Korean Church Mourns Youth

His head bowed and his steps measured, 14-year-old Young Kang walked to the lectern in the Rosemead Korean Seventh-day Adventist Church to read a letter to his best friend.

“Don’t worry about your parents cause I’ll do my best to make them happy, and also your brother will do his best,” Kang promised as he choked back tears at a memorial service for Hee Sung Kim.

Hee Sung, 14, was killed on Aug. 20 when a van carrying 16 people from the Rosemead church blew a tire and crashed on Interstate 5 near Los Banos. Another passenger, Angela Bon, 14, of Nanuet, N.Y., who was visiting relatives, also was killed, and 13 others were injured in the accident that took place as the group headed to a religious retreat in Northern California.

Family and the church were important to Hee Sung, friends said. So Kang, recalling an old Korean proverb, read the symbolic letter at the memorial service on Saturday to assure the youth that his parents would be looked after.

The proverb, explained Yun Hee Lee, Hee Sung’s uncle and pastor of the 240-member church, implies that it is disloyal to die before one’s parents because of the grief and heartache such a death causes them.

“It’s the hardest thing a parent can endure,” Lee said in an interview a few days after service. Hee Sung was buried Tuesday in Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier.

Although about 250 people crowded into the church for the memorial, it was some absences that underscored the toll of the accident.

Both Lee and Duk Hee Kim, Hee Sung’s mother, were hospitalized with injuries suffered in the accident. Lee has sincebeen released, but Duk Hee Kim and seven other accident victims were still hospitalized this week.

It was the church that fostered the friendship between Hee Sung and Kang.

They met there four years ago and found a common bond in the fact that neither could speak English. They lived in the same neighborhood and Kang taught Hee Sung to play basketball.

Hee Sung was popular among the toddlers of the church, often joining them in their rough-housing after services, “carrying them on his back, running around with them,” Kang said.

Hee Sung was a serious student and well liked by his peers. He had graduated in June from Macy Intermediate School in Monterey Park and was to enter Schurr High School this fall.

He had hoped to go on to college, but his exact plans were uncertain.

“This thing happened so suddenly, we didn’t have time to talk about that,” Kang said.

Two days before the church group left for the retreat, the two boys went swimming and Hee Sung asked Kang to go along on the trip.

“But I couldn’t,” said Kang, who used what money he had at the time of the trip to help relatives meet medical expenses.

Worked as Dishwasher

Hee Sung got the money to pay for his expenses by working as a dishwasher at a restaurant in Monterey Park, where the family lives, said his brother, Bruce Kim, 18, who was the only passenger in the van who was not hurt in the accident.

The two brothers had talked of saving for a trip to Korea next summer to visit family and friends, Bruce Kim said.

On the morning of the accident, Myung Mook Cho, a church elder, said he checked out the van, rotating the tires and checking the engine.

Bruce Kim and Susan Cho, another passenger, recalled that the trouble began when a tire blew near Magic Mountain. The driver changed the tire and got off the freeway, driving to a tire company where they bought two new tires, Cho said.

Another Tire Blew

About four hours later, a back tire blew out. The van shook from side to side, Cho said, and the driver, Hyung Mo Chung, 50, of El Monte, lost control of the van.

It rolled over three times, Cho said, and most of the passengers were thrown out of the vehicle.

A shocked but uninjured Bruce Kim saw both his brother and his mother lying by the van.

“She was asking about my brother and I kept saying, ‘He’s OK,’ ” Bruce Kim said. “But I knew he was going to die. The injuries were too bad.”

Hee Sung was baptized about a month ago. Bruce Kim said that he thought his brother was too young at the time to fully understand and abide by church rules, “but now I’m glad he was baptized.”

Emigrated in 1981

The Kim family, which has had ties to the Adventist church since 1942, joined the Rosemead church when they came to the United States from South Korea in 1981.

In doing so, they became part of a 2,200-member community that belongs to seven Korean Seventh-day Adventist churches in Los Angeles County.

Organized in New England in 1851, the religion reached Korea in about 1905 after Heung Jo Sohn, en route to Hawaii, happened on a church sign during a stopover in Japan.

He learned of the religion’s doctrine from the pastor of the Japanese church and returned to Korea with the message.

Growth of Church

Today there are about 50,000 people in South Korea who belong to the church, according to Hyun Chul Shin, a professor at a Seventh-day Adventist seminary in Seoul, who was visiting Los Angeles and attended the memorial service.

For many in the Rosemead congregation, the church functions extend beyond religion.

Bonded by culture and language, members help other Koreans who come to the area by providing money, transportation and information about how to make the transition into American life.

About two-thirds of the Rosemead congregation were members when they came to the United States, Lee said. A good number of the rest joined the church as a means of entering the Korean community in this country, he said.

Being Survivors

“They need very much to be survivors here in the United States,” Lee said. “That’s why every church is kind of an information center.”

Services are conducted in Korean, a fact that draws many to the church but discourages others. English is spoken during only a small portion of the worship service devoted to Bible stories for children.

“They (the children) were born in this country. They’re second-generation,” said Herman Chai, one of seven church elders. Many of the youngsters do not speak Korean or understand much of the worship services, he said.

Even teen-agers and young adults, all of whom can at least converse in Korean, speak English during Sabbath school Saturday mornings.

Can’t Understand Sermons

“I can’t understand the sermons unless I really, really try,” said Cho, 20, whose father is a church elder. “And then I understand about 60% of it and generalize the rest.”

Regardless of language, members are united on Saturdays at the Rosemead church, when the day begins with Sabbath school at 9:30 a.m. Services begin at 11 a.m., followed by a pot-luck lunch.

Often, members of the congregation visit other families who are experiencing hardship.

“When you come to church, it feels like we’re not in the real world,” Julie Chung, 19, said. “We’re in a different place.”