Name: Jenny H. Cho (조효빈 / Hyo-bin)
Age: 28. I would like to be forever young. There is just so much to experience, learn, and accomplish, but so little time don’t you think? :)
Location: Seoul/Los Angeles
Occupation: Reporter, MC/host, model, voice actor
Who has been the biggest influence in your life?
With each year that passes I realize more and more how influential my mom has been in molding me into the person I am today. Thanks to her traditional morals, values, and up bringing, I have been able to play a part in easing the generational gaps between the young and older generations. She grounded me and instilled the roots of traditional Korean culture/heritage as a grew up in America, so I feel that had a good balance of both.
What is the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning?
“Should I sleep 10 more minutes?” And after 10 minutes, “How about just five more minutes.”
If you could be invisible for a day, what would you do?
I would shadow Catherine Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, to see what a day in her life is like.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Doing exactly what I’m doing now: Bringing entertainment to people and sharing the Korean culture with the rest of the world.
What do you feel is your most attractive physical feature? Continue Reading »
Authorities charged a Southern California man with killing his business partner in lieu of paying a $1 million buyout fee, according to news reports.
The Orange County D.A.’s office charged Edward Younghoon Shin, 33, of Irvine, Calif. with murder on Monday after being picked up the day before attempting to board a plane to Canada. Following a six-hour interview, Shin admitted to killing Christopher Ryan Smith, 32, of Laguna Beach, according to the Orange County Register.
Prosecutors say Shin murdered Smith in the offices of their advertising agency and reportedly covered his tracks by taking over Smith’s email account and responding to relatives’ worried inquiries posing as his partner.
“It wasn’t the typical email his son would send,” said Lt. Jason Kravetz of the Laguna Beach Police Department. “It was different words, short, strange.”
Investigators with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department announced the arrest of Shin on Monday morning, alleging he killed Smith instead of paying $1 million to buy him out. The two men had been co-owners of an advertising agency, 800Xchange, for two years but began to have a falling out in 2010, said Assistant Sheriff Mark Billings.
Smith wanted to leave 800Xchange and a financial settlement of $1 million was reached, Billings said. But in June 2010, investigators believe Shin instead killed Smith in the offices of their San Juan Capistrano office.
After Smith’s father reported him missing last April, Laguna Beach police opened an investigation and searched the business offices of the two men and found traces of blood in the area, authorities said.
Through DNA testing, authorities were able to match the blood to Smith’s DNA. Investigators said Shin went through extensive measures to try to hide the blood in the business, including cleaning it thoroughly and repainting the walls. Shin of Irvine was taken into custody Sunday morning at Los Angeles International Airport as he was boarding a plane headed to Canada.
Shin, who is expected to be arraigned today, was charged with one felony count of “special circumstances murder for financial gain” and, if convicted, could face up to a life sentence in prison without parole, according to the Orange County D.A.’s office.
Prior to forming the business partnership, police said, Shin was convicted in Riverside County of embezzlement and was forced to pay restitution and serve three years of probation.
Police said they have not located Smith’s body.
Name: Thomas Kim
Age: 42
Location: Torrance, California
Occupation: Graphic designer, Mindlinq
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Venice and Culver City [California].
How did you meet your wife?
I met her at the AAAA’s Café in Koreatown. It was a set-up.
If you could have an endless supply of any food, what would you get?
It would be sushi because sushi is healthy and it’s good.
If you had to describe yourself using three words, it would be…
I’m da man. Continue Reading »
An Orange County jury convicted actor Joseph Hyungmin Son yesterday of torturing a woman he kidnapped off a street in Huntington Beach, Calif. in 1990, according to news reports.
Son, 40, faces a prison term of 15 years to life when he is sentenced on Sept. 9.
The jury, made up of eight men and four women, deliberated for three hours before returning a not guilty verdict for conspiracy to commit murder and a guilty verdict for torture, according to the Orange County Register.
Son, who also had a brief and unsuccessful stint as a mixed-martial arts fighter, shook his head briefly when the guilty verdict was announced. He was quickly handcuffed and escorted out of the courtroom.
Deputy District Attorney Eric Scarbrough told the jury in his final arguments Thursday that Son is a sadist who gained pleasure from the suffering of the 19-year-old woman he and his crime partner abducted at gunpoint on Christmas Eve, and then sexually assaulted in the back seat of a car while telling her repeatedly that she was going to die.
Son, of Garden Grove, tortured her to get her to acquiesce to his desire to sexually assault her, Scarbrough contended.
Son was initially charged in 2008 for multiple sexual offenses in connection with the crime but the charges were later dropped due to the expiration of the statute of limitations, according to the Los Angeles Times. Son’s accomplice was given a 17-year prison sentence last January after pleading guilty to to rape, kidnapping and other charges.
Son is best known as an actor for his role as “Random Task” in the first Austin Powers movie in 1997.
Over the years, KoreAm has documented the impact of the 1992 Los Angeles riots on ours and other communities, and urged an understanding of lessons learned. As we count down to the 20th anniversary next year, iamKoreAm.com will be running a riot article, image or testimonial in this space every week until April 29, 2012. Some will be taken from our pages, while others will be excavated from our own personal archives.
We welcome your submissions—first-person memories (no word limit), pictures, poems and (photographed/scanned) artifacts—for this project, too. Please email them to julie@iamkoream.com with the subject line ‘Riots Spot’. Many of us were mere children in 1992, but 19 years later, we have voices. We can speak now.
This article appeared in the April 2007 issue of KoreAm.
Revisiting The Scene Of The Crime
This former reporter who covered the 1992 riots and the events leading up to it reveals a truth much more nuanced than the “black-Korean conflict” headlines of that time.
by Richard Fruto
I was a reporter at the English-language Korea Times Weekly in Los Angeles from late 1990 to early 1993, and I covered the 1992 riots and the aftermath. I also reported on the events that led to the riots, starting with the shooting of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins by Soon Ja Du in March 1991.
As a reporter at the Korea Times, I had what my former editor, K.W. Lee, would call a worm’s-eye view of those events, and as the only non-Korean on the staff (I am Filipino American), I also had an outsider’s view from the inside. What I witnessed was a story that was not as straightforward as the perception that most people have of those events based on what they read and heard from the major media outlets.
Much has been written about these events in the media and academic circles. Yet most of these accounts, retrospectives and commentaries tend to paint the matter in broad terms. For example, most accepted the notion about tensions between Korean immigrant shopkeepers and African-American customers, who accused the former of rudeness, clannishness and exploitation, and described them as newcomers and outsiders who went in and did business without giving back to or hiring from within the community.
These stories of conflict between Korean immigrant merchants and their customers generally ignored the details. The absence of these details unfairly stereotyped each and every Korean immigrant who brought enterprise to the poorest neighborhoods in their own quest for the American Dream.
In my opinion, mainstream TV reporters caused the most damage. Continue Reading »
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Featured Event
One of the the biggest Asian cinema events to hit Southern California opens on May 10. The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, presented by Visual Communications, features the latest works by established and emerging filmmakers, along with seminars, panel discussions and symposiums on topics relevant to Asian Pacific cinema.
Opening Night features “Shanghai Calling,” directed by Daniel Hsia and starring Korean American Daniel Henney, who plays a Chinese American expat lawyer navigating his way through the mean streets of Shanghai (the picture above also indicates he is a raisin smuggler). But does he take off his shirt? Go watch the movie to find out! read more
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