Ashley and Alexander

ORIGINAL POST:

In the Los Angeles Times, the tragic story of eleven-year-old Ashley Yun and ten-year-old Alexander Yun, whose fiery deaths at the hands of their financially troubled father has cast a dark cloud over the Korean-American community in the Los Angeles area.

UPDATE (Monday, February 16, 2009):

Since I still get lots of hits to this, from people who wish to know what's going on with this case, I thought I should track down some follow-up information. (And if anyone has a picture of these two children, I would love to put it up.)

The first thing I found was this July 2008 news piece saying the father of Ashley and Alexander, Dae Kwon Yun (maybe 윤대권; Dae Kwon would be his first name, probably 대권, which is pronounced taegwon) pleaded not guilty to double murder charges.

The story from the local CBS affiliate does not explain why it took two years for the case to get to this point, but it does say he would be back at the downtown Los Angeles courthouse on September 10 for a pretrial hearing. If that is how slow things are going, there's a good chance that by now (February 2009, just five months later) nothing has been concluded.

The second story I found was a Los Angeles Times piece from January 2008, when I wasn't yet back to regular blogging so I probably missed it. That story was on the two-day preliminary hearing, where 56-year-old Dae Kwon Yun's wife, Sun Ok Ma (마선옥, I presume; in Korea wives rarely take on the surname of their new husband, though some will do so when they emigrate to a Western country where this is the custom) testified against him.

The LAT gives some insight into his actions:

Acquaintances have said the father buckled under the pressure of maintaining a model lifestyle that once included private school for Ashley and a Hancock Park home. Within days of the Yun deaths, two other Korean fathers killed their children, sending shock waves through the Southland’s Korean community.

Mr Yun was also facing gambling debts, which was a factor in his divorce in March 2006. Not that there weren't other reasons, including Yun beating his wife several times during their thirteen-year marriage, including one time in 2004 where he pleaded guilty to beating her and was sentenced to probation. He had also threatened to kill her and burn down the family home.

There was a witness to the crime, a Mr Nelson, who was on his way to mass that afternoon and saw Mr Yun yelling at Ashley in the same alleyway.

That's all I have found so far. I have taken the liberty of contacting the writer of the LAT piece, to see if she has any more recent news.

This is such a tragedy. The pressure cooker people find themselves in this relentless effort to "keep up with the Kims" has far too many casualties. People need to understand that there are alternatives and your children can still get into darned good schools without spending every extra minute of the day in a hagwon or doing kwa•oé of some kind.

More directly related to Mr Yun's case, something better must be done to curtail not just the violence that goes on in some homes, but also the acceptance of such violence. Yun was a man who needed help and he should have gotten it before he snapped.

Yeah, Monday morning quarterbacking is so easy.