Andy Ivens
Staff Reporter

p. A15.

Teens-sex accused says he liked to party

A Richmond man charged with obtaining sexual services from nine juvenile girls portrayed himself in B.C. Supreme Court yesterday as a misunderstood rich kid.

After his parents became wealthy in 1988, "from that point on I had a good, easy life," Frank Kim, 25, testified in Vancouver.

He liked to party, he told Justice Janice Dillon and the jury.

"Altogether in 1997, I spent about $100,000 that year," he said.

Born in Kitchener, Ont., Kim said he joined his parents in South Korea for a while in the 1990s, and spent time at the University of Maryland before moving to Richmond.

Kim, who is representing himself without legal counsel, said he received $65,000 from his father in January 1997 and spent $45,000 on a white BMW car.

"I had a lot of time on my hands," he said, describing how he met the first of the nine complainants at a gas station on Broadway in Vancouver in February 1997.

After she got into his car, "She kept telling me to touch her."

He said they drove all over Vancouver and she told him she was 19.

All nine complainants were between the ages of 12 and 16 when he had sex with them, according to the Crown's theory.

"I asked for proof [of age]," said Kim.

"She showed me a B.C. ID card," he testified, without mentioning the age on the card.

Prosecutor Sandra Cunningham, who called her final witness in the nine-week-old trial last week, is expected to cross-examine Kim today.