk told them, "wants to make a mistake."
Bryan Denson: 503-294-7614; [email protected] Angie Chuang: 503-221-8219; [email protected]