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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Wendy Ide

Free Chol Soo Lee review – wrenchingly sad chronicle of injustice in 70s San Francisco

Chol Soo Lee.
Chol Soo Lee. Photograph: San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Images

It was a notorious miscarriage of justice: a 20-year-old Korean immigrant, Chol Soo Lee, was found guilty of a Chinatown murder in San Francisco in 1973. But the witnesses were all white and, it became clear, they struggled to tell Asian people apart. Lee became a cause celebre, unifying the Korean and broader Asian communities; his suffering became emblematic of the struggle of Asian people in the US. Finally, he was released.

But, as this impressive and wrenchingly sad documentary explains, that was not the end of the story. Ten years in the penitentiary system for a crime he didn’t commit cost Lee, who died in 2014, more than just a decade of freedom.

Watch a trailer for Free Chol Soo Lee.
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