Koreans rally to suspect, despite shame

PORTLAND – Despite shame over underwear theft and child pornography charges against Sung Koo Kim, the Korean community is rallying to support him and show there is no link to Brooke Wilberger’s disappearance.

Kim is considered a person of interest but has not been charged with any crime in the disappearance of Wilberger, a Brigham Young University student who vanished May 24 from her sister’s apartment complex near the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis.

A police task force has accused Kim of stealing panties from a clothes dryer in the complex, cyberstalking an Oregon State swimmer who resembled Wilberger and searching the Internet for nations without extradition treaties with the United States.

But Wilberger’s mother, Cammy Wilberger, said Wednesday the family keeps in close contact with the task force and it has “never really focused on him.”

Kim, 30, has declined a plea bargain offer to serve eight years in prison for the theft of thousands of pairs of women’s panties and child-pornography cases in four counties.

It is the links to the Wilberger case, however, that remain disturbing for Kim’s family and Korean community leaders, who all say there is absolutely no connection.

They say they feel a collective shame about the details of burglaries. But they believe they were part of an obsession that left Kim with a vast collection of pornography depicting violence against women and, in a few cases, images of children.

His parents, Joo and Dong Kim, maintain that their son was with them the morning Wilberger disappeared.

Court documents tend to back up their claims 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’s parents have complained that judges in four counties have set bails too high to pay in the panty theft and child pornography cases.

The total amounts to nearly $15.5 million, despite a decision Thursday by Washington County Circuit Judge Donald R. Letourneau to reduce Kim’s bail in that county from $1.3 million to $480,000.

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Frank Bearden postponed a decision on a bail reduction request by Kim until Monday following a Friday morning hearing in Portland.

The recent emergence of Korean community leader support for the Kim family 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 the way the case has been handled.

“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.”

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 Kim said. “Face – it’s life. What affects one affects us all.”

Korean American leaders met Thursday with Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schrunk to share concerns about Kim’s treatment. 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 told community leaders that prosecutors felt it was important, at the time of the e-mail exchange, to charge Kim with whatever they could, partly to find out if he was connected in any way to the Wilberger case.

“No one,” Schrunk told them, “wants to make a mistake.”