Over 60 people lost their lives during the 1992 Los Angeles riots which destroyed LA’s Koreatown.

Kyung Lah, senior national correspondent for CNN, attended the University while the Rodney King riots took place. Her father owned a Korean grocery store in Chicago.

“That fueled my desire to be a journalist,” Lah said. “Seeing that breakdown, the failure to protect those Korean grocers, to not understand the pain of the Black community and to let it spiral out of control because of a police encounter.”

“I wanted to give a voice to all of it,” Lah said. “To my parents, who don’t speak English well, to people who are politically disenfranchised and (to) people of color.”

On the 25th anniversary of the Rodney King riots, Lah published an article in CNN retelling the stories of those who survived and the violence they faced. She also described the riots’ effects on today’s Korean Americans.

Six years later, the Illini Media Company inducted her into its hall of fame.

When Lah heard the news, she said she felt like it was a joke.

“I just feel like I’m a working journalist,” Lah said. “It feels like something that happens to other people, not necessarily me, because I’ve always just been a regular reporter.”

Lah graduated from the University in 1993 with a Bachelor of Science in journalism. She became a staff writer for The Daily Illini as a freshman and became an opinions columnist as a junior.

“Once you join the ranks of all the journalists who are just trying to make it, (the degree) almost becomes irrelevant,” Lah said.

Lah said she did not come from a lot of money, which made unpaid internships a struggle. However, she gained experience working in a newsroom and expanded her list of contacts in the process.

After college, Lah became a desk assistant for WBBM-TV in Chicago. She went on to work for CBS, ABC and CNN. Her work has led her to Japan, China, Poland and cities across the U.S.

“The most valuable thing (I’ve encountered abroad) is that people really are the same,” Lah said. “(We all) want to live a safe, happy life.”

However, Lah said the world feels “so tumultuous” right now. She has covered mass shootings, antisemitism and natural disasters killing tens of thousands of people.

Even though she has reported on so many tragedies, Lah said the most heartbreaking story she covered was the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

“The numbers in natural disasters are very big and you would think that those are the ones that stay with you,” Lah said. “But you can’t be mad at God all the time. Here, there was a villain, and there’s a political answer and a human answer in America that we still cannot seem to solve. The disappointment of watching the American political process fail children is something that will never leave me.”

Lah said journalists should cut through disinformation and tell the truth, becoming a source of information that everyone can agree on.

However, she said embodying that role became difficult when Keri Lake, 2022 Republican nominee for Arizona governor, called her out by name at a political rally.

“I didn’t become a journalist to be the story,” Lah said. “I became a journalist to tell the stories of America.”

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