Showing the Way : Paul Kim Becomes LAPD’s 1st Asian American Captain

Three decades ago, Paul Kim was a 15-year-old immigrant from South Korea who barely spoke English; he was living in a small Oklahoma town and wondering what future America held for him.

This week, Kim, 44, of Northridge, was named a captain in the Los Angeles Police Department--the first Asian to achieve that rank in the city’s history.

As the new patrol commanding officer of the Pacific division, he will be in charge of the Los Angeles International Airport, Venice Beach and Westchester areas.

“I am very happy to have an opportunity to play on a bigger stage,” he said this week. “But I also know that the taller you are, the bigger your fall will be if you screw up.”

His promotion is a cause for celebration not only among Asian Americans but others who have worked to bring diverse communities of Los Angeles together.

“It’s a wonderful appointment--and long overdue,” said Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, western regional director of the American Jewish Committee and former president of the Police Commission. “Paul is a great representative of the department to all of our communities and the Asian community in particular. He has helped me understand a very important community in Los Angeles.”

Wednesday evening, City Councilman Nate Holden, whose relationship with the Korean American community has been strained in recent weeks, gave a party for Kim at the Oxford Palace Hotel in Koreatown, during which Police Chief Willie L. Williams was to pin new captain’s bars on Kim’s uniform.

“This is an important breakthrough for a very qualified Asian Pacific American police officer,” said Stewart Kwoh, president of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, which has long prodded the Police Department to increase Asian representation to better reflect the population. “It also shows that some of the community pressure has been successful.”

Kim, who has been on the force since 1977, is one of 63 captains in the department, where Asians make up 4.5% of the force. Caucasians make up 54% of the force, Latinos 26% and African Americans 15%. Asians make up about 10% of the city’s population.

Kim’s American journey has been an unusual one.

The second son of a U.S.-trained physician, Kim, whose Korean name Myung-Chun means “bright sky,” led a privileged life before coming to the United States. He had just completed ninth grade at Kyunggi, South Korea’s most prestigious boys school, when his father gave up his lucrative medical practice in Seoul for an uncertain future as a doctor in a hospital for impoverished Native Americans in Talihina, Okla., population 1,200--all because he didn’t want to live under the authoritarian regime of the former South Korean President Park Chung-Hee.

While his father treated sick Native Americans, the son explored his new environment with a Huckleberry Finn spirit.

“I have dark skin so, I fit right in “ Kim said. “Indians accepted me as one of them.”

His father’s work next took him to hospitals in South Dakota, Ohio and then Michigan.

After his father’s death in 1970, Kim worked his way through school, scooping ice cream, busing tables and washing dishes.

He joined the Marine Corps and eventually rose to the rank of captain. In 1973, while Kim was stationed in California, he decided to change careers.

“The military life felt too confining,” Kim said. “I wanted to be in the mainstream.”

He completed his bachelor’s degree in management at Pepperdine University, then received a master’s degree in public administration, also at Pepperdine, and he is a doctoral candidate in public administration at the University of LaVerne in Pomona.

His first attempt to join the LAPD in 1975 failed because of a hiring freeze. So he joined the La Habra Police Department. Two years later, he made the switch.

As a rookie cop, he patrolled some of the roughest streets in the city and later was assigned to the Asian Task Force, which pulled him into Los Angeles’ burgeoning Asian communities. Promoted to lieutenant in 1989, he has worked in Internal Affairs at Parker Center in recent years.

Kim, who spends a lot of his off-duty time in the Korean community, says his message to the community is “to participate--become a player.”

“They cannot continue to be a people who are unaccounted for,” he said.