The Korea Society

March 27, 2024 - In her intimate and touching debut, Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History, journalist Margaret Juhae Lee uncovers her family’s lost history that had been buried in the darkness of Korea’s colonial decades. Growing up in Houston, Margaret Juhae Lee was never told about her grandfather, Lee Chul Ha. His memory was submerged in 1936 Korea, when Lee Chul Ha died a disgraced communist rebel, leaving Margaret's grandmother widowed with their two young sons. To his surviving family Lee Chul Ha was a criminal. As an act of unearthing her own identity, Margaret needed to understand why. Margaret began investigating the truth of her grandfather’s story. After many trips to Korea, she located her grandfather’s interrogation records, and began a series of long-form interviews with her grandmother. Through her research, Margaret discovered an extraordinary young man, Lee Chul Ha – a student revolutionary imprisoned in 1929 for protesting the Japanese government’s colonization of Korea. Lee Chul Ha was