Collection on Diamond Kimm

Collection — Box: 1

Identifier: 3003

Staff Only

Diamond Kimm, Korean Heritage Library subject files

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Scope and Contents

This small collection chiefly contains photocopies of documents related to the deportation case of Diamond Kimm, a Korean resident of Los Angeles, whose legal case denying a suspension of deportation after refusing to say whether he was a Communist in the 1950s went to the Supreme Court (Kimm v. Rosenberg, 363 U.S. 405). Documents include Kimm's CIA, FBI, and INS files, published court transcripts, clippings, and drafts of a letter from Edward L. Klein to the US Attorney General. These files were requested using the Freedom of Information Act by Kenneth Klein, the librarian of the Korean Heritage Library in the late 1980s as part of an effort to gather materials related to the Korean community of Los Angeles.

Dates

Creation: 1933-early 1960s

Conditions Governing Access

Advance notice required for access.

Rights Statement for Archival Description

Finding aid description and metadata are licensed under an Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

Conditions Governing Use

All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the East Asian Library at eal@usc.edu. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the East Asian Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained.

Biographical / Historical

Diamond Kimm was born circa 1901 in Long Chun, Northern Pengan Province, Korea, and came to the United States in 1928. He was a student at the University of Southern California and a temporary agent of the United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. In the 1940s-1950s, he published a bilingual newspaper, "Korean Independence" in Los Angeles. Kimm was deported to North Korea after appealing and losing his case before the Supreme Court in 1960 (Kimm v. Rosenberg, 363 U.S. 405).