K.W. Lee, ‘godfather of Asian American journalism,’ dies at 96

A trailblazing figure known as the “godfather of Asian American journalism” has passed away.

Kyung Won “K.W.” Lee died on March 8 in Sacramento at the age of 96, surrounded by his family.

Born in 1928 in Kaesong, now in North Korea, Lee immigrated to the United States in 1950 and attended West Virginia University and the University of Illinois. He became the first Asian immigrant hired by a mainstream daily newspaper, working at the Kingsport Times-News in Tennessee and later the Charleston Gazette in West Virginia.

After covering race, poverty, corruption and civil rights, Lee moved to Sacramento in the 1970s. He became the chief investigative reporter for The Sacramento Union and developed a reputation for digging into bureaucracy and government.

Lee was also known for giving voice and coverage to Asian American communities, founding and editing several Korean-American newspapers including Koreatown Weekly and the Korea Times English Edition.

Most notably, he tackled the story of Chol Soo Lee. A Korean American immigrant, Lee was wrongly convicted in 1973 of murdering a Chinatown gang leader in San Francisco and sentenced to life in prison. K.W. Lee wrote over 100 articles about the case which, along with an Asian-American social justice movement, eventually resulted in Chol Soo Lee’s acquittal and release.

Lee was the inaugural recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Asian American Journalists Association. He also helped found the K.W. Lee Center for Leadership in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Koreatown to help young Korean Americans become future leaders.

Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez recently spoke with three of Lee’s former colleagues about his life and legacy.

Lonnie Wong is a retired journalist for FOX40 and the past president of the Sacramento Chapter of AAJA, of which Lee was a founding member.

CalMatters political columnist Dan Walters and journalist Steve Chanecka worked with Lee at The Sacramento Union in the 1970s. Chanecka also co-founded Koreatown Weekly with Lee and Randy Higihara in 1979.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

How did you meet K.W. Lee, and what stuck out to you about him?

Walters: It was in 1973 or ‘74… I was going to start covering politics in California. I teamed up with Lee. I don't know how - he asked for me or I asked for him, or somebody ordered us together. We wound up teaming up to do a series of articles about how the Legislature spent its operational money on offices and all sorts of expenses.

Lee was like a ferret. He just dug and dug, and was very inventive about figuring out ways to get information that supposedly was not available. He was a one-man wrecking ball, so to speak, as a journalist.

Wong: When the Sacramento chapter first formed in 1985 or so, basically there were a lot of Asian American journalists with different media outlets that really didn't cross paths. 

We all kind of went through the same things in terms of dealing with the editors and owners… we had a lot of stuff in common. And K.W. was at one of our first meetings. He was there as probably one of the senior journalists at that time, had a lot of experience and made a big impact on us.

As people knew him… he was loud, boisterous, profane, and something you wouldn't expect normally from any Asian American, let alone [an] Asian American journalist.

Chanecka: I was at The Sacramento Union at the time, I joined in 1977. After a couple of days there, I was at my desk and a couple of cubicles behind me was Lee. He had his own place and I heard him yelling on the phone, “hey what are you doing?” And then after about 30 minutes he says, “and whom am I speaking to?!” That kind of piqued my interest right there. We became friends at the newsroom, and I liked the fact that he was a little bit crazy.

Lee was a well-regarded investigative journalist. What do you remember about his work?

Wong:  I remember his series of articles on Bill Honig, who was the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Very progressive, very controversial, but because of that very well-known and wielded a lot of clout. [Lee] did a series of stories on how his wife had a consulting business, and Bill Honig sort of funnelled money toward her nonprofit.

I was wondering, where is he getting this stuff? He would just dig and dig and dig. Eventually a few years later, Bill Honig was indicted and convicted, and basically had to resign from office.

Here's a journalist almost single-handedly writing stories… uncovering the nuances of this conflict of interest, and eventually getting the attention of prosecutors and taking down a statewide elected official.

Walters: He'd already had a couple of big game stories before I moved out here. He exposed how the Legislature was kind of padding its pensions at one time, he also did a piece about how an assemblywoman was using the state’s telephone to make long-distance calls all over the world to make reservations for her travel agency clients. The Legislature clamped down even more on its information after he did that one… he was just a bulldog.

I think what makes us all tick… particularly somebody who is willing to make the investment of time and brain cells into investigative journalism, is you’re just curious. You just keep peeling back the layers like an onion… that was very, very definitely K.W. Lee. We've all had K.W. Lee experiences in his kind of… profane encouragement, I guess you'd say. But he was definitely a trip to be around. 

Steve, you co-founded Koreatown Weekly with Lee. How and why did this newspaper get started?

Chanecka: In 1979 [Lee] approached me. He was thinking about starting a newspaper in Los Angeles because he wanted to pursue the Chol Soo Lee case on his own. The Union was beginning to crack down on him - he was spending so much time in the Bay Area, spending a lot of money, and he felt they would not support him in the future. That’s the reason why he started Koreatown Weekly.

That's where Koreans were at that time. They were coming over, it was a very large community and very immigrant. He felt that an English voice was necessary for the community, to represent them among the normal politicians. 

I did it because I grew up in an immigrant family from Eastern Europe, so I understood that experience… how that first wave thinks and how they had struggles.

In a recent piece for the LA Times you wrote, “I’ve known two important people in my life. K.W. Lee was one.”  How are you reflecting on your relationship with him, professionally and personally?

Chanecka: I stayed close to him throughout the years. Spent many, many hours at his home because we were working on a book project. The depth of his knowledge about culture and about the world, he really gave me a lot of information about how he grew up.

When he first came here in 1950, he became a student at West Virginia University and he was on the newspaper there. He was invited to a local gathering of journalists where he was just amazed - there were 200 journalists there and he stood out because he was the only Asian.

He finally had to ask a question. “This freedom of the press about which you speak… you talk so much about how you must keep it. What I would like to know is how do you go about getting it?” He was from Korea, there was no free press.

His original idea was to go back to Korea and start an English paper there, but the Korean War and other things came in. He actually lost his passport because he wrote a column about [South Korean President] Syngman Rhee… Rhee’s wife did not like that. She called the San Francisco consulate and said, "pull his passport, he's not coming back." But he just kept going.

Lee faced significant barriers throughout his life. Lonnie, when you speak with Asian American journalists today and look at AAJA as an organization, what have Lee’s lasting contributions been?

Wong: He got the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Asian American Journalist Association for good reason. I go around to conventions every year, and I always meet a lot of young Asian American journalists. A lot of their complaints are working in markets or areas where there are no Asian Americans. No support group, not even a community that can help support their endeavors. 

You think about K. W. Lee, who started out working in Tennessee and West Virginia. For those who don't know, he spoke with a thick accent which belies his master of the English language in the written word. So to work in that environment and have people mistake him as being Chinese, it’s amazing that he would even stick in that profession.

I think when he came to California [and wrote] the Chol Soo Lee articles, he really found his voice. He found, I guess, a story that could encapsulate what a lot of immigrants have felt in terms of the power structure, the police, the DAs, even civic government in which immigrant communities are marginalized. When he found that voice he just ran with it. I think people recognize that, young journalists recognize that. 

Dan, in your recent remembrance column you said K.W. Lee deserves to be included in the California Hall of Fame. What goes into making that happen?

Walters: Somebody has to petition the governor. I think that K.W. has support. Someone needs to push that hard.

Is it a Hall of Fame or is it a Hall of Achievement? If it's just fame then you put a bunch of movie stars in there. But if it's achievement then he absolutely belongs there. He was unique, pioneering, a person who has had a terrific impact on political stuff in California. I hope some governor, if not this one, will see the rightness of that and do it.

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