LAGUNA BEACH : Missing Man’s Body Washes Up on Beach

The body of a Garden Grove man missing for more than a week washed ashore at Sleepy Hollow Beach, police said Tuesday, ending a countywide search by authorities and family.

An unidentified Laguna resident spotted the body of Yong Park, 43, bobbing in the surf Monday afternoon, about three miles from where he was last seen, Laguna Beach Police Sgt. Ray Lardie said.

The death was termed accidental.

Park, a commercial painter who immigrated to the United States four years ago, had been missing since March 3, when he disappeared while fishing on a rocky point, Lardie said.

Park and two friends were fishing on the beach at Crescent Bay shortly before noon, when Park struck out on his own toward a rocky point that encircles the cove, said his wife, Un Ok Park.

“There weren’t enough fish where my husband and his friends were,” Park said. “He decided to try another spot and walked off alone.”

An hour after Yong Park set off, the friends, Suk Bong Ham and Nam Sik Cho, began wondering where he was, Un Ok Park said. Failing to find their friend at the beach, Ham and Cho spent several hours searching nearby streets.

Later that evening, Un Ok Park reported the disappearence to authorities, prompting an eight-day search by police in Laguna Beach and Garden Grove and by county lifeguards.

Park said she called her husband’s two brothers and sisters, who live in the Garden Grove and Cerritos area, his employer at Kim’s Painting, and family friends. Park said a local Korean language newspaper published an appeal for information about her husband’s whereabouts.

“We just waited to hear something,” she said Tuesday from the Garden Grove apartment she shares with her 9-year-old son, Daniel, and daughter, Heidi, 6.

“We kept checking with the police. . . . They finally told us he had been found,” Park said.

Police said Park, who wore hip-high rubber boots, may have fallen from the rocks into the sea. The boots could have quickly filled with water and prevented him from surfacing, Lardie said.

Funeral services are scheduled Thursday.