THE VIEWPOINT INTERVIEW:
Steven Kim
LAW OF THE LAND
B Y L EI GH TU CK E R
S
teven Kim, ’97, ’00, senior deputy attorney for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, returned to Seattle in February after spending a year in South Korea teaching government officials about the American criminal justice system. The Ministry of Justice invited Kim after learning he had tried nearly 100 cases and that he is fluent in Korean. When the opportunity arose, Kim and his wife, Lina Kim, ’99, ’03, made the difficult decision to divide their family for a year. His wife stayed at home with their school-aged daughter; he took his 3-year-old son and his mother. “It was meaningful to me,” Kim says. “When my mother lived in Korea, it was wartime. She immigrated … for [her family] to have a chance.” His son attended Korean kindergarten, where he learned the language. Now, Kim’s family speaks only Korean at home. During the first few months, Kim lectured at almost every major law school. He spent the following eight months writing a textbook about the U.S. jury system. After translating it to Korean, the Ministry of Justice sent copies to prosecutors throughout the country and will distribute it to every new Korean prosecutor. When Kim realized that he didn’t know a lot of the cultural aspects of being Korean, he decided to make it his mission to educate other Korean Americans about their shared heritage. Since returning, he has signed on as president of the Korean American Bar Association; as part of that role, he plans to provide career guidance for Korean American UW undergrads. Kim left Korea with a deeper cultural understanding: “The best part of my trip wasn’t anything professional. It wasn’t the books, it wasn’t the lectures, it wasn’t the resumé. It was the fact that, now, in my home, we all speak Korean.” PHOTO BY ANIL KAPAHI
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V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m . c o m / v i e w p o i n t s