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That's OdoOo.com. On June 3, 1973, a gang leader named Yippee Tak was gunned down at a very busy intersection in Chinatown. Julia 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. Julia 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. Mug books for the photograph of Asian men. The white tourists were asked to point out anyone who looked like the shooter.

A couple of people stopped on the same photo of a young Korean man. His name was Cholsu Lee. Cholsu Lee was involved in a gun accident at his place the day before the murder. According to the police, Cholsu Lee had accidentally fired a gun in his apartment and they questioned him about it. When police looked at the type of gun, it was a 38 caliber revolver. They did a ballistic test on the bullet from his apartment.

When their ballistic expert did a test, they said it was a match. That the bullet that Cholsu Lee fired from his gun came from the murder weapon.

Cholsu Lee was charged with first-degree murder.

An all-white jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison. When the verdict was read, a reporter from the Sacramento Union wrote, "The Cholsu Lee, quote, spat at the prosecutor and munched toward him as jurors were filing out of the courtroom." Later, after he was restrained and put in a holding cell, that same newspaper reporter described Cholsu Lee as having tears dwelling in his eyes. Cholsu Lee insisted he was innocent, but no one believed him for years.

Intelligent journalist heard about his story and wrote an article that would change both of their lives. This story comes from our friends at Side Door, a history podcast from the Smithsonian. "I'm Phoebe Judge," this is criminal. Here's Side Door's host, Lizzy Peabody. It was a lazy summer afternoon in 1973 when Ronco Yamada was killing time at her friend's apartment.

She was lying on the floor, flipping through the San Francisco Chronicle when she saw an article that snapped her out of her summer haze. There was an article about all the killings in Chinatown, all the people arrested, and this person named Cholsu Lee had been arrested for murder. Ronco knew Cholsu Lee as the Korean kid hanging around her sister's jewelry shop in San Francisco's Japan town. He was sweet and they were friends, but she knew him as Charles Lee.

"This sounds like a Korean name. Is this the Charles that I know?" So she made a few calls and confirmed that yes, Charles Lee was in fact Cholsu Lee, and he was being charged with murder.

Ronco did know one thing for sure though. Cholsu could not afford a defense attorney.

“Ronco 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 Cholsu didn't do that." And he knew who had killed Gip G-Talk. He said, "We all know that Cholsu 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 KW Lee caught wind of Cholsu'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. So Chinatown 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.

KW 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 follow this smell, and things that 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 Cholsu Lee as Chinese. "Coring a Korean Chinese. Anybody who is a smarter, you know, of understanding the culture would find it in a very unreal." Cholsu Lee's story resonated with KW Lee, who both have the same last name because they both immigrated from Korea.

“KW was a generation older though, and before we go any further, there's something you need to know about KW.”

He's a character. He cursed every other word. I was like, "Wow, I didn't realize you could use the effort in so many different parts of the speech." KW was one of those people you remember meeting. The first time I saw him in person was at a community forum that was held in the LA Times building in downtown Los Angeles. So Jen is one of KW's unofficial biographers.

And KW got up there and was like foaming at the mouth and like yelling. And I was at the back of the room and I could see like the saliva, like gathering at the size of his mouth as he yelled into the mic. KW had a reputation for absolutely hating, corruption, and wrongdoing. For him, it was personal. See, KW Lee had left Korea for the United States in 1950.

His full name is actually King Juan Lee, and he was born in 1928. And he comes to the United States as a student to study after World War II and right on literally the eve of the Korean conflict. KW despised the political corruption that had taken hold in his native South Korea. His plan was to get a degree in the United States, and then return to Korea to speak out against authoritarianism. But he soon found himself in Tennessee, writing about lunch counter sit-ins in protest of racial segregation.

Then he moved to West Virginia, the heart of coal country. Where he sees a corrupt political system, and it really like really angered him, because he thought it was country. I'm seeing this thing that I wanted to go back to Korea and fight against through an independent press.

“And so I think he dives into that here in his new home.”

Whether it was coal miners struggling to put food on the table, politicians personally profiting from their office,

or entire systems that seem to favor the powerful over the vulnerable.

He really was like a champion or an advocate for the underdog. And if he sniffed out injustice, he was going to write about it. He was going to expose it. In 1970, KW left Appalachia and headed to California to work for the Sacramento Union. 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 Cholsu Lee.

It was 1977 when KW Lee heard of Cholsu Lee. And his interest was peaked. What if this young Korean American was innocent?

The murder of Yippee Ta could happen in San Francisco. His city hitters like, "You're my chief investigative reporter. You're supposed to be working on like capital exposés." And so KW had to sort of make a deal with his city editor.

You know, he said, "Okay, 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 Cholsu Lee at first. He said because he didn't want to get this guy's hopes up. Because if he, in fact, he uncovered evidence to show that this guy was guilty of this murder.

He was just going to drop it in 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 Cholsu Lee is charged with murder in the stabbing death of a fellow prisoner. Cholsu Lee said that he killed this man. He was a member of the Arian 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 KW suspected to be falsely accused of murder had just appeared to commit another murder while in prison. The KW did not stop his investigation. Instead, he wrote a letter to Cholsu in prison. Dear Cholsu Lee, my name is Kewen 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 1957.”

I have been a reporter with a 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 go in their adopted country. Also, recently I was shocked to learn that you were being charged with slaying and inmate at Tracey.

In 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, can one Lee. When Tulsu Lee got the letter, he wrote to his friend, Rangu Yamada.

Dear Rangu, what I'd like to know right now is as much as I can about Kim one 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 as Mr. Lee sincere and wanting to be an aide to me,

love Tulsu. Ever since she'd sat in that courtroom at his trial, Rangu hadn't stopped working to free her friend, Tulsu. She even started going to law school to learn every legal option available. She became Tulsu's person on the outside.

So after he wrote that letter to Rangu, he fired off another one to KW, saying,

“"You should get to know this woman, Rangu 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 Rangu 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 Tulsu Lee.

After the meeting, KW would spend the next few months interviewing Tulsu in prison, going to Chinatown to talk to sources and diving deep into court documents. And on January 29, 1978, people in Sacramento opened their Sunday edition of the Union to see the headline "The Americanization of Tulsu Lee," part one, lost in a strange culture by KW Lee.

Deepened volatile, trazy prison for young convicts, a 25-year-old Korean man waits in a maximum security cell facing a possible death penalty. Convicted killer Chor Su Lee stands accused of fatally stabbing a fellow inmate last October, a first-degree murder offense with special circumstances called him for capital punishment. At the time of the prison slaying, Lee was serving a life term

This was the first in a two-part series.

“You might expect that this story would go into detail about the killing in Chinatown,”

but that's not what KW did. The first story actually just delves deeply into Chor Su Lee's background. His personal story, his biography. Chor Su Lee was born in South Korea.

He never knew his father and spent most of his childhood with his aunt and uncle and soul.

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, Chor Su 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 school yards or in 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. Chor Su actually fights back against the bullies and is often disciplined. In one of these cases of bullying, a vice principal accused Chor Su 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 doctor is diagnosed 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 in KW, probably like it sounds like psychological babble, but it's also about him. It's also about KW. KW later said he saw himself in Chor Su Lee.

He told journalist Sandra Jen in the 1994 interview. "It was just by the grace of God, I have eluded the faith that fell on him. Because there is a very thin line between him and me, I was lucky. He was not lucky." Part two of KW's story on Chor Su Lee came out the next day. This one was a deep dive into the case against Chor Su.

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capable device required, availability speed and coverage varies. Additional terms apply. See Mint Mobile.com. In a Sunday edition of the Sacramento Union in 1978, journalist KW Lee had introduced the people of Sacramento, California to Chol Suley,

a young Korean immigrant facing a death sentence.

The next day, KW ran the second part of his two-part story,

posing a question to his readers. Did Chol Suley assassinate Yip Yitok in 1973

“on a contract from the watching gang, a mid-of-rash of gangland murders in San Francisco?”

This is an excerpt from that article, which he titled Alice in Chinatown Murder Case. The Sacramento jury believed that Lee was the hired gun, who cold bloodedly pumped three bullets into the 32-year-old Tok at the intersection, swarming with Sunday tourists and inhabitants.

KW, in his investigation, he went into Chinatown in San Francisco many times to just do the legwork to talk to people in the community.

And they said it defied common sense for this Chinatown gang

to hire Chol Suley a Korean to kill this very high profile Chinatown gang leader. The prosecution's thrust, based on intelligence reports that the Korean acted as a trusted Chinatown gang in force or for money, defied the common sense and experiences of the Asian community. KW's article lays at a detailed outline

“for why Chol Suley was unlikely to have committed the Chinatown murder”

and he found that the biggest flaws in the city's case against Chol Suley boil down to two things, the murder weapon and the witnesses. To refresh, the police uncovered a 38-calibur gun near the crime scene and they had matched it with the bullet Chol Suley had accidentally fired into his own wall the day before the murder.

Before the murder trials took place though, this was challenged by Chol Suley's then defense attorney. They challenged that ballistic test and they discovered that it was not a match and that this was a mistake. The police department actually admitted it was a mistake before the murder trial

but still the police and the DA, they still went ahead with the prosecution of Chol Suley. The gun wasn't actually a match and the police knew it but they thought they still had a case against Chol Suley because of the witnesses.

“But remember, nobody who lived in Chinatown came forward as a witness.”

They were too afraid of the gangs. So the only eyewitnesses were out of towners. And the IDs made by these witnesses were not as rock solid as jurors were made to believe. Rancos says after the shooting, six witnesses had been brought to the police station. There officers handed them a photo book full of Asian men's faces

or mugs and they were told. Oh, just pick anything that's similar. Pick any similarities with the person that you saw. Some of the witnesses picked Chol Suley because his hair looked similar to the killer. Or maybe his eyes.

But they told the police they weren't actually identifying the person in the photo as the suspect. They were pointing out similar facial features. And some people even said, "I'm picking this because something looks similar, but I know for fact it wasn't him." This is not the person I saw.

They chose a total of five mug photographs. Having characteristics similar to the Mandy's lawsuit to victim, they may know identification of the suspect. What's more, the witness is noticed that the person who shot Yip Yitak was about the same height. So when they described the killer, they said,

"It was a person who was between five foot six and five foot ten." Chol Suley was actually quite short. People often describe him as around five foot two. At most he was five foot four. By no stretch of the imagination, would you imagine him being between five or six or five foot ten?"

The witness is also described the shooter as being clean shaven.

But even though Chol Suley didn't fit the description,

“he was the only person from the mug book that police brought to the station”

for a physical line-up. Chol Suley was marched into a room. Stood shoulder to shoulder with a handful of random men, and the witnesses were asked to make an idea of the shooter. And they choose Chol Suley,

but it's not even that this is the person that they saw in Chinatown, Kill Yip Yitak. This is the person that they remember really from the mug book. Rungo and KW argued that police had been pushing the witnesses toward Chol Suley the entire time.

You almost can't fault the witnesses.

The police slowly over time persuade them to believe that the person they have chosen is in fact the one. But even if the police hadn't steered the witnesses toward Chol Suley, there was another problem with their IDs. While they explained in this TV news investigation of the case...

“Now, what would be the problem, say, with the witnesses who were standing over on that corner?”

Why couldn't they make a positive identification? Well, if you look over there, there's a nasien couple standing over there. Now, look away, because you only had no more than three or four seconds. Suppose that you're looking at a book with hundreds of Asian faces in it

and asked to pick out a few faces a few hours later.

See how difficult it is? Cross-racial ID. It's one of the enormous problems. If you're not Asian, you're not likely to identify someone who is Asian as easily. Research has shown that, quote, "an eyewitness trying to identify a stranger"

is over 50% more likely to make a misidentification when the stranger and eyewitness are of different races.

“And not a single one of the witnesses identifying Cholsu Lee was Asian.”

KW's articles about Cholsu Lee hit the mainstream. And the majority of people read them and moved on with their lives. But not everyone. Some Korean Americans who read the stories were shaken enough to take action. There was a small group of Korean Americans living in the Davis Sacramento California area.

And they decided that they were going to form a defense committee to help Cholsu Lee, whom they believed was innocent after reading KW Lee's newspaper articles. There were maybe 10 Koreans in this group. But Rancal Yamada had already begun to rally college students and youth activists in the Bay Area. The Koreans in the Valley were welcome allies in their fight to free Cholsu Lee,

which KW had helped them take public. If Cholsu was going to be convicted in the courtroom, at least we could have him tried in the public. KW's articles became the opening argument in a trial of public opinion. Activists and concerned Korean Americans took the article,

ran to the nearest photocopier and started shoving copies into the hands of anyone who would take it. So it might be something that would show up at a university or in a meeting of students. But it became something really tangible that people could then use in a sense as evidence and support for mobilizing. And just word of mouth, little by little, as New Spread that there was this Korean immigrant man who was likely railroaded for a murder he did not commit in San Francisco.

People just started joining the movement. And they wanted to do something to help this man even though he was a stranger. So it was KW who had spelled it out. Very clear outline and we followed it. And this movement was created.

The article had given voice to a broad swath of Americans who felt voiceless and unseen. We're coming on the heels of the civil rights movement, on the heels of ethnic studies movement, on the heels of the antiwar movement because of the Vietnam War. And you had a really like this whole generation of young Asian Americans who were feeling quite empowered to try to work for themselves to be seen and heard in a society that they felt was not seeing them and also discriminating against them.

Everybody had an incident either through themselves or the relatives or their friends. When they had been treated quite unfairly or gone through, you know, a terrible, terrible process. Due to no fault of their own but because they were Asian. Something in Chelsea's story resonated with each of them and really touched them deeply.

The irony of it though is that what he helps to mobilize is a Pan Asian American movement.

“Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and many more joined the fight.”

College students sold hotlinks and held car washes to raise money for the toll-su lead defense fund. Older Asian Americans spoke at churches and asked for donations. Some supporters even wrote a song. [Music] Proceeds from all these efforts went to the defense fund.

And eventually, they had raised enough money to reinvestigate Chelsea's case. The free Chelsea lead defense fund hired new lawyers for Chelsea. Leonard Wineglass, who defended the Chicago 7, took the lead. And he hired a private investigator named Josiah Tink Thompson.

Tink soon discovered another witness that Chelsea's original defense attorney never knew about.

“And that's because the police never told them.”

A man named Stephen Morris. He is a man who actually witnessed the murder from a closer distance than any of the witnesses who testified at Josiah's first murder trial. And actually, he called the police station after the murder and said, "I witnessed this." The police apparently talked to Stephen Morris briefly, but then never called upon him again as they investigated the case.

Stephen Morris had been ready to testify on behalf of Chelsea. But he never heard from the police again. And nobody who was defending Chelsea was made aware of his existence. He said the killer was taller. Also, when he looked at Chelsea at the courthouse one day because the defense's private investigator brought him in

to just take a look at Chelsea and ask him, "Is that the killer you saw that day?" Stephen Morris said, "No, that's not him." Chelsea is very handsome, he's beautiful. He's actually the killer was kind of ugly. And so he was able to say that definitively, this was not the killer that he saw.

A judge ruled that since the police suppressed the existence of the witness Stephen Morris, Chelsea's murder conviction had to be thrown out in a new trial, had to be held. We'll be right back. Support for criminal comes from home shaft. Click like a shaft in your own kitchen with home shaft.

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So why not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's OdoO.com. It was 1979 when Cholsu was granted a retrial for the killing of Yippee Talk, nearly six years earlier. With additional evidence and a crack legal team by his side, there was hope.

Because in the meantime, Cholsu Lee had to be tried for the prison yard stabbing. The jury in that case had no idea that Cholsu'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. Cholsu Lee sat on death row in San Quentin for the next three years, awaiting his retrial. And during that time, KWup ended 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 and 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 career town weekly, which is a weekly newspaper,

“and one of the key stories that they follow in that newspaper is the Cholsu Lee case.”

KW rearranged his entire career to stay on top of Cholsu's case, running himself ragged to get this new paper off the ground. And at the end of each day, he stayed up late to write to Cholsu at San Quentin. Because he knew like Cholsu was probably waiting for that kind of human contact from him, from that letter of encouragement, and so he just couldn't let him down.

I mean, the letters between those two are so beautiful, really encouraging each other in the darkest moments. KW really wanted to keep his morale up. He wanted to give him a sense of what the possibilities were. He wanted him to feel proud of who he was and what he had endured. Even Cholsu, after being placed on death row,

and you can imagine what he was going through at that time. But he writes such a comforting letter to KW after that. You see, Cholsu, you know, encouraging him, you know, like it's great. It's all the issue, a great job. It must be really hard, but it's great. You know, I'm glad you're doing this.

I remember KW saying, "Oh my gosh, like here you on death row, and you're comforting me."

“Cholsu never knew his own father, and so I think, in many ways,”

KW sort of filled that rule in his life. August 11, 1982. Nine years after Yippee talk was killed in Chinatown, Cholsu leaves retrial began.

Not so much was different in the second trial.

Like night and day, those two murder trials. This time, Cholsu Lee had a community of supporters behind him. You had not only these young, college-age activists there, you had these church-going grandmothers, Korean immigrant grandmothers, some of them wearing their traditional Korean silk dresses,

showing up in the courthouse, smiling at and waving at Cholsu Lee at the defendant's table. And while this community support didn't have any legal power, Julie says it had an impact on the trial.

“I think it was Rongo who said, you know,”

that the community's support in presence helped give the jury and the judge a conscience. It helped keep everybody honest. Community support and a top-notch defense was good in all. But Cholsu's fate would ultimately come down to the evidence and testimony

that was presented to the jury. Remember, there was no evidence tying Cholsu Lee to the murder of Yippee Talk. The ballistics didn't match, so his conviction rested purely on eyewitnesses. The very same witnesses who testified in 1974. But this time, the result was different.

Cholsu's attorneys were able to actually show how outrageous it was that they could be describing a killer who looked nothing like Cholsu Lee and it's still led to his conviction. This is what happens when you actually have competent defense attorneys who believe in their client's innocence.

After nearly a month-long trial, the prosecution and defense rested their cases. The jury began to deliberate. Rongo, KW and Cholsu's supporters were hopeful. All their work would free Cholsu.

But you still, you never know.

You never know until the verdict comes out. Deliberations lasted one day. At APM, the jury announced that they had reached a verdict. Everyone filed in the courtroom to hear their decision. The verdict is red and it's not guilty.

Well, people in crazy.

“We've just jumped up and started yelling in the courtroom.”

One of the members of the Defense Committee, J.U.

had told activists in the courtroom to stay quiet after the verdict. Don't make a scene. But as soon as he heard the naught guilty verdict, he screamed. He screamed he couldn't control himself. This is how the verdict was covered in KW Lee's career-town newspaper.

With tears brimming in his eyes after the nine men, three woman jury read the not guilty verdict, Cholsu Lee faced his supporters through bulletproof glass protections of the maximum security facility and told them that his victory was in fact theirs. It's a verdict.

Not only for myself, it has been your support, your faith.

That has made this possible. God bless you. The audience wept even some sheriff's bailiffs showed red-rimmed eyes. This pan-asian movement of old and young, Japanese-Americans, Korean-Americans, Chinese-Americans, and many others had come together and they had freed a young Korean immigrant from death row.

But Cholsu Lee was still a convicted murderer for the prison stabbing in 1977. His lawyers, though, were able to strike a plea deal. So he settled with the conditions that there'd be no other association with the courts when he walks out, he walks out for good. He's okay.

In March of 1983, he walked out of prison, a free man. Cholsu Lee had spent nearly 10 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

And during that entire time, Ranko Yamada never lost focus on getting him back home.

It was the issue that really did change me and created me, just made me who I am. It inspired her to go to law school and become a champion for the underdog. But it wasn't just her life that was changed. Working on the Cholsu Lee case really changed KW's life.

“I think that he would probably say it was probably one of the most important relationships”

and experiences that he had. After meeting Cholsu Lee, he said, "It's sort of awakened his latent Korean-American identity." KW Lee left mainstream English language newspapers, and dedicated himself to journalism about Korean-Americans and four Korean-Americans. He was also working hard to train a whole new generation of journalists.

He was mentoring all his Korean students and all his young people in journalism and how to be an excellent journalist. That's how Julie met KW Lee in 1990. I was 18 years old, had just graduated from high school, and he just started a Korean-American newspaper called the Cree Times English Edition.

He was espousing this principle of how all people, all communities, including Korean-Americans, deserve to be known, seen and heard in our full human context, warts and all, and those sort of a signature phrase of his. KW stayed friends with Cholsu Lee for the rest of his life.

He was his mentor, a guiding hand that helped Cholsu when he struggled to adapt to life outside prison. KW was like a father figure to him, which made it even harder when Cholsu died unexpectedly in 2014. And he was in such English when Cholsu died at age 62.

But KW was also angry. That's the funeral he stood up, and he was clutching this Buddhist monks walking stick that Cholsu had carved for him out of a tree, and he was a little bit angry and he said,

why is the story of Cholsu Lee under ground after all these years? You know, why don't people know about it? That speech inspired Julie to make the documentary "Free Cholsu Lee," and KW was at the film's premiere in 2022. Three years later, in the spring of 2025, he died at the age of 96.

When he passed, I described it as like the brightest flame going out.

“You know, that's what it felt like because his force”

and his spirit felt that big. And so when he passed, it did feel like the brightest flame just blew out.

Armed with a typewriter, he spent his life bringing people together

to build a community.

“And he challenged people to find the strength to protect that community.”

I've known many, many brilliant people. People, I would consider genius, and KW was one of them. Smart is just smart. But when you couple that with the compassion that he had

and his integrity and his feeling for humanity as a whole, that singular, that's the difference. He was a great, great person. So Jen Kim says KW can be summed up in a letter.

She once saw sitting on his desk.

It was from a former colleague of his at the Charleston Gazette in West Virginia. This was years after they had worked together, reporting on coal miners. He wrote, "But struck me, at the time, was how much you really cared about these people."

“And he said, "Except back then, I wouldn't have said it that way.”

Back then, I would have said that KW, he gives a shit." And I think that's how I think of it. Yeah, he really gave a shit. Thanks to Lizzie Peabody and the podcast "Side Door" from the Smithsonian. We've got a link to the "Side Door" podcast in our show notes.

It's great, and we hope you'll follow them.

We've also got a link there to Julie Haas documentary.

Free Joel Suley. Special thanks to Ranko Yamada. Julie Haa, so Jen Kim, Rickley, Sebastian Yoon, and Matsuko Adachi. "Side Door" is produced by James Morrison, Lizzie Peabody, and Anne Konanan. Back checking by Natalie Boyd and mixing by Terek Fuda.

"Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and Me." Nadia Wilson, as our senior producer, Katie Bishop, as our supervising producer. Our producers, our Suzanne Roberson, Jackets of Gico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kanane. Our show is mixed in engineered by Veronica Seminetti. Julie and Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of "Criminal."

You can see them at this is criminals.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at this is criminals.com/newsletter. We hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program "Criminal Plus." You can listen to "Criminal."

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They wait right at the Doring Effect. We milk them and we just open up the lane way and let them just go right out to pasture. I'm Ron and Miller Goodrich and I'm a dairy farmer in Cabot Vermont. Our farm is Molly Brook Farm.

We're an organic dairy farm and we are a supplier to Stonyfield. Molly Brook Farm has been in my husband's family since 1835. We started our organic transition in 2015. We had 53 acres of corn ground. And of course we had to use herbicides and pesticides.

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