K.W.
At 82-years-old, K.W. Lee is considered the “Godfather of Asian American journalism.” He immigrated to the U.S. in 1950 on a student visa and became the first Asian immigrant to be hired by a mainstream news daily and has reported for the Kingsport Times and News in Tennessee, the Charleston Gazette in West Virginia and the Sacramento Union. He has covered stories ranging from the plight of coal miners in the Appalachians to the civil rights movement in the Jim Crow South to the unjust incarceration of Chol Soo Lee. K.W. founded the Korea Times English Edition and continues to work and lecture across the country. On the eve of Sunday’s 20th Anniversary of the L.A. riots, K.W. looks back.
With the 20th anniversary of the April 29, 1992 LA Riots just around the corner, it’s déjà vu time again.
On sobering reflection, I dare say that our Sa-I-Gu (Korean for 4-2-9) didn’t explode on that date.
Long before the greatest urban upheaval in modern America, hardy Korean mom and pop storekeepers, along with their long-suffering and stoic Latino and Black neighbors, had been living dangerously every waking hour, seven days a week, all year round in the seething inner-cities.
Only God knows how many of these bedraggled newcomers from Korea — some call them wannabe Kamikazes —have been mugged, robbed, maimed or slain in their dogged pursuit of an elusive dream in America’s own killing fields.
