A Journey of Love : Black Man and the Korean Boy He Raised Are Invited to Seoul

Leon T. Graves, whose story of rearing an abandoned Korean child has touched countless hearts across the country, on Thursday left for South Korea with the boy on a 10-day trip sponsored by nonprofit groups in Seoul whose members wanted to thank the African American for what he has done.

“We are looking forward to the trip,” said Graves, 68, as he prepared for his departure. “I’m a little nervous about what I’m going to say.” He is scheduled to deliver a sermon Sunday at the Namson Presbyterian Church.

His message will be about love, he said, about how “we can come together (regardless of race, ethnicity and color) if we just try.”

Graves, who was wounded during the Korean War, also said he has been praying and dreaming that South and North Korea will be united within five years.

For nearly 13 years, Graves, 68, has cared for Roy, whom he found crying and near death as an infant, abandoned by his mother in an apartment building at the edge of Los Angeles’ Koreatown.

Calling Roy “God’s gift to me,” Graves hired a Korean woman to care for the baby while he was at work. Graves remained close to Koreatown because he wanted the boy to acquire a Korean identity. He has learned to cook Korean food, shops in Korean grocery stores and attends a Korean church.

Since the story about the pair’s life together appeared in The Times on Father’s Day, they have been inundated with telephone calls, requests for interviews from Connie Chung and other television personalities and offers of movies and TV series. Universal Studios and Disneyland invited Roy and his friends to visit the theme parks.

Roy and Graves have also received gifts and cash donations. A builder, who wants to remain anonymous, presented a TV and a video camera.

Graves is pleased with the outpouring, but is not letting his renown go to his head.

Despite offers from big-name production companies, Graves chose a young Korean American woman with “no track record (or) reputation” to produce a movie of their story because, he said, “I want to return the story back to the (Korean) community.”

“He wanted to maintain the integrity of their story,” said Anna Shon, who was consulted on the decision. She and her husband, Young Joon Shon, own a golf shop and driving range where Graves works in a variety of jobs. “Leon felt that a Korean American woman would be more sensitive.”

At Graves’ insistence, Anna Shon is accompanying him and Roy on the trip. “Timing couldn’t be worse for me because my boys (ages 6 and 8) are in school, but Leon says he won’t go without me,” she said. So, she is taking her sons with her because her husband will be running the shop by himself.

The first stop on their itinerary is a tailor’s shop.

“They want to have a suit made for Leon,” said Shon, who has been talking with people from the Namson Presbyterian Church and the Nak-Do Children’s Support Assn., a women’s group that helps disadvantaged children.

After that, they will get a tour of Seoul and attend church services at Namson. On Sunday, Roy will also celebrate his 13th birthday. After taking in cultural sights in Seoul and outside the South Korean capital, the Graves party will fly to Cheju Island, “the Hawaii of Korea,” to relax. They will return to Los Angeles on July 30.

Earlier this week, Graves, who said he has not shopped for clothing in years, bought two pairs of wrinkle-free pants and a couple of short-sleeve shirts for himself, and four pairs of shorts and tops for Roy. For once, Graves could afford to buy a few things. He received $3,000 a week ago from the producer who bought the TV and movie rights to his story.

Fate brought Leon Graves and Roy Chung together in 1981. Graves was working at a wholesale fish market and lived in a four-story building occupied mostly by blacks and Koreans.

One afternoon, a neighbor told him that she and her husband had not been able to sleep for nights because of a crying baby next door.

When he opened the door to the room the cries were coming from, he saw an infant on the floor, wailing. “I saw that the baby needed immediate attention,” Graves recalled.

Next to the baby was a birth certificate naming him Roy Dae Yon Chung. Graves took the baby to Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles. Doctors there said the infant would not have survived another three hours.

Two weeks later, Graves, who was 55 and single, picked up the baby from the hospital, and the two have been inseparable ever since.

Graves is his legal guardian, but Roy said he considers Graves “my father.”

And Graves said he lives for Roy.