Doc Corner: 'Free Chol Soo Lee'

By Glenn Dunks

Whether he liked it or not (most certainly the former), Chol Soo Lee was a pivotal figure in the history of the Korean people within the United States—as well as for the broader Asian community. His name came to symbolise many things, most significantly the inherent racism of anybody who wasn't white that was found within the justice system. His story was a tragic one, struggling as he did to overcome the lasting effects of what happened to him. But his plight as a man wrongly jailed for a crime he didn’t commit brought Asian and Asian-American people together and to the political forefront in ways that meant things wouldn’t be the same ever again.

In Free Chol Soo Lee, Julia Ha and Eugene Yi’s quietly damning documentary about his life inside (and perhaps even more importantly, outside of) prison, we get to reflect on a case that many may have forgotten or which they never knew about in the first place.

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