True Believer

Honoring the dean of Asian American journalists

BY BILL WONG

If asked to identify a well-known Asian American journalist, most Asian Americans would probably cite Connie Chung and perhaps Ann Curry (a newsreader on NBC's Today show). Depending upon what region of the country you live in, you might say Tritia Toyota, Wendy Tokuda, Linda Yee, and Kaity Tong. A few might mention Ken Kashiwahara, a veteran ABC-TV correspondent based in San Francisco.

I doubt if many would say K.W. Lee. If anything, he deserves greater accolades than almost all of the names above because of the kind of journalism he has practiced and his considerable legacy.

Who is K.W. Lee? He is one of the finest Asian Pacific American newspaper reporters, having worked 25 years at the Sacramento Union until an illness waylaid him. At age 69, he is the undisputed "dean of Asian American journalists."

Kyung Won Lee's story is remarkable. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Lee came to the United States when he was 21 to study journalism. (I am indebted to Luke Kim, an old friend of Lee's, for this biographical information.)

After Lee got his master's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he worked at the Kingsport Times in Tennessee and later at the Charleston Gazette in the West Virginia state capital.

Picture that: a Korean immigrant man doing mainstream reporting in the South in the 1950s, when Jim Crow laws segregated the races. Lee reported on the civil-rights struggle in the South and covered the plight of poor whites in the Appalachian coal mines and poor urban blacks. In 1970, he moved to California and began his distinguished career as an investigative reporter for the Sacramento Union.

He wrote stories that exposed government abuse. While he was practicing the highest form of public-service journalism for a mainstream newspaper, Lee never forgot his immigrant Korean roots. He founded several English-language newspapers in Los Angeles aimed at Korean immigrants and Korean Americans. Indeed, the coverage he supervised of the 1992 Los Angeles riots in which many Korean immigrant store owners were vandalized is an example of Lee's courageous journalism.

Within Asian American activist circles, K.W. Lee is best known and revered for his investigative journalism in the Chol Soo Lee case (unrelated to K.W.). Chol Soo Lee had been convicted of a San Francisco Chinatown murder in 1973. K.W. Lee wrote a series of articles in 1977 that questioned the conviction. His work led directly to a pan-Asian movement in many different cities that pushed for Chol Soo Lee's release.

The Chol Soo Lee case was the basis of a Hollywood movie, True Believer, starring James Woods playing defense attorney Tony Serra. But guess what? K.W. Lee's pivotal role in Chol Soo Lee's release was invisible to Hollywood.

K.W. Lee told the Charleston Gazette he enjoyed the film "as fiction ... but it was not a true picture. ... They have completely preempted the struggle of the Asians."

If Hollywood can't get it right--and when has it as far as authentic Asian and Asian American subjects?--his own community and supporters can.

Many of them did just that last week when they honored the great American journalist at the University of California at Davis. The occasion was the formal recognition of Lee's generous donation of 40 years worth of newspaper articles, other writings, ethnic publications, correspondence, rare original photographs, and oral histories that chronicle Korean American and Asian American experiences.

According to Stanley Sue, director of the Asian American studies program at UC Davis, the K.W. Lee collection will be kept at Shields Library.

Sue also said the Asian American studies program there is establishing the K.W. Lee Research Fund to support "significant research on Asian Americans." The goal is $100,000.

If you care to donate to the K.W. Lee Research Fund, send a check to: UC Davis Foundation/K.W. Lee Research Fund, attn: Gregory Garcia, Asian American Studies Program, 3102 Hart Hall, University of California, Davis, CA 95616. Your contributions are tax deductible.

Bill Wong is a San Francisco Bay Area-based writer who contributes regularly to AsianWeek.

©1998 AsianWeek. The information you receive on-line from AsianWeek is protected by the copyright laws of the United States. The copyright laws prohibit any copying, redistributing, retransmitting, or repurposing of any copyright protected material.