In 1973, Chol Soo Lee, a young Korean immigrant, was arrested for the murder of Yip Yee Tak, a Chinese American man, in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Despite unreliable testimonies and a lack of evidence, Lee was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. That’s where the story begins in Free Chol Soo Lee, the latest documentary for PBS’s Independent Lens.
Chol Soo Lee’s story is not only an important legal case but a landmark moment in American history. In reading the comments from K.W. Lee and other people involved, they feel the case was forgotten and pushed to the side. K.W. mentioned that it was not taught in Asian-American studies classes at universities and colleges. Eugene, why do you think the case disappeared from the spotlight?
Ha: Back in 2014, Chol Soo passed away at age 62. I had actually attended the funeral to write an obituary for a magazine I was working for. Also, I was worried about K.W. Lee, the journalist in our film. He’s been my mentor for 30-plus years. He had become a father figure to Chol Soo and had never expected to outlive him. While at the funeral, I was struck by the emotion in the room, people expressing not just grief, but deep regret.
Yi: With stories like this, so much relies on the archive. With communities like ours, you just never know how much is out there because communities like ours are traditionally not included in the mainstream narratives. In the face of that exclusion and that marginalization, what’s even out there, in terms of material? That led to earlier parts of the journey to see what was out there because we didn’t know. But K.W.
I would say, too, that Eugene and I felt this nagging insecurity for so many years after we scripted the lines for Chol Soo Lee because we never had a chance to interview him ourselves. We felt like as much as we were immersing ourselves in everything he left behind, maybe we weren’t getting close enough. Once Sebastian, our narrator, joined our film, it felt like everything fell into place. Sebastian’s a formerly incarcerated Korean-American.
Yi: I guess a bit of both. We always knew that we had to tell this part of the story. There’s no way to tell the story without telling this full story of what happened once he was released and really examining what kind of relationship he had with the community, what we called in the edit his “surrogate family” of activists and people in the community who came forth. It’s also the reality of what happens when people are released from prison. That’s not where the story ends.
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