LAKE FOREST PARK — Byung Sup Kim, a North Korean refugee and human rights activist revered by Korean-Americans in Washington state as "Elder Kim," is dead at 85.
Kim, who organized a memorial in South Korea on the first anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., died Sunday at his home.
A native of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, Kim was jailed as a young man for protests against communism. He fled to South Korea at age 31 and worked as a newspaper and magazine publisher and teacher.
He led protests when North Korea seized the Navy spy ship USS Pueblo in January 1968 and took the crew hostage, and the next year he organized the first Asian memorial service for King.
He and his wife, Won Sook Hong, emigrated to the United States with their six children in 1977. Hong died in 1997.
Kim served as chairman of the Washington State Korean Community Coalition and adviser to the Korean American Association for Seattle and the Washington State Korean School.
He helped organize a commemoration of the centennial of Korean immigration to the United States, advised the Korean Peninsula Unification Research Center and worked with medical missionaries to North Korea.
Survivors include sons Mark and Willie Kim of Seattle and Christopher Kim of New York, and daughters Rebecca Kamran of Kenmore, Jo Ann Williams of Bellevue and Sil Hamilton of Bonn, Germany.
A service is scheduled today at Acacia Funeral Home in Seattle.
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