Episode notes
Tae Yeon Lee’s family ties to the Rooftop Koreans of the 1992 LA Riots led him to direct his creative efforts into revisiting the story from a modern day lens. And it made for a different kind of episode. We delved into growing up as the child of Korean immigrants and the stories Lee’s own family shared from living in LA during the riots. But we spent most of our time digging deep into the events that set the stage for the riots to kick off, from Rodney King, to the interracial tensions in minority communities, to the provocative narratives the media was portraying, and the commonly touted assignment of blame placed on Ice Cube in reference to his hit song, Black Korea. Later on, we covered what it was like creating his graphic novel, Return of the Rooftop Koreans, from the perspectives of research, writing, and collaborating with his illustrator ...