Man Is Wounded During Home-Invasion Robbery : Crime: Three gunmen take money and valuables from immigrant couple. The shopkeeper and his wife are left shaken, fearful for their lives.

By ERIC YOUNG

Aug. 6, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

BUENA PARK — As a Buena Park man rested at home with a gunshot wound, police on Wednesday searched for three men who tied up the man’s wife and son before shooting him during a brutal nighttime robbery.

Ji Hong Jung, 58, was recovering from a gunshot wound to the back of the head after three masked men entered his southern Buena Park home about 9:45 p.m. Tuesday, stealing an undetermined amount of money, rings and a handgun, police and a family member said.

The Jungs had returned home from their business in Compton about 8:45 p.m. when the three men burst through the unlocked front door and ordered them on the floor, police said.

“Three . . . guys just walked into here,” said Jung’s nephew, Brian Park, who came to the San Haroldo Way home Wednesday after Jung was released from Anaheim General Hospital. “It was hot, and so the door was open.”

During the robbery, Jung’s wife, Imsoon, and 32-year-old son, Do Young, were tied with a telephone cord as the men ransacked the house, said Lt. Dick Hafdahl. Imsoon and Do Young were not injured, police said.

As they tore through the home, the gunmen “said, ‘Give us more or we’re going to kill you one by one!’ ” Park said.

At one point a gunman shoved the barrel of his gun into Jung’s mouth, Park said. Then, as they were about to leave, one gunman shot Jung in the back of the head at close range, Park said.

Jung speculated that the men followed him home from his women’s clothing shop at the Compton Swap Meet, where Ji Jung and Imsoon Jung work, Park said. “They knew there was money to be had,” Park said.

“Now my aunt is nervous,” Park said. “Every time someone knocks on the door she gets really nervous,” he said. “She just cries.”

Park said his uncle is a frail man who had an operation for stomach cancer last year and could not have threatened the three armed men, who fled in a dark, full-size car.

“Things like this, it really breaks the American dream,” Park said. He said Ji and Imsoon Jung came to Buena Park three years ago from Colombia after leaving their native Korea.

“They kind of lost hope right now,” Park said of the Jungs. “What are they going to do?”