On Yebin Kim’s fridge in her San Francisco apartment, the calendar had Sept. 5 marked with a red star.
That’s the day she was going to go back to South Korea to see her family, whom she’d sparsely communicated with during her time in the city, as they anticipated seeing each other soon.
But the adventurous 32-year-old, who left the country just a year and a half before to pursue a career in the United States, never came home.
She was hit by a truck while riding a scooter on Market Street the morning of Aug. 7. It killed her in the city where she planned to build her life, career and family.
“I miss everything about her,” Yonga Cho, Kim’s mother, said in Korean during a Zoom interview with the Chronicle. “I want to give her a hug, but I can’t. Now that I’m home, I still hear her voice, like she’s going to come into the room saying, ‘Mom.'”
Kim’s family is grappling with the sudden loss of a devoted daughter and sister who had worked her way out of a small South Korean village to one of the most prestigious universities in the country and then to California.
Kim grew up in Sacheon, a small, pretty farmland and fishing village. Her parents were poor and worked at their small business until late at night, leaving Kim to care for her two younger siblings. While they struggled, Kim gained confidence to apply to the top university in the country through the responsibility she felt to take care of her family and herself, Cho said.
Growing up, Yebin Kim, center, took care of her siblings while her parents worked, giving her the maturity and fortitude to pursue her high ambitions, her mother said. (Courtesy of Yonga Cho)
In retrospect, Cho felt bad that she hadn’t realized Kim had struggled so much growing up. She was so mature that when the challenge of helping raise her siblings affected her, she didn’t show it.
Her mother described Kim as a person who simply excelled. From attending Seoul National University – the South Korean equivalent of an Ivy League – to working in human resources at Qcells, her daughter had shown a natural intelligence since she was a toddler. She always wanted to be the most capable person at work.
Kim’s talents extended beyond school and work – she loved extreme sports, and her latest obsession was tennis, Cho said. The family buried her in her tennis outfit.
Rich Schoenberger, senior trial counsel at Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger and an attorney for Kim’s family, said they know about as much as what has been publicly reported: She was on a scooter eastbound on Market Street, and a truck driver going the same direction struck and killed her at the intersection of Powell and Market streets.
Internal police reports said she suffered a traumatic head injury. Her helmet and scooter were splayed out onto the street.
Yebin Kim’s helmet and scooter sit on San Francisco’s Market Street on Aug. 7 as police investigate the collision that killed her. (Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle)
To the attorneys, it’s still unclear exactly what caused her to fall.
Before Kim was struck, witnesses saw her wheel become stuck in the streetcar rail tracks, ABC7 and the San Francisco Standard reported. Many people lamented online about how the city’s streetcar rail tracks are a common cause of falls off bikes and scooters.
The family’s attorneys are gathering security footage and the full report from the San Francisco Police Department.
Schoenberger said police have provided little information on Kim’s death despite repeated requests. SFPD spokesperson Mason Lee declined to comment on why police haven’t provided more details on their investigation to the family’s attorneys.
The attorneys are looking into a potential wrongful death lawsuit but have minimal information and are still exploring whether they believe the city of San Francisco or the truck driver may be at fault.
The design of the street concerns Schoenberger. In 2020, due to a budget crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic, the San Francisco Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board scaled back a redesign plan for Market Street that would have added a protected bike lane.
Instead, bikes and scooters share the same lane as taxis, commercial vehicles and buses, which advocates said can lead to injuries and death.
“We believe that there is something wrong, dare I say goofy, about the concept of having folks on scooters and bicycles commingling and intersecting daily with multiton vehicles in an 11-foot-wide lane,” Schoenberger said.
SFMTA declined to comment and instead pointed to the city attorney’s office, whose spokesperson Jen Kwart said in a statement that it would review any claims against the city and that the city “cannot be held liable for every accident between private parties that occurs on our streets.”
Cho, who visited the site of her daughter’s death every day while she was in San Francisco, wondered how bicyclists and scooters could commingle with cars. She watched jaywalkers dart across the street as police didn’t bat an eye, she said.
It was unthinkable to her that cars and cyclists share the same road, especially in comparison with South Korea, where she is used to complete separation between the two.
“Yebin went to the States to chase her dreams and came home to Korea as a cold body,” Cho said. “I cannot understand why Yebin had to die there.”
So when she collected Kim’s belongings from her apartment, she smelled her Mickey Mouse pajamas. She collected her Snoopy toys and clothes, and the Park Hyo Shin merch. She and Kim used to bicker over the famous South Korean singer and their other favorite celebrities.
Sometimes Cho takes a walk and listens to the songs to feel her daughter there.
When Cho came to the United States to collect her daughter’s remains, she was struck by the foreignness of the language that her daughter had left home to study and immerse herself in. Kim had gone on a working holiday in England for two years during school to learn English before graduating college.
Yebin Kim, center, showed great intelligence from a young age, which propelled her to one of the top South Korean universities, Seoul National University, her mother said. (Courtesy of Yonga Cho)
Only when she returned home could Cho sleep.
Kim had spent most of her life away from home, whether for high school, college at the prestigious Seoul National University, or England and California, always dreaming of achieving greater heights, Cho said.
“For almost half her life, Yebin lived somewhere other than home, so I didn’t feel sad to see Yebin leave for the States,” Cho said. “In fact, I rooted for her search for a wider world. It was just like Yebin, that was her style.”
Kim’s cremated remains lie in a pretty site in a cemetery about 50 minutes from their home.
Her mom didn’t want her to be far away.
Joy Jihyun Jeong contributed to this report and provided translation from Korean.
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This article originally published at South Korean woman came to San Francisco to pursue her dreams. Then a truck killed her on Market Street.