Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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On June 3rd, 1973, a gang leader named Yip Yee Tak was gunned down at a very busy intersection in Chinatown.
Julie Ha is a journalist and a filmmaker.
This murder was actually witnessed by probably dozens and dozens of people.
When police arrived, they found a .38 caliber revolver. But they couldn't find any witnesses. Julie Ha says the locals in San Francisco's Chinatown were too afraid of gang retaliation to speak with the police. There were more than a dozen unsolved murders in Chinatown attributed to gang warfare.
It started to become actually quite a serious problem for the city of San Francisco because tourism in Chinatown was really like a main lifeblood of San Francisco's revenue. The police interviewed the only people willing to talk.
The police were only able to get these white tourists who saw the killer for mere seconds from quite a distance away to come down to the station and look through mug books.
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Chapter 2: What happened in Chinatown on June 3rd, 1973?
Chol Su could not afford a defense attorney. Ronko was a college student, so she couldn't afford one either. But she figured she could at least support her friend during his trial. So she drove to the courthouse in Sacramento. And while she was sitting there, in the courtroom, a young Chinese man approached her.
And he was from Chinatown, San Francisco. And he said, you know, Chosu didn't do that. And he knew who had killed Yip Yitok. He said, we all know that Chosu didn't do that murder. That was the first time that someone told me that he was actually innocent.
Three years later, in 1977, a journalist named K.W. Lee caught wind of Chol Soo's story.
He was talking to a social worker in Chinatown named Tom Kim, when Tom happened to mention... He was really saddened by the fact that there was this young Korean immigrant who was in prison for a crime that he didn't commit.
Sojin Kim is a curator at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
This social worker felt like he hadn't had the means to be able to do anything to help or support him.
K.W. was working as an investigative reporter for the Sacramento Union, the largest paper in California's capital. And he could tell right away that something smelled fishy.
And I followed the smell. And things shouted at me.
KW said that the first thing that failed his sniff test was the court record. The arresting officer, while he was on the stand, kept referring to Chol Soo Lee as Chinese.
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Chapter 3: Why were tourists the only witnesses to the murder?
That would be when, for the first time, he said, he would get to write about a fellow Korean immigrant like himself in the story of Chol Soo Lee.
It was 1977 when K.W. Lee heard of Chol Soo Lee. And his interest was piqued. What if this young Korean American was innocent? But K.W. was a Sacramento reporter. The murder of Yip Yee Tak had happened in San Francisco.
His city editor's like, you're my chief investigative reporter. You're supposed to be working on like capital exposés. And so K.W. had to sort of make a deal with his city editor. You know, he said, OK, let me work on this on my own time at first. Let me see if I can uncover enough evidence to show that this guy may be innocent. So off the clock, KW got to work.
KW actually was quietly investigating this without even contacting Cholsuli at first. He said because he didn't want to get this guy's hopes up. Because if, in fact, he uncovered evidence to show that this guy was guilty of this murder, he was just going to drop it and, like, quietly walk away.
Instead, he was uncovering evidence, you know, that was quite alarming to him, and that was proving that this guy was likely innocent.
But this evidence wasn't the only thing that was alarming. During his investigation, a news report flashed on KW's TV screen. Inmate Cho Soo Lee is charged with murder in the stabbing death of a fellow prisoner.
Cho Soo Lee said that he killed this man who was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang in self-defense, but authorities charged him with murder. Because this was his second murder charge, this would become a death penalty case.
The guy K.W. suspected to be falsely accused of murder had just appeared to commit another murder while in prison. But K.W. did not stop his investigation.
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Chapter 4: Who is Chol Soo Lee and what was he accused of?
Instead, he wrote a letter to Chol Soo in prison.
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.
Sincerely, Kyungwon Lee When Chol Soo Lee got the letter, he wrote to his friend, Ranko Yamada.
Dear Ronco, What I'd like to know right now is as much as I can about Kyung Won Lee, because I want to be sure to know if he is for me or against me. Mr. Lee told me he's known Tom Kim for some time, and I would like for you to talk with Tom Kim and let me know his views on Mr. Lee. And is Mr. Lee sincere in wanting to be an aid to me? Love, Chol Soo
Ever since she'd sat in that courtroom at his trial, Ronco hadn't stopped working to free her friend, Cholsu. She even started going to law school to learn every legal option available. She became Cholsu's person on the outside.
So after he wrote that letter to Ronco, he fired off another one to KW, saying, You should get to know this woman, Ronco Yamada, who's my friend and who has been helping me. And so finally, KW and I were able to get together. That's how we met.
It was a dark and stormy night in Sacramento when Ronco met KW. Really. She said the rain was blowing sideways as she looked out the window of the coffee shop and told him everything she knew about Chol Soo Lee. After the meeting, KW would spend the next few months interviewing Chol Su in prison, going to Chinatown to talk to sources, and diving deep into court documents.
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Chapter 5: What flaws existed in the prosecution's case against Chol Soo Lee?
When he was 12 years old, he moved to San Francisco to join his mother there. He said that he thought she must be rich because she had hot water and a gas stove. But really, she was living in poverty, working two jobs. And while she struggled to pay the bills, Chol Soo struggled at school. He didn't speak English, so the school placed him in a bilingual class for Chinese students.
He did not speak Chinese either, and they didn't differentiate between a Korean kid and a Chinese one. The article goes on.
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.
At school, he's bullied because he doesn't know the language. He doesn't know how to speak English. Chol Soo actually fights back against the bullies and is often disciplined.
In one of these cases of bullying, a vice principal accused Chol Soo of being the aggressor. This made him so angry, he kicked the vice principal. Instead of getting help, he was arrested, convicted of battery, and sent to juvenile hall. Later, he was sent to a mental institution.
The doctors diagnosed him with schizophrenia. And then later, a Korean-speaking nurse talks to him, and they realize that he just can't speak English. It must have been just such a nightmare for him, quite alone.
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.
I feel like in retrospect, and KW would probably be like, it sounds like psychological babble, but it's also about him. It's also about KW.
KW later said he saw himself in Chol Soo Lee.
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Chapter 6: How did K.W. Lee become involved in Chol Soo Lee's story?
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It was 1979 when Chol Soo was granted a retrial for the killing of Yip Yee Tak nearly six years earlier. With additional evidence and a crack legal team by his side, there was hope. But there was also dread, because in the meantime, Chol Soo Lee had to be tried for the prison yard stabbing.
The jury in that case had no idea that Chol Su's earlier murder conviction had been overturned, and they found him guilty. Because it was his second murder charge, he was sentenced to death and transferred to San Quentin's death row. Chol Soo Lee sat on death row in San Quentin for the next three years, awaiting his retrial. And during that time, KW upended his life to stay on the case.
He took a leave of absence from his newspaper, the Sacramento Union, because his editors finally said, we can't have you, our chief investigative reporter, still working on the same case.
So KW said, look, I'm sorry, but I have got to see this through to the end.
And so he takes a leave of absence and he starts a Korean American newspaper in Los Angeles. He starts the Koreatown Weekly, which is a weekly newspaper. And one of the key stories that they follow in that newspaper is the Chol Soo Lee case.
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