Missing father's body found a mile from car

MERLIN, Ore. — Rescue workers discovered the body of a San Francisco man Wednesday, 11 days after he took a disastrous series of wrong turns in Oregon's coastal range while driving his family on a vacation trip. It was a grim coda to the miraculous rescue two days earlier of his wife and two young daughters.

James Kim's body was discovered shortly after noon Wednesday, four days after the 35-year-old Internet journalist had set out on foot in a desperate bid to seek help.

His wife, Kati, 30, stayed behind with Penelope, 4, and Sabine, 7 months, at the family's stranded automobile. All three were rescued Monday when a search helicopter spotted Kati Kim waving an umbrella.

Josephine County Undersheriff Brian Anderson said James Kim had walked up to eight miles in "tremendously rugged terrain," dressed only in tennis sneakers, pants, shirt and a medium-weight parka. He walked a circuitous route up the road he had driven in on but apparently abandoned that strategy and headed downhill. His body was found a little more than a mile from the parked car.

"It seems somewhat superhuman to me that he got as far as he did, given his lack of resources and the fact that he had barely anything to eat for nine days," Anderson said.

Autopsy results will not be available until today, and authorities would not speculate on how long Kim had been dead when his body was found.

He would have faced temperatures that dipped into the low 20s at night and heavy, wet fog. Kim left at least one SOS note along the spur road, written on a piece of notebook paper, Oregon State Police Lt. Gregg Hastings said.

The death culminated a family vacation trip gone horribly wrong after the Kims overshot an exit for the Oregon coast while traveling south on Interstate 5 late Nov. 25, according to an account by Kati Kim.

The search for the Internet editor and his family had captivated sympathetic strangers who monitored a Web site launched by friends.

Kim's stint with TechTV, an experimental cable and satellite network, made him an on-air celebrity.