JAE C. HONG

The Palisades Fire ravages a neighborhood amid high winds in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
Landscapes turned into hellscapes, shock and the ongoing fight against wildfires in Los Angeles
While firefighters made gains on the fires, the battle was far from over. From both the air and the ground, firefighters attacked the flames. Hazardous smoke, from both active burning and smoldering homes, filled the skies.
 
Resident sift through their fire-damage property after the Franklin Fire swept through Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024, in Malibu, Calif. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Fire danger diminishes in Southern California even as crews continue to battle Malibu blaze
Weather conditions have improved enough in Southern California for forecasters to say that the worst of the high winds that drove a wildfire through part of Malibu have passed.
 
A car drives past flames from the Franklin Fire at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer)
Celebrities and coastal residents flee from wind-driven wildfire in Malibu
Thousands of Southern California residents are under evacuation orders and warnings as firefighters battle a wind-driven wildfire in Malibu.
 
Kenneth Barthel, adopted from South Korea to Hawaii in 1979 at 6 years old, holds a tablet showing his childhood photo in Busan, South Korea, Thursday, May 16, 2024. Barthel is looking for his birth family in Busan where he believes he was abandoned when his mother ordered soup for him in a restaurant and never returned. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
South Korea adoptees endure emotional, sometimes devastating searches for their birth families
They began a pilgrimage that thousands before them have done — a long flight to their motherland, South Korea, to undertake an emotional, often frustrating, sometimes devastating search for their birth families.
 
A tourist views high-rise apartment buildings from a bus in Incheon, South Korea, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
South Koreans are starkly divided over North Korea’s nuclear threat
There are two Koreas, North and South. But there’s also more than one South Korea; it’s split into camps with often polar opposite views on the danger posed by their nuclear-armed neighbor to the north.
 
Timothy Walker, left, a resident at the Los Angeles Mission who graduated from its faith-based drug rehabilitation program, chats with a security guard at the mission in Los Angeles, Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
AP Photos: A tumultuous life, a turn toward faith and one man who wonders if it’s time to vote
Timothy Walker spent years wrestling with cocaine addiction, cycling in and out of drug treatment centers. He lost his home and his job as a marketing executive at a law firm. Elections came and went, largely unnoticed.
 
A vendor selling used remote controls for various home appliances takes a nap in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
E-waste is overflowing landfills. At one sprawling Vietnam market, workers recycle some of it
The world is producing more electronic waste than ever — 62 million metric tons in 2022. And it’s growing faster than formal efforts to recycle it.
 
A couple view the skyline of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Jan. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
AP PHOTOS: In Vietnam, vibrant Ho Chi Minh City is a magnet that pulls in millions
Millions of lives – an estimated 9.3 million in 2023, according to the U.N.
 
Ethan Meyers, right, carries crosses to put up to honor the victims killed in a recent wildfire in Lahaina, Hawaii, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023. Two weeks after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century swept through the Maui community of Lahaina, authorities say anywhere between 500 and 1,000 people remain unaccounted for — a staggering number for officials facing huge challenges to determine how many of those perished and how many may have made it to safety but haven't checked in. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Hawaii’s cherished notion of family, the ohana, endures in tragedy’s aftermath
Hundreds of homes are gone, scores of lives lost and dozens of people still missing after a fire ripped through the town of Lahaina. But in the land of aloha, the spirit of ohana endures.
 
FILE- A general view shows the aftermath of a devastating wildfire in Lahaina, Hawaii, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023. During the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, a developer of land around a threatened Maui community urgently asked state officials for permission to divert stream water to help fight the growing inferno. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
Maui fires renew centuries-old tensions over water rights. The streams are sacred to Hawaiians
During the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, a developer of land around a threatened Maui community urgently asked state officials for permission to divert stream water to help fight the growing inferno.
 
FILE - A woman takes a nap on the lap of her husband on a bench at Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, July 30, 2023. Life in the capital of a war-torn country seems normal on the surface. In the mornings, people rush to their work holding cups of coffee. Streets are filled with cars, and in the evenings restaurants are packed. But the details tell another story. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
AP PHOTOS: Life in Kyiv may seem normal on the surface, but a closer look reveals the burdens of war
Life in the capital of war-torn Ukraine seems normal on the surface. In the mornings, people rush to work holding their cups of coffee, the streets are busy with cars at peak hours and in the evenings restaurants are packed with people ordering food.