ABC News 20/20 Special Edition – Wrong Turn: The Kati Kim Story

James Kim was travelling with his wife Kati and their two young children, four years old and seven months old, when they took a wrong turn in a blizzard and became desperately lost deep in the Oregon wilderness.

For nine days the questions mounted… Where were the Kims? What happened to them? Were they alive?

“Families don’t simply disappear,” one rescuer said.

But the Kims did and their story riveted and shocked the nation. “Wrong Turn” is the definitive account of this harrowing story of love, hope, despair, sacrifice, death and ultimately, survival.

It is, after years of silence, Kati Kim’s first televised detailed account of how an innocent family holiday trip turned into a deadly nightmare. Kim’s heartfelt, never-before-seen interview is an ABC News exclusive that will take viewers through every dramatic twist and turn.

Like a scene from a chilling horror movie, the young family is trapped in isolated woods miles away from any help and surrounded by black bears. As each day passes and their hopes of rescue dim, Kati Kim will resort to breast feeding her two daughters to keep them from dying. They will battle starvation, sub-zero temperatures, frostbite and hypothermia and at one point, desperately set their tires afire in an attempt to signal help. And in their darkest moment they will even contemplate ending their own ordeal by slitting their wrists and laying their bodies in the snow.

How did the Kims survive such an extreme environment? What clues did the family leave the heroic search teams? And what happened when James Kim, in his final attempt to save his family, decided to leave the car and look for help?