J.K. Yoo, K.W. Lee and Steve Chanecka.

The coming and going of ethnic newspapers are hardly noteworthy events in the daily grind of the news business. At times, however, there are publications that are ahead of their time and more than worthy of discussion.

Koreatown Weekly is one such newspaper. In 1979, it was spawned in the midst of an important event in Asian American history, by a visionary who was years ahead of his time. Unfortunately, like many ethnic newspapers, Koreatown breathed a short life.

Many Asian American journalists consider K.W. Lee to be the godfather of Asian American journalism. He has had his share of hard knocks, paid his dues in the mainstream press, and has paved the way for many young reporters trying to break into the profession.

In his long career as a print journalist, he has brought many fascinating stories to light–from highlighting the plight of the underdogs of American society, to exposing political graft. In the late seventies, Lee’s investigative reporting sparked the first national pan-Asian movement, which was a fight for the freedom of a wrongly convicted Korean American immigrant–Chol Soo Lee–on death row for a murder he did not commit.

The Chol Soo Lee movement sprung up among the emerging Korean immigrant communities across the country after K.W. Lee broke the story of Chol Soo’s plight in the Sacramento Union. It became clear to the veteran newsman than Korean Americans were sorely lacking a voice with which to broadcast the gross miscarriage of justice.

The nationwide, grass roots effort to free Chol Soo inspired K.W. Lee. A small congregation of Korean immigrants responded to appeals for defense funds from a core group of volunteers led by then-law school graduate J.K. Yoo, school teacher Grace Kim and her husband, Dr. Luke Kim. Together they collected more than $100,000 in five years of holding bake sales, dinners, concerts and conducting door-to-door campaigns. “It was amazing! None of this could have been done without K.W. Lee,” said Randy Hagihara, a former Koreatown staff member who is currently an editor with the Los Angeles Times.

Also, Lee said he drew inspiration from the numbers of third generation Chinese and Japanese Americans who still had a strong desire to discover their roots and fight for a cause that would no doubt affect them as Asian Americans. They were on the forefront of the movement.

Invigorated by the fighting spirit of the Chol Soo Lee movement, Lee felt he had to try and create a voice for the thousands of Korean American immigrants struggling for survival in the Koreatowns of America. He teamed up with another veteran reporter, Steve Chanecka, and Hagihara, who is a third generation Japanese American, to publish a Korean American English language weekly newspaper.

They named the newspaper “Koreatown,” and hoped it would give a voice to the voiceless Koreans and Korean Americans entrenched in the “subterranean enclaves” across the nation, said Lee. The front cover of the September 1979 Festival Issue symbolized Lee’s vision–Koreatowns across America coming together as one voice.

Koreatown had three goals, wrote K.W. Lee in the Festival Issue. First of all, Koreatown would tell the “remarkable saga of a hardy and brave people from the Land of the Morning Calm.” It would also “function as a mirror and forum for self-discovery and identity in a new land.”

Finally, Koreatown was to be a bridge between Korean Americans and their motherland and heritage. According to Lee, “This bridge-building role is crucial to the long-range survival of the Korean Americans as a cohesive people.”

Koreatown’s base of operations was the second floor of a rented house in a rough neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles. Besides the downstairs tenants, the Koreatown staff shared the house with rodents and other vermin.

It was a hard road for Koreatown–a road that Lee calls “I-5 Journalism.” The week started on Wednesday, when the Koreatown trio would round up all copy and advertisements. That night, one of them would drive 400 miles to Sacramento along Interstate 5 in the Koreatown company Pinto.

K.W. Lee somewhere on Interstate 5.

On Thursday, the paper would be edited and laid out using equipment at the Sacramento Union (with the blessing of the Union’s President/General Manager Bill Hofer). There, it would also be pasted up and then taken 20 miles away to be printed.

Every Friday morning, 20,000 copies of Koreatown were hot off the press. The “I-5 Journalism” effort boasted about 3,000 subscribers nationwide, comprised of college educated recent immigrants from Korea, Korean American college graduates, second generation Korean Americans, former servicemen who had been stationed in Korea, and American institutions interested in Korea. Their copies were dropped off at the main bulk mail post office in Sacramento, while the remaining 17,000 or so copies were packed into the Pinto and taken to Los Angeles, a 400-mile return trip.

Despite the long, lonely drives and endless nights of work, Lee looks back on those days with affection. Likewise, Hagihara describes his time working for Koreatown as “the most fun time I’ve ever had in journalism.”

Without losing their momentum, the Koreatown trio hashed out Koreatown week after week, never missing a deadline. They were later joined by staff writers Sophia Kim and Kapson Lee, Seattle correspondent Kun Hong Park, as well as volunteer columnist K. Connie Kang, who is now a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and author of the recently published book, “Home was the Land of the Morning Calm.”

Hagihara describes Koreatown as the cutting edge of ethnic journalism. “It presented a perspective that readers could not get from the mainstream press,” he said. Unfortunately, the publication was far too ahead of its time, and solid financial support for the paper was nowhere in the horizon.

The short life of Koreatown was forecasted during the Koreatown Festival Parade on September 23, 1979, where the Festival Issue was distributed to those who participated in the festivities. “Most of the Koreans used their copy of Koreatown as a seat cushion during the parade,” Lee said. “Maybe one out of ten people put their copy in their pocket if they had a second generation kid at home, but most of the copies ended up as piles of trash along Olympic Boulevard.”

Despite this gloomy forecast, Koreatown had a mission. The injustice heaped upon young Chol Soo Lee was the fuel that kept the fire of Koreatown burning–each issue had a weekly update on Chol Soo’s plight. And there were plenty of other hidden stories around Korean America that were ready to be told.

Most Koreans, who were either unwilling or unable to read the English language paper, did not embrace the publication. “The idea of an English language newspaper was completely new to Koreans at that time,” said Park, whom Lee describes as his “eyes and ears in Washington State.” “K.W. Lee was a visionary with an idea that was ahead of his time.”

According to Park, many first generation Korean Americans “paid a lot of lip service, but when it came down to actually supporting Koreatown as a publication, there was no interest.” Park attributes this apathy to his generation’s preference for reading Korean language newspapers. Even though they were relatively fluent in English, he said, they still preferred to read in their native language.

Although Koreatown had a healthy number of subscriptions, support from advertisers was not commensurate with reader support. Korean business owners were leery of advertising in an English language publication, and there was little interest from mainstream advertisers.

After a grueling struggle to keep the paper alive, Koreatown folded in 1982. “Our supporters wrote and called, begging us to keep the paper alive,” said Lee. “But I was simply exhausted. I could have kept it going, but I was out of gas.”

Lee, who is now 67 years old, knows a voice for Korean Americans is not a luxury, but a matter of survival. Especially in “subterranean ghettos” like Koreatown Los Angeles, where the effects of the 1992 riots are still felt by the Korean American community there. But Lee says it is now in the hands of second generation Korean Americans, whom he calls “the last gasoline stop” for his generation.

“You are… the last window through which a millennium of Korean experience will be passed through,” he once said in an interview with Do Kim, of the Korean Youth and Community Center in Los Angeles. “That’s why you have an added responsibility.”

Note: I wrote this article, which was originally published in the December 30, 1996 edition of Northwwest Asian Weekly. I’ve edited it, and posted it here as a tribute to our (the old Korea Times English Edition) chief, Mr. K.W. Lee. The above photos did not appear with this article when it was published.