Gia Someya-Nordmann, an instructor in Japanese at St. Olaf College, died Monday, Feb. 12, the result of an automobile accident near Northfield, Minn. She was 38.

Mass of Christian Burial will be at 10 a.m. Friday, Feb. 16, in Boe Memorial Chapel, St. Olaf College, Northfield, the Rev. Fr. Francis L. Fried of St. Dominic Church officiating. Visitation will be from 5-8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 15, at Benson Funeral Home, Northfield.

Gia Kim Someya was born Dec. 24, 1962, in San Francisco, Calif. She lived in San Francisco until she was 8, when her mother died and she and her father moved to Korea, where he served as a professor at Keimyung University.

She attended Junghwa Girls High School in Korea and in 1986 graduated with honors from Keimyung University with a B.A. in literature. She studied cultural anthropology at Tokyo University in Japan and Japanese as a foreign language at Columbia University, New York. From 1988 to 1990 she was a translator for Isuzu Automotive Co. in Japan, and in 1991 served as a counselor at the Minnesota International Center. In 1994 she graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a master's degree in Japanese.

She served as a teaching assistant for one year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; an instructor for one summer at Indiana University; and an instructor for one year at Edgewood College in Wisconsin.

In 1995 she joined the St. Olaf College faculty, teaching Japanese as a member of the Asian Studies Department. In addition to English and her ancestral language of Japanese, she was fluent in Korean and could read in German.

On Feb. 2, 1996, she married David Nordmann in Faribault, Minn., where the couple lived at 1304 25th Ave. NW.

She is survived by her husband, David; her father, of Korea; a cousin, Masayuki Someya, of Tokyo, Japan; and an uncle, of Tokyo. She was preceded in death by her mother.

Interment will be in St. Lawrence Cemetery, Faribault.