Crime or Culture Clash? : Raid: Store owner accused of illegally selling wild animal parts for Korean folk remedies denies he knew he was breaking state law. He says he is the victim of cultural misunderstanding.

When state game wardens raided Ki Won Kim’s K.S. Trading Co. in Rowland Heights recently, they called his business “the most sophisticated case of wildlife commercialization in animal parts uncovered in Southern California.”

Officials carted away packages of sliced elk, deer antlers, animal horns, canned and pickled rattlesnakes, frozen goat meat, bottled snakes cured in vodka and bear gallbladders, skins and paws.

Kim, a Korean-born merchant whose shop on Colima Road had been open for only 4 1/2 months before the Feb. 21 raid, said cultural misunderstanding is the reason he ended up in handcuffs and had to post $50,000 to get out of jail.

“My main business is herbs,” Kim said as he stood in his nearly barren shop, which he calls a “health store” on his business card. “I never thought I was going against the law.”

Two days after his arrest, Kim wept before his church congregation in Norwalk and apologized for embarrassing the region’s Korean and Korean-American community.

A California resident for 18 months, Kim said he operated a similar business in Texas for three years and did not know it would be a crime here.

Kim’s plight has struck a chord among some Korean-Americans, who believe his story.

“Yes, it is a crime. But for someone who understands Korean customs, it is less a crime,” said Jong M. Lee, president of the 3,000-member Korean American Federation of Eastern Los Angeles.

Shops similar to Kim’s are common in Seoul, where Koreans have relied on folk remedies made from rare animal parts for thousands of years, Lee said.

“If he made an error, instead of just punishing him right away, (state officials) should try to help him understand cultural differences,” Lee said.

Game wardens have tried in the past to inform the Asian community that California law prohibits the sale of various wild animal parts, said Gordon Cribbs, regional chief for the California Department of Fish and Game.

In 1988, wardens raided more than a dozen shops selling such items in Los Angeles County and arrested a ring of poachers in Northern California. At the time, wardens urged Korean-language newspaper publishers to shun ads selling such products and to educate their readers about the law, Cribbs said.

But the sale of the parts constitutes a multimillion-dollar industry nationwide, Cribbs said.

In some states, such as Wyoming and Texas, the sale of wild animal parts is legal. Deer and rattlesnake farming are practiced in Texas to harvest items for the industry.

The demand is high, and comes from the nation’s growing Asian community--Koreans, Chinese, Laotians, South Vietnamese and Cambodians--some of whom will sacrifice a year’s earnings to secure the high-priced ingredients, Cribbs said. Bear parts, including gallbladders, make a potion widely thought to help turn a boy into a virile man, the state official said.

Hot brews of powdered bear gallbladders and spleens, or sliced deer antlers, carry energy, believe the elderly, who drink such concoctions prepared for them by loving sons and daughters, Lee said. Similarly, snakes are cured in alcohol to produce an allegedly potent drink. And doses of the mixture are routinely sold to provide an extra jolt of energy, he said.

Cribbs said shops selling such products are flourishing again. But with only 90 game wardens to cover 10 Southern California counties, the state is unable to crack down on all of the outlets.

Also confiscated during the raid on Kim’s store, and from his home in Walnut, were snake-head key chains, alligator-foot back scratchers and stuffed animal heads--including a pig, a coyote and a “jackalope,” the cross between a jack rabbit and an antelope that occurs only when a taxidermist crosses humor with skill.

Now, the items nearly overflow a small room at the California Department of Fish and Game offices in Long Beach, where they are being stored while the district attorney considers whether to file felony criminal charges against Kim, 51, and his partner, Sup Kyyung Shim, also 51, of Glendale. Shim declined comment.

K. S. Trading Co., known in the Korean community as the “Colima Black Goat” store, came to the state’s attention through a tipster, said Fish and Game spokesman Kurt Taucher.

After wardens working undercover bought a black bear skin at the store for $800, they arrested Kim and carted away most of the business’s contents.

Kim insists that the bear skin was merely decoration. He maintains that he refused to sell it to the undercover game agents even though they pursued a sale.

Most of the packaged animal parts and stuffed animals were legally purchased in Texas, the merchant said. He blames county officials who issued him business and tax licenses for failing to inform him that sale of such items is banned in California.

Moreover, Kim said, state game wardens mistook packages of Chinese roots for sliced animal parts, prompting erroneous television news reports that he was selling “thousands” of bear gallbladders.

“They don’t know what it is,” he said, displaying the roots that resemble bagel chips. “That’s why they took it away.”

State officials concede that some of the animal parts could have been legally purchased in Texas, or elsewhere. To find out, they have sought help from Los Angeles Police Department Asian Task Force members in deciphering hundreds of Kim’s store documents, which are written in Korean.

But Kim and his partner made incriminating statements to the undercover wardens, leading investigators to conclude that Kim knew he was operating illegally, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Erica Martin. Further, she said, Kim may have been violating federal laws that also would have applied in Texas.

“Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but consciousness of guilt will be part of the Fish and Game report,” the prosecutor said.

Martin said investigators will determine from the evidence what criminal charges, if any, to file. Kim and his partner could be prosecuted on a felony charge of selling bear parts and numerous misdemeanor charges of selling other animal parts.

If convicted, they could face up to three years in state prison and a $5,000 fine on the felony charge, as well as six months in custody and up to a $5,000 fine for each of the misdemeanor charges.

Meanwhile, Kim says the arrest and resultant publicity have embarrassed and traumatized his family.

His wife, Eunice, a registered nurse, was so upset after wardens entered her home after raiding the store that she took a week’s sick leave, Kim said. Kim’s 11- and 13-year-old sons cried at seeing him in handcuffs on television news accounts.

The Rev. Dong Choon Kye, pastor of the Korean Evangelical United Methodist Church in Norwalk, said the senior citizens who ride the church bus that Kim drives every Sunday to services were upset and puzzled.

Kim’s store is open again for business, although customers are now few. Still, he manages to joke about his plight.

“There was no bear hunting, no deer hunting. I buy everything from Texas and I have the receipts” he said.

“I am not a hunter,” he said. “I didn’t kill anything but ants in my back yard with spray.”