K.W. Lee

And I followed the smell.

And things shouted at me.

Calling a Korean a Chinese, anybody who has a smattering, you know, of understanding of Asian culture would find it, you know, very unreal.

Dear Char Soo Lee, My name is Kyung Won Lee, and I am a Korean who came to America in 1950 at the age of 20 to study.

I attended universities and have been working as a newspaperman since 1957y seven.

I have been a reporter with the Sacramento Union since 1970.

A few months ago, I met Tom Kim of San Francisco's Korean Community Service Center.

He said his gut feeling was that you got a raw deal in a San Francisco shooting case and that you couldn't have done it.

Tom Kim feels, and I feel the same way, that nobody has given a damn about troubled Korean boys trying to make a go in their adopted country.

Also, recently I was shocked to learn that you were being charged with slaying an inmate at Tracy.

It may be late, but never too late.

I can do one thing at least.

I want to write about the problems you have run into as a bewildered and helpless Korean boy in America.

And maybe society will listen.

Deep in the volatile Tracy prison for young convicts, a 25-year-old Korean man waits in a maximum security cell facing a possible death penalty.

Convicted killer Cho Soo Lee stands accused of fatally stabbing a fellow inmate last October 8, a first-degree murder offense with special circumstances calling for capital punishment.

At the time of the prison slaying, Lee was serving a life term for the 1973 street corner killing of a reputed gang leader as a hired gun in San Francisco's Chinatown.

In classrooms, he found himself in regular lessons in a sink or swim situation.

In schoolyards or on hallways, he was constantly picked on because he was very short for his age, and he didn't know English except how to say his name and age.

Thus began the Americanization of Chor Su Lee, with good intentions and benign ignorance, paving the road to a private hell for the bewildered boy from Seoul, Korea.