James Kim (August 9, 1971December 4, 2006) was an American television personality and technology analyst for the former

TechTV TechTV is a defunct 24-hour cable and satellite channel based in San Francisco featuring news and shows about computers, technology, and the Internet. In 2004, it merged with the G4 gaming channel which ultimately dissolved TechTV programming ...

international

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...

network, reviewing products for shows including '' The Screen Savers'', ''Call for Help'', and '' Fresh Gear''. At the time of his death he was working as a senior editor of

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Orig ...

and Digital Audio for CNET, where he wrote more than 400 product reviews. He also co-hosted a weekly video podcast for CNET's gadget blog, Crave, and a weekly audio podcast, ''The MP3 Insider'' (both podcasts were co-hosted with Veronica Belmont). His disappearance and death, and his family's ordeal, made them the subject of a brief, but intense period of news coverage in December 2006.

Early life

Kim graduated from Ballard High School in

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana borde ...

, in 1989 and from Oberlin College in

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

in 1993 where he double-majored in Government and English and played for the varsity lacrosse team. Son of Spencer H. Kim, an aerospace company executive and internationalist, Kim and his wife, Kati, owned two retail stores in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

Career

Kim was most widely known as a television personality on the international cable network

, where he was a senior technology analyst for TechTV Labs. He made frequent appearances testing new products for shows including '' The Screen Savers'', ''Call for Help'', '' Fresh Gear'', and '' AudioFile''. He was best known for his "Lab Rats" segments, in which he reviewed the latest electronic gadgets. After leaving TechTV, he became a senior editor for CNET, a technology trade journal, which he had joined in 2004. He wrote product reviews and co-hosted a weekly podcast for CNET's gadget blog, Crave. Prior to working for TechTV, Kim had been a legal assistant at law firms in New York and France; a media relations assistant for baseball's American League; and a script reader for Miramax Films.

Snowbound

After spending the 2006 Thanksgiving holiday in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

, Washington, the Kims (James, Kati, and their two daughters, 4-year old Penelope and 7-month old Sabine) set out for their home in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

. On Saturday, November 25, 2006, having left

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populou ...

, on their way to Tu Tu' Tun Lodge, a resort located near Gold Beach, Oregon, the Kims apparently missed a turnoff from

Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels through the states of Calif ...

Oregon Route 42 Oregon Route 42 (OR 42) is an Oregon state highway which runs between U.S. Route 101 on the Oregon Coast, near Coos Bay, and Green, a few miles south of Roseburg on Interstate 5. OR 42 traverses the Coos Bay–Roseburg Highway No.&nbs ...

, a main route to the

Oregon Coast The Oregon Coast is a coastal region of the U.S. state of Oregon. It is bordered by the Pacific Ocean to its west and the Oregon Coast Range to the east, and stretches approximately from the California state border in the south to the Columbia ...

. Instead of returning to the exit, they consulted a highway map and picked a secondary route along

Bear Camp Road Bear Camp Road is a rugged mountain road traversing the Klamath Mountains in Josephine and Curry counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. Bear Camp Road is a combination of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Road 34-8-36 (also known as Galice Road ...

that skirted the

Wild Rogue Wilderness The Wild Rogue Wilderness is a wilderness area surrounding the Wild and Scenic portion of the Rogue River in southwestern Oregon, U.S. to protect the watershed. The wilderness was established in 1987 and now comprises . Because it spans part o ...

, a remote area of southwestern Oregon. After encountering heavy snow at high elevation on

, they backtracked and ventured onto BLM Road 34-8-36 (North Fork Galice Creek Road) (), a paved logging road supervised by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) thinking that could be an option. A road gate intended to prevent such mistakes was open despite BLM rules requiring that it be closed. Media outlets reported that vandals had cut a lock on the gate, but a subsequent investigation showed that BLM employees had left it open to avoid trapping local hunters and others who might have ventured past it. After 23 miles of slow travel along Road BLM 34-8-36, the family stopped at about 1:00 a.m. on November 26 because of fatigue and bad weather (). As more snow fell around their immobilized

Saab 9-2X The second generation of the Subaru Impreza compact car was introduced in 2000 and manufactured up to 2007 by Subaru in Ota, Gunma, Japan, in both sedan (GD series) and five-door wagon (GG series) bodystyles, as well as two intermediate fac ...

station wagon, the Kims kept warm by running its engine. When the vehicle ran out of fuel, they made a campfire of dried wood and magazines. Later, they burned their car's tires to signal rescuers. Search efforts began shortly after November 30, when coworkers of Kim filed a missing persons report with the San Francisco Police Department. After investigators learned that the Kims used their credit card at a local restaurant,

search and rescue Search and rescue (SAR) is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger. The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, typically determined by the type of terrain the search ...

teams, including local and state police, more than 80 civilian volunteers, the

Oregon Army National Guard The Oregon Army National Guard is a federally mandated and equipped military organization under the civilian direction of the Oregon Military Department, with the Governor of Oregon as its Commander-in-Chief. It responds to state and national eme ...

and several helicopters hired by Mr. Kim's father, Spencer Kim, spent several days looking for the family along area highways and roads, to no avail. On December 2, James Kim left his family to look for help, wearing tennis shoes, a jacket, and light clothing. He believed the nearest town ( Galice) was located four miles away after studying a map with his wife. He promised his wife he would turn back the same day if he failed to find anyone, but he did not return. Kim backtracked about 11 miles down BLM Road 34-8-36 before leaving the roadway and electing to follow a ravine northeast down the mountain.

Search

Although the Kims had a

cellular phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...

with them, their remote location in the mountains was out of range of the

cellular network A cellular network or mobile network is a communication network where the link to and from end nodes is wireless. The network is distributed over land areas called "cells", each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver (typically th ...

, rendering the phone unusable for voice calls. Despite being unusable for voice calls, their cell phone would play a key role in their rescue. Cell phone text messages may go through even when there appears to be no signal, in part because

text messaging Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/ laptops, or another type of compatible compu ...

is a

store-and-forward Store and forward is a telecommunications technique in which information is sent to an intermediate station where it is kept and sent at a later time to the final destination or to another intermediate station. The intermediate station, or node in ...

service. Two

Edge Wireless Edge Wireless LLC was a mobile phone provider founded in 1999 by Wayne Perry, Cal Cannon and Donnie Castleman, serving southern Oregon, northern California, southeastern Idaho and Jackson, Wyoming. Edge Wireless's network, currently owned by AT&T ...

engineers, Eric Fuqua and Noah Pugsley, contacted search and rescue authorities offering their help in the search. On Saturday, December 2, they began searching through the data logs of

cell site A cell site, cell tower, or cellular base station is a cellular-enabled mobile device site where antennas and electronic communications equipment are placed (typically on a radio mast, tower, or other raised structure) to create a cell, or adj ...

s, trying to find records of repeaters to which the Kims' cellphone may have connected. They discovered that on November 26, 2006, at around 1:30 a.m., the Kims' cellphone made a brief automatic connection to a cell site near

Glendale, Oregon Glendale is a city in Douglas County, Oregon, United States. The population was 874 at the 2010 census. History After construction of a railroad line south from Roseburg in 1881–83, Solomon Abraham, the local right-of-way agent, platted the ...

, and retrieved two text messages. Temporary atmospheric conditions, such as

tropospheric ducting Tropospheric propagation describes electromagnetic propagation in relation to the troposphere. The service area from a VHF or UHF radio transmitter extends to just beyond the optical horizon, at which point signals start to rapidly reduce in st ...

, can briefly allow radio communications over larger distances than normal. Through the data logs, the engineers determined that the cell phone was in a specific area west of the cellular tower. They then used a computer program to determine which areas in the mountains were within a line-of-sight to the cellular tower. This narrowed the search area tremendously, and finally focused rescue efforts on

. On the afternoon of December 4, John Rachor, a local helicopter pilot unaffiliated with any formal search effort, spotted Mrs. Kim and her two daughters walking on a remote road. After he radioed the family's position to authorities, the three were airlifted out of the area and transferred to a nearby hospital. Law enforcement officials said that the discovery of the cellphone connection, and the subsequent analysis of the log data, was the critical breakthrough that ultimately resulted in the rescue of Kim's wife and daughters by helicopter.

Death

Officials continued to search for Mr. Kim, at one point finding clothing that he had discarded along the way in the likely belief that he was too hot;

paradoxical undressing Hypothermia is defined as a body core temperature below in humans. Symptoms depend on the temperature. In mild hypothermia, there is shivering and mental confusion. In moderate hypothermia, shivering stops and confusion increases. In severe h ...

being one of the symptoms of hypothermia. Optimistic Oregon officials stated, "These were placed with our belief that little signs are being left by James for anyone that may be trying to find him so that they can continue into the area that he's continuing to move in." On Wednesday, December 6 at 12:03 p.m., Mr. Kim's body was found in Big Windy Creek. () Lying on his back in one to two feet of icy water, he was fully clothed and had been carrying a backpack which contained his identification documents, among other miscellaneous items. He had walked about 16.2 miles (26 km) from the car to that point, and was only a mile from Black Bar Lodge, which, although closed for the winter, was fully stocked at the time. An autopsy revealed that Kim had died because of

hypothermia Hypothermia is defined as a body core temperature below in humans. Symptoms depend on the temperature. In mild hypothermia, there is shivering and mental confusion. In moderate hypothermia, shivering stops and confusion increases. In severe h ...

and that his body had suffered no incapacitating physical injuries. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy guessed that Kim had died roughly two days after leaving the vehicle.

Route

Because of Mr. Kim's background as a technology analyst, observers speculated that the family had used online mapping to find their route. However, Mrs. Kim told state police that they had used a paper road map, an account supported by the

Oregon State Police The Oregon State Police (OSP) is a law enforcement agency of the U.S. state of Oregon. The OSP enforces all of Oregon's criminal laws and assists local law enforcement agencies. Terri Davie has served as Superintendent since November 1, 2020. ...

, which reported that the Kims had used an official State of Oregon highway map. Mrs. Kim later recounted that, after they had been stuck for four days and were studying the map for help, both she and Mr. Kim noticed that a box in the corner of the map bore the message: "Not all Roads Advisable, Check Weather Conditions". Bear Camp Road is lightly used between October and April, even by local residents, because of its difficult terrain, spotty maintenance, steep drop offs and often inclement weather. As they drove along the road, the Kims passed three prominent warning signs that state: "Bear Camp Rd. May Be Blocked By Snowdrifts". Mrs. Kim later told police that they had noticed only one warning sign.

Media

The Kim family's ordeal became a lead story on most major U.S. news networks, even amidst

breaking news Breaking news, interchangeably termed late-breaking news and also known as a special report or special coverage or news flash, is a current issue that broadcasters feel warrants the interruption of scheduled programming or current news in orde ...

of the

Iraq Study Group The Iraq Study Group (ISG) also known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission was a ten-person bipartisan panel appointed on March 15, 2006, by the United States Congress, that was charged with assessing the situation in Iraq and the US-led Iraq War and ...

's recommendations on America's war in Iraq. MSNBC.com reported one million page views on the story, making it the top story in the hours after Kim's body was found. CNN.com reported twice as many page views that afternoon as the Iraq story. Within a week, the Kim family appeared on the cover of ''People'' magazine. Newspapers in the region, led by ''

The Oregonian ''The Oregonian'' is a daily newspaper based in Portland, Oregon, United States, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the U.S. west coast, founded as a weekly by Thomas J. Dryer on December 4, 18 ...

'' and the ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The pap ...

'', devoted heavy coverage to the events and their aftermath. On January 6, 2007, ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'' published an op-ed article written by Spencer Kim, James Kim's father, criticizing various government entities that had, in his estimation, played roles in his son's death. The elder Kim blamed the BLM for not locking the gate to the logging road; privacy laws that he claimed had delayed the start of search and rescue efforts; local authorities for "confusion, communication breakdowns and failures of leadership" during the search; and the Federal Aviation Administration for not keeping media aircraft out of the search area. On February 18, 2007, a memorial service was held for James Kim at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. On April 16, 2007, ''

'' was awarded the

2007 Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prizes for 2007 were announced on April 16, 2007.The Pulitzer Prize Winners for 2007
from t ...

for a distinguished example of local reporting of breaking news, presented in print or online or both, for their coverage of the Kim family story. The staff of ''The Oregonian'' was lauded for "its skillful and tenacious coverage of a family missing in the Oregon mountains, telling the tragic story both in print and online". On September 12, 2007, Kati Kim gave an exclusive interview of the ordeal to UK blogging site DollyMix. In December 2009, Kati Kim and her daughters made a surprise appearance at a Christmas party being held by the membership of Josephine County Search and Rescue. In February 2011, the television show ''

20/20 Visual acuity (VA) commonly refers to the clarity of vision, but technically rates an examinee's ability to recognize small details with precision. Visual acuity is dependent on optical and neural factors, i.e. (1) the sharpness of the retinal ...

'' aired a special 2-hour episode, "The Wrong Turn", which included interviews with Kati Kim. In September 2011, the television show ''20/20'' aired a second special 2-hour episode, "The Sixth Sense", which depicted the same story as in "The Wrong Turn". On August 27, 2017, the television show ''SOS: How to Survive'' aired a 1-hour episode, "Trapped in a Blizzard", which depicted the Kim's story with survival tips on how to survive in a similar situation

References

External links

Google Earth Community
View the area with Google Earth, with waypoints marked includes timeline of events. * *
Obituary
in the ''

Herald and News The ''Herald and News'' is a daily newspaper serving the city of Klamath Falls and Klamath County in the U.S. state of Oregon. It also distributes east into Lake County. The General Manager is Joe Hudon and the editor is Gene Warnick.. The ''H ...

'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Kim, James 1971 births 2000s missing person cases 2006 deaths 21st-century American non-fiction writers Accidental deaths in Oregon American bloggers American people of Korean descent American technology writers Television personalities from San Francisco Ballard High School (Louisville, Kentucky) alumni CNET Deaths from hypothermia Formerly missing people Missing person cases in Oregon Oberlin College alumni TechTV people Television personalities from Louisville, Kentucky Writers from Louisville, Kentucky Writers from San Francisco Villanova University alumni