Mee Yeon Lee clutched her 4-year-old son's pudgy hand as she led the boy into the lobby of his father's office building. In her other hand, she held a small bag with his clothes.
Two men in dark suits waited. One, a chauffeur, pried the boy from her. Mee Yeon gave him the bag. Dong Koo screamed for his mother. He began to weep. He cried until he fell asleep in a limousine taking him to his father's mansion in Seoul.
"I felt as if my heart was being ripped apart," Mee Yeon said.
Then she went to a lawyer's office and collected a check for $68,000.
She had told Dong Koo that he would spend a few days with his father and return to her. It was a lie, the first of many to fall like downed branches in his path.
It was in the boy's best interest, she told herself. Mee Yeon believed her son would attend the finest schools. And in a society that prized bloodlines, he would belong to one of the richest, most powerful families in Korea.
It did not turn out that way. For Dong Koo, the parting was the beginning of a 22-year odyssey that took him from his father's mansion to an orphanage and later to Southern California, where he grew up in a Caucasian family, with an American name.
He was haunted by flashbacks and a sense of betrayal, a memory of having been wrested from his rightful place. He entered adulthood determined to learn the truth about his past.
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Dong Koo's father was Won Man Lee, a leading Korean industrialist, adoption records show. He founded Kolon Industries Inc., a nylon manufacturer that grew into a conglomerate with annual sales of more than $1 billion.
Won Man Lee met Mee Yeon in 1977, when she was a hostess at a yo-jung, the Korean equivalent of a Japanese geisha house. He was 72 and married. She was 18 -- slender with long, dark hair and a childlike vulnerability. She became his mistress. Despite their intimacy, she called him "The Chairman."
He wrote a poem about wanting to grow a rose for her. He told her she would age gracefully and always be loved. She would be his last woman, Mee Yeon remembered him saying.
He provided an apartment for her in an exclusive neighborhood of Seoul. Servants brought whatever she desired. In return, she was expected to wear hanbok, the traditional Korean costume, a bell-shaped dress with petticoats and bloomers. She was also expected to be available to the Chairman at his whim.
