Man whose remains were found near Anchorage trailhead was owner of restaurant destroyed in fire

The man whose skull was found this month in an East Anchorage park disappeared shortly after the restaurant he owned was destroyed in a fire, a family member said Thursday.

Chung Ho Kang, 61, had been managing the Dimond Bar-B-Que Pit in South Anchorage for at least 15 years when the restaurant burned down in late March 2018, said his daughter, Jieun Kang. He was still working with investigators to determine what caused the fire when he disappeared about a month later, she said.

Brian Dean, a fire investigator with the Anchorage Fire Department, said investigators found evidence suggesting the fire was set intentionally. Dean wouldn’t elaborate on what evidence was discovered but said the door had been forced open. The fire is still under investigation, he said Thursday.

The man’s remains were found in early January off Campbell Airstrip Road in Far North Bicentennial Park, police have said. Someone spotted them after their dog located them in woods near the Bivouac trailheads. The cause of death has not yet been determined, police said.

Arlene Butler, who worked at the Bar-B-Que Pit as a manager for three years before leaving in 2014, said the news of the fire came as a shock. She’d watched on television as firefighters attempted to quell the flames, but she had no idea that her former employer had been missing until his remains were identified, she said.

Butler, who now lives in Missouri, said she didn’t know much about her boss’s personal life, aside from the fact that he ate lunch with his wife every day and took a week off once a year to go fishing in Kenai. He usually kept to himself, and typically didn’t interact with customers very much unless one asked for him directly, she said.

Leah Brown, another former manager, said Chung Ho Kang spent nearly all of his waking hours at the restaurant, working alongside his wife for about 12 hours each day to prepare food. Brown said the couple worked so often she would sometimes tease them about taking a vacation.

Brown remembered her boss as someone who cared deeply for his customers and employees, saying he would often give her rides home from work when it was too snowy to walk, and once gave her an advance on her paycheck when she was short on rent.

“He was one of those employers who you want to work for because they appreciate your work,” Brown said.

Brown, like Butler, wasn’t aware her former boss had gone missing. Neither of the former employees kept in contact with the Chung Ho Kang after they left their jobs.

Brown said far as she knew, her former employer didn’t have any enemies.

Chung Ho Kang, who lived with his wife in an East Anchorage subdivision a few miles from where his remains were found, would often take morning walks in Far North Bicentennial Park, his daughter said. Occasionally, his wife accompanied him, but most of the time he went by himself, she said.

Jieun Kang, who lives in Oregon, described her father as a solitary man who preferred activities like golf that allowed him to be alone.

“He was always an independent person,” she said.

The Kangs had been living in Alaska for about 20 years and had previously run the Fifth Avenue Deli in the food court of the Anchorage 5th Avenue Mall, Jieun Kang said. For the first eight years that her parents ran the Dimond Bar-B-Que Pit together, they wouldn’t show themselves at the front of the store out of fear that customers would think less of the food if they found out it was cooked by a Korean couple, she said.

Chung Ho Kang had not worked since the Dimond Bar-B-Que Pit had burned down, and he spent most of the month leading up to his disappearance working with fire investigators and planning a trip to California, his daughter said.

His wife had previously confided worries about his mood, Jieun Kang said. “She thought he looked a little depressed after the fire."

Jieun Kang said she normally spoke with her father about once a week, and the last time she heard from him was in late March. Nothing he said struck her as being out of the ordinary, she said.