Montgomery judge fined in road-rage case resigns
Washington Post
A Montgomery County judge recently fined in a road-rage case resigned Friday, according to his attorney.
District Judge Brian G. Kim was approaching his 10-year reconfirmation process. A colorful and controversial figure in Rockville legal circles, he was known for running a tight courtroom.
Kim’s attorney, Barry Helfand, said the judge “wanted to seek a new opportunity.” He said that Kim, 50, did not want to be interviewed.
In April, Kim paid a $510 fine for a traffic citation stemming from an Oct. 18, 2010, incident that started outside the Montgomery District Courthouse at the end of a business day.
Kim, driving a Honda CR-V, was accused of tailgating a Volkswagen Passat — apparently after believing he’d been cut off — and following it onto Interstate 270. The Passat’s driver, Rachel Viglianti, filed a report with Maryland State Police asserting that the CR-V driver kept “zooming up beside me, yelling through the windows and gesturing.” She also said that the Honda reached about 70 mph and zoomed over to her lane, causing her to slam on her brakes to avoid a wreck.
Man charged with second-degree murder after body found in SUV
Toronto Star
Toronto police have laid second-degree murder charges after a man was found dead in an SUV in North York Friday.
The victim has been identified as Victor Seung, 33. Joon Sung Kim, also known as Kevin Kim, has been charged with second degree murder. He was scheduled to appear in court Saturday.
Residents of a quiet, modest North York neighbourhood expressed shock and disbelief after Seung’s body was found Friday afternoon in a vehicle on Willowdale Ave., north of Finch Ave. E.
Police were called just after 1 p.m. Seung, was pronounced dead at the scene, said Const. Tony Vella. He died as a result of injuries inflicted by a sharp object, according to police.
Motorist charged after elderly woman killed in Albany Park hit-and-run
Chicago Tribune
Charges have been filed against a motorist who allegedly struck and killed an elderly woman crossing the street on the Northwest Side Saturday.
Jose Cornejo-Flores, 51, of the 3600 block of North Francisco Avenue, was charged with leaving the scene of an accident involving injury or death, according to police News Affairs Officer Hector Alfaro. He was ordered held in lieu of $50,000 bail today, officials said.
Hyun Cho, 76, of the 4000 block of North Spaulding Avenue, was pronounced dead at 12:23 p.m. at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, according to a spokesman for the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
An Abductee’s Daughter Speaks Out About an Unhealed Korean Wound
New York Times
Since 2000, Ms. Lee has campaigned to generate more interest in the fate of tens of thousands of South Koreans believed to have been forcibly taken to North Korea during the Korean War six decades ago. She has been demanding that the government negotiate for the return of those who may still be alive and the remains of those who are not. Government officials have never made that issue a priority when they have sat down with their North Korean counterparts, treating her campaign as a distraction from what they consider a more important task: persuading the North to abandon its nuclear weapons.
Once Again, Lawmaker Escapes Punishment
Wall Street Journal
Can any wrongdoing get a South Korean lawmaker removed from office?
Slanderous foot-in-mouth disease doesn’t do it; one lawmaker clung to his seat after slamming the TV news profession by suggesting female reporters sleep their way to the top. And violence doesn’t do it either, with the lawmaker who set off tear gas in the chamber of the National Assembly escaping penalty.
Indeed, the tear-gas tosser Kim Sun-dong over the weekend was appointed vice floor leader of a new party called the United Progressive Party.
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Downtown Murder Suspect Pleads Not Guilty
Patch.com (Bellevue, Wa.)
Sung Ho Kim, 43, the Redmond man that prosecutors say shot and killed a man he believed was having an affair with his wife, pleaded not guilty at an arraignment Friday morning, according to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.
Kim is accused of shooting Jin Kim — an employee of the wife and no relation to the family — at a Belle Arts apartment building in downtown Bellevue on Nov. 15. Kim pleaded not guilty to a charge of Murder Second Degree and remains in jail with bail set at $2 million, according to the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.
Dog, Gone
Wall Street Journal
Columnist Jeff Yang mourns the death of his Jindo dog.
My friend Hyungwon Kang — a senior staff photographer with Reuters, and perhaps America’s foremost authority on Korean dogs — has told me that Shaohu’s personality was typical of this exceptional breed. “Faithful, independent, and very proud,” he calls them. They’re also devastatingly smart, fiercely fearless, and capable of extraordinary (and sometimes infuriating) feats.
Store Owner Still Waiting for Looters to Pay
Bay Citizen (Oakland, Calif.)
On July 8, 2010, as an angry crowd made its way through downtown Oakland smashing windows, James Cho and his wife, Kim, huddled in the back of his store, JC Jewelry, along with an employee and her 2-year-old daughter.
That day, members of the crowd, enraged over the involuntary manslaughter conviction of Johannes Mehserle, the BART police officer who had killed Oscar Grant in 2009, looted stores and lit trash cans on fire.
“It seemed like the people were crazy. I understood why they were angry,” Cho said. “But I was scared to death.”
By late afternoon, Cho heard people shaking the steel bars covering his windows, which eventually gave way. More than 200 people rushed into the store, smashing glass jewelry cases, punching Cho in the face, pummeling his wife and running off with around $100,000 worth of merchandise — enough to force the jeweler out of business.
South Korea police probe possible election fraud
Los Angeles Times
REPORTING FROM SEOUL — Probing political chicanery reminiscent of some banana republic nation (or perhaps the state of Florida circa 2000) South Korean authorities are investigating a case of alleged election fraud that appears to be designed to keep a ruling-party candidate in office.
Police say that an aide to a lawmaker for the nation’s Grand National Party organized a widespread cyber attack to confuse voters trying to get to the polls on election day in late October.
The aide, who is in custody, reportedly hired three Internet technology workers to cause computer breakdowns on a website designed to help voters find their polling stations.
Pyongyang Restaurants Extending Reach in Southeast Asian Cities
Voice of America
North Korean restaurants are offering a rare glimpse to the country’s reclusive culture by growing its network in major Southeast Asian cities. The restaurants, bearing the brand name Pyongyang after the capital city of North Korea, are serving everything from cold noodles to quirkier dishes such as dog meat casserole.
At first, the establishments catered to South Korean businessmen in the region. But in recent years, they have seen an increasing number of tourists and locals craving Korean cuisine.
Some Asians’ college strategy: Don’t check ‘Asian’
AP via Yahoo News
Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white.
“I didn’t want to put ‘Asian’ down,” Olmstead says, “because my mom told me there’s discrimination against Asians in the application process.”
For years, many Asian-Americans have been convinced that it’s harder for them to gain admission to the nation’s top colleges.
Studies show that Asian-Americans meet these colleges’ admissions standards far out of proportion to their 6 percent representation in the U.S. population, and that they often need test scores hundreds of points higher than applicants from other ethnic groups to have an equal chance of admission. Critics say these numbers, along with the fact that some top colleges with race-blind admissions have double the Asian percentage of Ivy League schools, prove the existence of discrimination.
The way it works, the critics believe, is that Asian-Americans are evaluated not as individuals, but against the thousands of other ultra-achieving Asians who are stereotyped as boring academic robots.
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South Korea and U.S. Differ on Nuclear Enrichment
New York Times
Over the past year, Washington and Seoul have held low-key but highly sensitive talks on whether South Korea should be allowed to do what the Americans have long tried to stop North Korea from doing: enrich uranium and reprocess spent nuclear fuel.
The talks, set to resume Tuesday in Seoul, are aimed at revising a bilateral nuclear cooperation treaty for the first time in four decades. And the two allies’ expectations are as far apart as their perspectives on what it would mean for South Korea to adopt the technologies, which can be used to create fuel for reactors, but also to make nuclear weapons.
Video: Dia Frampton Performs “The Broken Ones” On ‘Jay Leno’
Neon Limelight (blog)
After finishing in second place on the first season of The Voice, Dia Frampton is ready for the spotlight. Dressed up in a dazzling blue floor-length dress, the shy girl with the sweet voice stopped by the Tonight Show with Jay Leno to perform her new single, “The Broken Ones.” It’s the first track taken from her debut solo album, Red, out on December 6.
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