More possible victims of man who used dating sites to find women then drug and assault them

Kwangmin Jin

A MAN WHO DRUGGED and sexually assaulted multiple women in the San Francisco Bay Area has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, police officials said.

In September of 2015, police detectives from Fremont, Calif., with assistance from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Police Department, arrested Kwangmin Jin, 21, in Illinois on suspicion of drugging and sexually assaulting at least seven victims and possibly more in the Bay Area. Jin was extradited to California to stand trial.

According to Fremont police, Jin pleaded no contest to six counts of rape while intoxicated. On August 4, Jin took a plea bargain and will spend 20 years in prison.

During the investigation, Fremont detectives learned that between May - August 2015, Jin used fake aliases to arrange meetings with female victims over social media sites. Once in person, Jin would give the victims an alcoholic beverage tainted with a sedative drug. The victims were rendered unconscious for several hours, during which time Jin sexually assaulted them.

Because the victims were rendered unconscious, police said there’s a possibility that there may be more women who came into contact with Jin and did not know what transpired. Police said the meetings were arranged through Tinder, MocoSpace, Skout and Facebook.

He adopted a number of fake names, including Kevin Park, Kevin Jin, Jeremy Lee and Kevin Lee.

Fremont Police detectives are requesting anyone who may have had contact with Jin, or with one of his aliases over social media and/or in person, to please contact Fremont Police Detective Ken Kwok at kkwok@fremont.gov or 510-790-6900. Reference FPD case #150810044.

Jin is currently in custody at a jail in Champaign County, Illinois, awaiting extradition to Alameda County.

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Asian/American women wrestling with body image issues

from BuzzFeed

NO, NO, NO! STOP IT, RIGHT NOW!

Just as we're starting to promote healthier attitudes towards body images and self-acceptance, along comes a new phenomenon that could derail that path. A new Internet challenge that started in China and is trending fast across the rest of the globe is the goal of having a waist the size of a piece of paper.

Women are taking pictures of themselves and posting on social media to show how slim they are compared to the width of sheet of paper. They're calling an "#AA4WaistChallenge," a reference to the A4 paper size, a little over 8 inches wide.

It is unrealistic and kind of disturbing. But some of the women are claiming that this is how they are naturally. The key word is "naturally." Love how you are naturally, and don't use a piece of paper to judge yourself.

The trend points out the type of social pressure Asian women are under to fit the stereotype of petiteness attributed to Asian women. (See the BuzzFeed video, above.) Some credit the "skinny gene" or "Asian metablolism" but it's more like the "crazy gene." 

The #A4WaistChallenge gained steam on Weibo, the Chinese micro-blogging site, and has since picked up traction on Instagram and Twitter.

This is clearly not a healthy obsession and women should ignore it. It can lead to eating disorders along with self-image problems. About the only good thing coming out of this trend is the reactions mocking the challenge.

Social networkers on Instagram and Twitter mocked it with poses behind multiple papers taped together, holding A4 sheets with body-positive messages written on them, or using university diplomas and asking: “Does this degree make me look fat?”

This unhealthy obsession with skeletal dimensions is the modern-day equivalent to the bound feet Chinese women were painfully forced to conform to back in the 19th century because the so-called standard of beauty was tiny feet..

Anybody who spends any amount of time with Asian women know they come in all shapes and sizes and the petite look is really the exception, not the rule. Beauty, comes in all shapes, sizes, pigments and heights. 

This is a social media trend that we have to - stop - right - now! The challenge is a total waste.

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Study: The Internet is an Asian/American medium

English-speaking Asian/Americans are more likely to have technical devices than other ethnic groups.

ENGLISH-SPEAKING Asians have flocked to the Internet like no other group of people, according to a new PEW report.

The popular narrative says that Euro/Americans "lead in technology adoption while other racial or ethnic groups struggle to keep up," says the analysis. However, the PEW study says English-speaking Asians are more adept in the new technology that exceeds the rest of the population, including whites.

The PEW analysis qualifies its report by noting that they did not poll non-English-speaking Asian/Americans. A 2012 PEW survey found that 63.5% of Asian/Americans say they speak English "very well."

For several years, many Asian Americans have suspected they had a larger presence on the Internet much higher than their relatively small numbers in the general populace But until now, there hasn't been any hard data to support this thesis.


Not surprisingly, the next group in the categories were whites, followed by African/Americans and Latino/Americans.

RELEASE: Almost everything about Asian/Americans

Here are some of their findings for the English-speaking Asian/Americans:

• 95% use the Internet. It is not even close. In second place, only 87% of Euro/Americans  use the Internet.
• 84% have broadband at home. The gap here is even wider. Only 72% of whites have broadband.
• 91% own have a smart phone. 66% of whites own a smart phone. When including less advanced mobile phones, Asian/American usage jumped to 98%.

Researchers surmise that Asian/
Americans' tendency to have higher education and higher income that contribute to higher use of high-tech devices.

Hopefully, the findings will convince PEW surveyors to include Asians in their other research about the Internet use and social media. 

RELATED: AAPI social networkers make their presence felt

It kind of reminds me of the surveys PEW did in 2011 that gave the education, incomes levels, education, religion, political preference, social attitudes of African Americans and Latinos. The research group skipped Asians because we were numerically too small to get accurate data.

Such a hew and cry came from the Asian/American community that PEW was forced to do a similar analysis of the Asian/Americans resulting in the 2012 "The Rise of Asian Americans."

It appears PEW has fallen into its old habits again. Several followup surveys released after this February 2016 report didn't include Asian/Americans.

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For more news about Asian/Americans & Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News.

Asian American social networkers make their presence felt

INTERESTING STATS, eh?

The graphic above, from pollster Nielsen suggests that the typical social media user is a mid-20s Asian woman who graduated from college, has a pretty good income and most likely, is a Red Sox fan. (I think if the same poll was taken today, it would show that she is a fan of the Giants or Golden State Warriors.)

In June 2012, the PEW Research Center issued a report on the use of social media among ethnic groups. "Their" ethnic groups were Whites, Latinos and Blacks.

This caused an uproar among Asian Americans who felt they were slighted. "What about us?" they asked. PEW explained that Asian Americans were difficult to poll because of our great diversity and languages and beside, Asian Americans -- all 17.3 million of us -- didn't make up a big enough ethnic group to be significant.

Not significant? Reduced to insignificance again! Well, that riled up the AAPI community again.

The following three paragraphs is what I imagined happened within PEW's office -- and keep in mind I'm making this up:

The response from the Asian/American community hit a nerve and in order to compensate that particularly vocal minority -- from academicians to ordinary Tweeters and Vimeo users -- PEW staff decided to do another study of the Asian American community. That report, titled "The Rise of Asian Americans," which conjures up an "invasion", came out later in 2012 covering the usual categories of where we live, family income, out-of-race marriage, etc.

PEW researchers were probably surprised at the response. Here they thought they were doing something good to appease its Asian/American critics and all they got in response was ... more criticism! 

Now they were being criticized for portraying the the Asian/Americans as well-educated, better than average income, loyal Americans, strong family ties -- in other words, the data presented reinforced the stereotype of the "model minority," an image that I and millions of other "average" Asians have had a hell of a time correcting.

The criticism apparently hit a chord (again) and in 2013, PEW updated the report to include data from other Asian groups and emphasized the poverty and lower test scores for some of the Asian groups.

I don't think PEW will put "insignificant numbers" and "Asian Americans" in the same sentence again, especially in regards to use of the Internet and social media. Therefore, it would seem, Asian/Americans should be included in any study regarding the Internet or social media.

Other polls have come out indicating Asians' use of social media goes beyond their numbers in the United States. If you go to to some social media sites such as Yelp, Twitter, etc. simply judging by the photos of the users, you will see the preponderance of Asian participants.

RELATED: Asian/Americans love the Internet, social media

When the TV show "How I Met Your Mother," recently aired an episode where its white actors donned yellow-face, the social media response was swift and heavy as Asian Americans flexed their new-found virtual muscles. It wasn't long before the show's producers issued an apology.

The online outcry that occurred when Asians were made the butt of offensive jokes at the 2016 Oscar telecast rallied people in the entertainment industry to express their disappointment which eventually led to an apology from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts.

RELATED: Chris Rock went one joke too many during the Oscars

Despite its apparent flaws, I found the PEW report interesting for the important information that they presented. It may be the closest thing we have of a researcher's acknowledgement that Asians are part of this American stew and although small in numbers, the influence of Asian/ Americans goes beyond their numbers. Business, political consultants, marketers and policy makers need to keep this in mind when viewing the data.

PEW's response indicates that a lesson was learned. America is not just a black-and-white world and the country's perception -- and the world's perception, for that matter -- of what an American looks like needs to be broadened beyond the broad brushstrokes used by traditional mainstream media,

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