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In April 1906, a clergyman wrote to Hawaii’s acting governor with an urgent plea: grant clemency to five Korean plantation workers convicted of murdering a fellow countryman on the Big Island.  

It was Rev. John Wadman’s hope that “justice may be tempered with mercy.”

According to the reverend, three of the men were mere accomplices and their crime had been motivated by desperation. Furthermore, all five death row prisoners were extremely remorseful and deserved a reconsideration of their sentences. 

His actions helped save two of the men, but a month after he made his plea, the remaining three were hanged at the Oahu Prison.

The execution of Kang Yong Bok, Shim Miung Ok and Woo Miung Sook is the first known case in which Koreans were tried, convicted and executed for first-degree murder in the United States. 

More than a century later, an English professor from the University of Hawaii Hilo is carrying on Wadman’s mission. Seri Luangphinith, who has researched the case for seven years, believes the men received excessive punishments because of racial discrimination amid the first wave of Korean immigration on the Big Island.

“I think that the three men were over-prosecuted, as compared to Native Hawaiians or white people in prior cases,” Luangphinith says.

Now, she is seeking a posthumous pardon or formal apology from the Hawaii government for these three first-generation immigrants.

By setting the record straight on this landmark case in Korean American history, Luangphinith hopes to call attention to some of the earliest anti-Asian discrimination that she believes persists to this day in Hawaii. 

A Brutal Crime

The five Koreans originally sentenced to death were employed at Kukaiau Plantation on the Hamakua Coast of Hawaii island. The men had arrived in Hawaii less than a year prior and came from all over Korea, from the mountainous Gangwon Province to Jeju Island, the nation’s southernmost region.

In December 1905, a group of Korean workers on the sugar plantation discovered that someone had stolen money from them, along with their passports.

They believed the criminal was Pak Han No, a fellow Korean who, according to Wadman, had a reputation for being ”a notorious thief.”

Passports were regarded as an invaluable form of identification for these first-generation Korean immigrants, without which they could not return to their motherland and claim citizenship. They also served as pledges of security for the Koreans during financial transactions on the island. 

The men interrogated Pak, hoping to retrieve their valuables. According to newspaper reports from the time, Pak confessed to his crime after some beating, disclosing that he had buried the stolen items in a Japanese cemetery. The men then made Pak dig the place up but they did not find the hidden valuables.

Newspaper accounts vary as to how many men confronted Pak. Many had been drinking. They beat and tortured the suspected thief, in what would later be called by newspapers “the most atrocious murder that has ever been done in this territory.”

Originally, seven Korean men were charged with first-degree murder. Woo, who was ultimately hanged for this crime, was omitted from the initial list of defendants. 

The following year in March, five men, including Woo, were convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death. One man, Han Sang Won, was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years of hard labor. 

That was when Wadman stepped in, arguing that the sentences were far too harsh for men who were ignorant of the laws of Hawaii. His plea caught the attention of lawyers Lorrin Thurston and William Kinney, who encouraged the Honolulu Social Science Association to press the acting governor to reconsider the case in May. 

There was no Korean ambassador in Hawaii and the men had little recourse. Without action by the association, it appeared the five men would be “executed without further investigation,” the group said in a statement. 

The association eventually recommended that death sentences be commuted for two of the death row convicts, shedding light on the fact that the original trial did not factor in differences in the degrees of involvement for the convicted men. 

The acting governor agreed to change Chang Chee Yuel and Kim Yong Yee’s sentences from death to hard labor. The remaining three were hanged the same month. Wadman attended the execution, offering prayers as the three inmates faced death. 

Untold History

Luangphinith, who was born and raised in Hawaii, came across articles about the trial in 2017 while looking for stories about Koreans on Hawaii island.

She has focused her work on Koreans on the Big Island since 2012, when she discovered the immense interest in learning Korean language and culture among her students.

In addition to her investigation of this case, Luangphinith has been tracking down and deciphering information written on Korean gravestones to research the history of first-generation Korean immigrants on the island.

She decided to concentrate on the Big Island because much of the previous research on Korean ancestry in Hawaii was centered in Honolulu. Through her early research, she discovered that the characteristics of Koreans who gravitated toward Hilo were very different from those of the immigrants who relocated to the Hawaii capital.

Luangphinith was deeply bothered by the story she read about the 1906 case, which described how hysterical one of the men was on the night before his execution. 

“It struck me that he possibly didn’t quite know what was going on,” Luangphinith said. “He may not necessarily have been told a lot of what had been going on both during their arrest and under trial.”

She believes the case deserves a second look considering the lack of legal and social representation given to the men.

Japan had taken control of Korea’s diplomatic rights in 1905. The inability of the Korean government to establish an independent consular presence in Hawaii may have accounted for the lack of representation on their behalf, she said.

She also found evidence that the personal biases of the men’s court-appointed defense attorney could have played a part in an unjust ruling against the Koreans. She clipped an excerpt from The Hawaiian Star, which described the attorney Carl Smith’s letter to the acting governor:

“Smith takes the position that his clients ought to be hanged … He thinks the evidence shows their clear guilt and he has not a word to say in their defense.”

She pointed out that white defendants involved in similar cases from the same time period received much weaker punishments.

An example, she said, is the case of Katsu Goto, a Japanese immigrant who was lynched in 1889. The four men responsible for Goto’s death, all of whom were white, were sentenced to manslaughter and received hard labor punishments.

Luangphinith says anti-Asian sentiments were rampant among plantation managers. One plantation manager quoted in a newspaper article said the hangings would let the people know “who was in control here.”

“That one quote, that is the one that really got me very angry,” Luangphinith said. 

Another plantation manager said he feared that if the laws were not upheld, “soon the Orientals will pre-dominate.”

Overdue Justice

While there is no questioning that the three men committed a terrible crime, Luangphinith, Wadman and others who fought for a reconsideration of the court order at the time all argue that the issue lies with whether the distressed men committed premeditated murder, or something more akin to manslaughter — a crime that would have resulted in a more lenient sentence and spared the three from execution.

For Luangphinith, shining a light on this Korean American history is important for getting people to rethink success stories of immigration and remember that many of the first-generation East Asian immigrants started their lives in America in the most vulnerable places as “cheap labor.”

“It’s interesting because the Koreans really did think of the United States as being right, the beacon of democracy,” Luangphinith said. “But democracy didn’t work necessarily for the poor. And we have had the same problems already — such horrible anti-immigration rhetoric against Latin America or China —and it’s like we haven’t learned from history. That’s what I really want people to take away from this.”

To help get what she sees as overdue justice for the men, Luangphinith has sought support and guidance from a variety of organizations. But unlike efforts to exonerate innocent people, finding anyone willing to take on a case that involves three convicted murderers from more than a century ago has proved to be particularly challenging. 

“I tried approaching the Innocence Project, a group that takes a look at people who were wrongfully convicted,” Luangphinith said. The problem in this case, she said, is that the men committed the crime.

Luangphinith also contacted the Hawaii Attorney General’s Office for assistance in January and is still awaiting a response.

She is trying to find if there are any living descendants of the Koreans involved in the case. So far, she discovered that Chang, whose sentence was reduced from execution to 15 years of hard labor, had a younger brother who also came to Hawaii. Han, the plantation worker who was sentenced to 25 years of hard labor in the original trial, had two daughters and a wife.

“I’m assuming they survived long after this case,” Luangphinith said. “So if any of their descendants are still around, then I would like for them to be able to make the case as well for their families.”

Nonetheless, legal experts like Ken Lawson, who co-directs the Hawaii Innocence Project, appreciate her endeavors to amend a flawed piece of history closely intertwined with racial injustice.

“The justice system back in the early 1900s failed these individuals, and you can still see it going on today,” Lawson said. “You still have the number of Native Hawaiians and minorities incarcerated in Hawaii at a higher rate than the white population, period. And the sentences are harsher.”

Luangphinith plans to continue with her research and push for an official apology. 

“They didn’t really care about providing human rights to the poor laborers,” Luangphinith said. “In spite of all the protections we may have had in the United States at the time, you had three men who paid the ultimate price.”