Fallen soldier in Iraq didn't tell family he was there

One thing about tracking all of this across the country is that some reports stun me. This is one of them. A US soldier, born in South Korea, wanted to join the military and serve this country. He didn't want his family to worry about him, so he didn't tell them he had been deployed. If that isn't strange enough, this part really got me.

"I didn't trust this document, so they called someone in the military. They were told when a soldier is born outside of the United States, they change his birthplace to a U.S. state. His had been changed to Kansas.

Slain Soldier Didn't Tell Parents He Was at War
Knight Ridder
by Imani Tate
Jun 02, 2012

Besides helping freedom-loving citizens of his adopted homeland and countries fighting tyranny, Jang Ho Kim of Placentia was fighting to protect his parents and sister.

Jang Ho, the son of La Verne's Nikuni Japanese Grill owner Steve Kim, thoroughly believed people everywhere should be free of worry and fear, so he enlisted in the Army in June 2005.

Not wanting his dad, mother Sang Soon Kim or little sister Michelle to fret about his safety, he fudged in conversations about his exact whereabouts after finishing basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., and combat training in Germany.

So, when two soldiers came to tell them Jang Ho had been killed in Baghdad, Steve Kim knew it had to be a mistake.

"I had just come back from lunch when I got a phone call from my wife," said Kim, then Samsung's information technology director in La Mirada. "She said two soldiers were at the house and asked me to come home."
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