Korean American documentary ‘Free Chol Soo Lee’ wins Emmy

“Free Chol Soo Lee,” a 2022 US documentary about a Korean immigrant who was wrongfully convicted in 1973 of murdering a gang leader in San Francisco, won an award at the 45th News & Documentary Emmy Awards.

“Free Chol Soo Lee” won in the Outstanding Historical Documentary category during the Emmy Awards, which took place in New York on Thursday local time, according to the film's distributor, Connect Pictures. The four other contenders were: MSNBC’s “To End All War: Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb,” National Geographic’s, “JFK: One Day in America,” Netflix’s “World War II: From the Front Lines" and PBS' "America and the Taliban.”

“Free Chol Soo Lee,” directed by second-generation Korean American journalists Julie Ha and Eugene Yi, explores the complicated life of Chol Soo, who spends 10 years fighting for his life inside California’s prisons. The 21-year-old immigrant from Korea was sentenced to life in prison after being wrongfully convicted of killing Yip Yee Tak in San Francisco’s Chinatown. He was then sentenced to death for killing prisoner Morrison Needham, though Lee claimed self-defense.

Through unprecedented social justice advocacy by the Asian American community, Lee was granted a retrial and his conviction overturned, resulting in him being set free in 1983. He passed away at the age of 62 in 2014, from complications due to third-degree burns sustained during an arson attack.

The film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize in documentary at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, where the movie premiered before being broadcast on PBS.

In an interview with The Korea Herald in October 2023, director Yi said that the film tells the type of story in which all of us have to do some self-reflection -- not just about the history of racism and discrimination against minority groups in the US, but in Korean society as well.

“We think there’s just a powerful metaphor that can apply to any society -- where there are people that you might not have much in common with -- to overcome those differences and see what we share,” said director Yi.

“Free Chol Soo Lee,” which hit local theaters in October last year, is currently available on Amazon Prime Video.