Ebook: Freedom without Justice: The Prison Memoirs of Chol Soo Lee

Freedom without Justice is a compelling story of ex-inmate Chol Soo Lee’s wrongful incarceration and the actions he took to survive years in prison, while political activists fought to win his retrial and freedom. It is at once a captivating chronicle of his life, a trenchant description of how prisons produce the very behaviors they purport to punish and prevent, and a poignant remembrance of an important chapter in Asian American history following the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act.

At the age of twelve, Chol Soo immigrated to the United States from South Korea to reunite with his mother, who had arrived earlier as a military bride. In less than a decade, Chol Soo finds himself labeled as a violent criminal, convicted, and incarcerated for murder. His case quickly became a rallying point for an extraordinary pan–Asian American movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s, bringing together foreign- and American-born Asians in a common cause of justice and freedom. Organized under a national network of the Chol Soo Lee Defense Committee, supporters included student activists, elderly immigrants, small business owners, white-collar professionals, social workers, lawyers, religious and legal organizations, and left-wing groups nationwide. The united front was a remarkable coalition of people from a broad spectrum of social backgrounds that transcended ethnicity, class, political ideology, religion, generation, and language. This diverse grassroots social movement organized a six-year “Free Chol Soo Lee!” campaign that led to Lee’s historic release from San Quentin’s Death Row in 1983.

Freedom without Justice provides a rare and valuable glimpse into a pivotal moment when the Asian American movement spearheaded one of its first major political campaigns. While the case inspired newspaper headlines, TV specials, and even a Hollywood movie, until now the full story has never been told in Chol Soo Lee’s own voice. As a chronicle of the life of a youth at risk, during a time when Asian American inmates were scarce, and Korean Americans even scarcer, his story draws readers into a variety of social worlds—war-torn Korea, the streets of San Francisco, the criminal justice system, prison gang politics, and death row.