At Torrance’s West High School he was known as Jun Ho Bae, a Korean immigrant active in the senior choir called Aristocracy, who had moved to the U.S. at age 16 with his family just two years before his 1988 graduation.
Today he’s better known as Kenneth Bae, a naturalized American citizen who operated a China-based tour company that would give foreigners glimpses of North Korea.
The 45-year-old father of three was detained in the reclusive, repressive nation last year and sentenced to 15 years hard labor in May for unspecified “crimes aimed to topple” the North Korean government.
Since then his younger sister, Terri Chung, who like her brother is now known by an Americanized first name, has campaigned for his release even as his health has deteriorated.
Bae was hospitalized earlier this month, suffering from diabetes, heart problems and back pain related to his six days a week prison labor in farm fields.
For Chung, who also graduated from West High in 1991 and lives in the Seattle suburb of Edmonds, Wash., it’s the isolation from her brother — the “not knowing,” as she put it — that is the hardest part of the ordeal.
“Anybody who knows him knows he doesn’t have a hostile bone in his body,” Chung said. “He’s trying to remain strong, but he really hopes to be able to come home.
“We try to do whatever we can to reach out to people, but we are powerless,” she added. “It’s not really up to us at all.”
So she comforts herself with memories of her older brother.
She recalls the white “Miami Vice” style jacket look he adopted, complete with sleeves rolled up and gel in his hair, while he sang Elvis Presley tunes.
How he would chase his nieces around on the outdoor deck of the Edmonds-Kingston ferry, while the rest of his family shivered inside out of the whipping Puget Sound wind.
And how he embraced the high school choir, which performs in formal dress, which she also joined a couple of years after her brother.
“It was a big part of both our lives,” Chung said.
Bae attended the University of Oregon and lived in several places in the western U.S. before moving to China in 2005.
A devout Christian, he was enamored with the people and the untainted natural beauty of the underdeveloped country, Chung said. That was something he shared with foreign tourists willing to venture to the nation, guiding at least 15 different groups to special zones opened to foreigners by the North Koreans.
“There’s an unspoiled beauty about the place, and also the people because they’re really excited about visitors,” she said. “He saw a side of North Korea that was so different from what we know and understand in the west.”
North Korean experts believe Bae is being used as a political bargaining chip by the regime there, which was the case with other Americans imprisoned there.
All were released after visits by respected American officials. But with American-North Korean relations strained even more than usual because of the Southeast Asian nation’s nuclear ambitions, the domestic reaction has been restrained.
A rumored visit by President Jimmy Carter hasn’t occurred yet. Former NBA star Dennis Rodman’s promises to intercede because of his unusual friendship with the North Korean leader also have yet to materialize.
As Bae’s health deteriorates Chung is struggling to keep her brother’s plight in the public eye, an effort that included a prayer vigil earlier this month and an Op-Ed piece in the Seattle Times.
Her brother’s son, Jonathan, is urging people sign a petition at www.change.org/FreeKenNow.
Two journalists formerly imprisoned in North Korea, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, are urging people to write letters to Bae at letterforkennethbae@gmail.com. The pair, freed after a visit by President Clinton, remembered how such letters kept their hopes alive during their captivity.
And updates on Bae are posted at the website freekennow.com.
While the family hasn’t lived in the South Bay for some years, they are in touch with old friends from West High and the Korean-American church they attended in Torrance.
“All I know is that Kenneth is a good man,” Chung said. “I know he’s been convicted of illegal acts in their land and for that I’m really sorry. … He was somebody who only had the best of intentions and was trying to help out of compassion.”
