Big Sentence, Cultural Doubts: Twin Evils?

The defense attorney blamed his own bad judgment. The mother blamed her own bad parenting. Thousands of Koreans who petitioned the judge blamed a lack of American understanding for a seemingly peculiar nuance of Korean culture.

But after all the blame had been parceled out, Judge Eileen Moore shoved it aside and sentenced 24-year-old Jeen Han to prison for a long, long time. In court parlance, Judge Eileen Moore “bombed” Han with 26 years to life for conspiring with two teenage boys to kill her twin sister in November of 1996.

In applying the maximum, Judge Moore suggests she’s quite certain what Jeen Han had in mind that November night. But does she?

The case captured public attention, both in Korea and in the segment of American society that watches tabloid TV, because from the start it was portrayed as the “evil twin and the good twin.” Jeen Han, also known as Gina, was cast as a woman who wanted to do away with her sister because of anger and a desire to assume her identity and her credit cards.

Testimony bolstered that contention. The sisters had feuded. Gina had asked numerous people to help her kill Sunny. Gina Han eventually linked up with two young men who bound and gagged Sunny Han the night of the crime, only to be thwarted because Sunny, frantic and cowering in her room before being assaulted, had dialed 911 in time for police to arrive.

The case seemed as clear-cut as the distinction between good and evil. But because police arrived when they did, we are left to speculate: Did Gina Han really intend to have her sister killed that night?

If the answer is so clear-cut, why did 13,000 Koreans sign a petition asking Judge Moore for leniency? Was it simply a foreign audience rallying behind a native daughter, much like Britishers last year when a Boston jury convicted 19-year-old nanny Louise Woodward of killing an infant in her care? Or did the Korean audience grasp a much more fundamental element about the Han case than Judge Moore?

Why did Sunny Han later go on TV and say she didn’t think her sister intended to have her killed?

The answer, if there is one to be had, may lie in an aspect of Korean culture that Americans would find strange if not downright unbelievable.

“We Koreans verbally may say something as a practical joke, like ‘I will kill you,’ ‘Go to hell’ or ‘You will be killed,’ ” says Seung Lee, the bureau chief of Orange County’s Korean TV station in Garden Grove. “It is a very common practical joke that means nothing, particularly for sisters and brothers when they get some anger. It should not be considered seriously.”

I asked Lee how so many Koreans who didn’t know Gina Han could be sure she didn’t intend to kill her sister. According to testimony, Gina Han had asked a number of people if they would “kill” her sister.

Lee said language like that is almost “meaningless” in Korean culture. Besides, he said, it is virtually unheard of for Korean siblings to kill each other, much less twins. That, combined with Korean society’s almost blase attitude toward verbal threats, apparently led the petitioners to believe that Gina Han would never have killed her sister, Lee said.

The fact that Sunny Han was bound and gagged “complicates” things somewhat, Lee conceded, because it proves she wasn’t joking. A plausible interpretation, however, is that Gina Han was truly angry that night but meant only to scare her sister, he said. Lee, who covered the trial, concluded by saying he doesn’t think Gina intended to have her sister killed that night.

This may sound like a classic rationalization to many Americans. Yet, Gina Han’s deputy public defender has already castigated himself publicly for not introducing testimony about those aspects of Korean culture. The defender, Roger Alexander, also says he should have let Gina Han take the stand to explain her intentions.

This case began as “good versus evil.” That’s a concept we Americans can grasp. It made for easy understanding.

Despite what police and prosecutors often want us to believe, this world does not always lend itself to easy understanding of why people do what they do.

To police and prosecutors, Gina Han intended to kill her sister, pure and simple.

I see intriguing and perhaps unanswerable questions that cloud the picture and call out for a less punishing sentence.

Seeing no such clouds, Judge Moore locked up Gina Han Friday and threw away the key. She was saying, in effect, that she knew exactly what was in Han’s mind that night.

My question for the judge: How can she know the unknowable?

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821, by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.