Ellington

One year ago, on Oct. 30, Joji Kohjima had been chatting with a friend when he saw it out of the corner of his eye: In the middle of Red Square, a man was drenching himself in gasoline.

Kohjima stood up from where he had been seated next to the obelisk and hesitated a moment before he could fully comprehend what was happening. Once he understood, Kohjima said he “instinctively” sprinted across Red Square toward the older man, who had just finished dousing his body in gasoline.

“When I got there, he stopped pouring it on himself and he kind of wiped his eyes so he could see, and he kind of looked at me as if to say ‘just stop, don’t get involved,’” Kohjima said. “I knew at that point that he was going to light himself on fire.”

Last Friday, one year later, a crowd including Kohjima gathered for a memorial upon the same spot where the man had covered himself in gasoline, lit himself aflame and burned, despite efforts from UW students to use water, fire extinguishers and even their clothing to put out the flames.

The man, later identified as In Soo Chun, had suffered burns over 90 percent of his body and died later that day at Harborview Medical Center. King County Medical Examiner authorities later ruled the 61-year-old former UW custodial worker’s death a suicide.

The event remains clear, even a year later, in the minds of those who saw it happen.

“I think I’m going to think about In Soo Chun just about every day for the rest of my life,” Kohjima said.

Gizachew Cassa, a UW custodian, knew Chun because they worked in nearby buildings.

“We all come here to have a better life, and this kind of thing happens … it’s just … I don’t understand,” he said in a phone interview with The Daily.

Cassa’s lingering astonishment and his desire to further understand Chun’s actions were two themes repeated again and again in speeches delivered at the memorial.

UW custodial workers and members of the group International Workers and Students for Justice (IWSJ) called for an investigation of Chun’s death. While Chun left no apparent note as to why he immolated himself in Red Square, speakers at Friday’s memorial asked the university to investigate whether Chun may have been protesting the treatment of custodial workers.

“[The media] did not bring up questions of what the work conditions were like or why he might have chosen such a public and dramatic way to kill himself,” said Ian Morgan, a member of IWSJ and a preschool teacher. “The coverage only focuses on his own personal issues.”

Several speakers argued that Chun, a Korean immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen, may have killed himself in such a public place to make a statement, much as other Koreans have committed public suicide to draw attention to labor-rights issues in Korea.

Indeed, Chun Tae-Il, a 22-year-old factory worker, had also doused himself in gasoline and lit himself aflame in a Seoul marketplace in 1970. Chun Tae-Il, however, had died screaming “Obey the labor laws! We are not machines,” as he burned to death.

In Soo Chun left no apparent message.

Speakers at last week’s memorial also criticized the media, which they believed portrayed Chun as insane. One such criticism targeted UW spokesperson Norm Arkans, who called Chun a “troubled person” in a Seattle P-I story last year.

“I said ‘troubled,’ and that word was carefully chosen,” Arkans told The Daily last Friday. “I think anyone who goes to the extreme he did to do away with himself reflects a troubled soul. No one knows the depths of what he was going through.”

On the same note, Arkans also said there will be no investigation into Chun’s death.

“There’s no basis for any sort of investigation; nothing warrants that,” he said. “There’s nobody who’s going to be able to answer the question of why he did what he did.”

Reach reporter Andrew Doughman at news@dailyuw.com.