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Posted Apr. 18, 2007, 11:29 a.m. ET
To Be a Korean-American After the Virginia Tech Nightmare
By Carol Lee
By yesterday morning the whole world knew the guy behind the beyond-tragic shootings at Virginia Tech. Every headline read that the killer was "a 23-year-old student from South Korea." And then it was cemented forever that he was a loner. While it is legally correct that Cho Seung-Hui was a Korean native, a resident alien in the U.S. and a South Korean immigrant (all descriptions used by the media), many of the articles made it out as though he had just come off the boat last week -- when in fact he was a mere 8-year-old when his family emigrated to the U.S. None of these facts excuse the monstrosity of his murderous act -- though beyond his green card status, he was a seriously disturbed social-outcast.
I feel like the media is not owning up to the fact that he was more or less a common law American. They're emphasizing his foreignness in order to further demonize a murderer who is already dead. And for what purpose? To perpetuate a racial backlash and deepen the remorse and paranoia that already exist among the Korean-American community? (nytimes.com has been flooded with comments by Koreans all over the world expressing apologies and regrets.)
Like so many, I've been freaked out, haunted and saddened by the nightmare at Virginia Tech. I've been following the news closely since the moment I first heard it on jetBlue en route from North Carolina (it's a weird thing to hear the biggest breaking news while on an airplane -- it had never happened to me before.) Later that night back in New York, my obsession with following the news grew even more when I found out that the suspect was an Asian male. After hitting many global news sites, I came across this unsettling photo (above) in the UK's Daily Mail of an Asian man on the VT campus being handcuffed. I was confused because I had thought that the gunman had killed himself after the rampage. I hope nothing happened to this guy. I see him and I see the faces of my own friends, cousins and brother. And I hope that we don't lose sight of the real issues at hand here.
Comments
I was thinking about you this morning when I was getting ready for work, wondering how it felt to be Korean and to be seeing all of the news headlines of the past few days...
Posted at 12:11 p.m. ET on Apr 18, 2007 by Christine Navin
thanks for the article. i thought it was tasteful and heart-felt. i agree with what you say--he is/was product of our culture. so i also agree that the media is unnecessarily emphasizing his foreignness. while most U.S. media emphasize his being south korean, i saw that on bbc he was finally described as an asian-american.
while this event is really sad and tragic, i get the sense that koreans in general are being overly affected and apologetic about this incident. lets face it, it could have been anybody. in some ways, i'm not
surprised that something like this happened and it happened to be an asian. there has been so much repression and depression, stuff going under the radar, among asian american community in general for so long, i think. it's really sad that it takes such disturbing tragedy to wake us up. in an ironic way, this incident makes us asians all more american. whether the rest of America will feel that way remains to be seen.
Posted at 2:40 p.m. ET on Apr 18, 2007 by sooyoung
i agree with the whole idea that media has been playing up his asian and korean identity in a way that inavertedly perpetuates the stereotype of the loner "geeky" foreign asian. times like these, we should be reminded that racial stereotypes further alienates groups when we should all be looking out for one another instead, just like post-9/11.
Posted at 4:37 p.m. ET on Apr 18, 2007 by a Lee
I dont think the issue should be race...its the human psyche and what the world does to it not to mention prescription drugs,class differences as well as just everyones unique perspective of the world which in some eyes just makes them blow up one day.They ask why this happened ...? I ask why this dOes not happn more .....and it will continue to happen as time goes by and the ways in which our surrounding world is manipulated or manipulates us into thinking we have to hae this standard IMAGE of living .........obviously some people feel very left out and anger sets in because they cannot be the commercial which makes them percieve reality to be.It was all in his video ranting about upper class kids getting everything or being bored with what they had ....a very desperate person looking to fit into a false reality he took all to real.
Posted at 1:42 a.m. ET on Apr 19, 2007 by randy focazio
It could have been an Indian from Middle East and would have been labeled a terrorist or anyone other race.
Sorry he was a south Korean.
But indeed, he was a disturbed American who bought guns in America by American Laws. Go Bloomberg, speak up against guns!
And that is campus life for you. Either join a group or be lonely and be labeled an outcast.
Wow! I couldn't beleive the picture where the officer had the Asian man on the ground. But I suppose that everyone was a suspect until the death of the sole gunman was confirm by the police.
Now NBC is flashing pictures of Cho Seung-Hui as if something can be done to change what happened. Ok, he did mailed a package to them but it is too late now to psycoanalyized the gunman's behavior.
It would have happened anyway.
Posted at 1:11 p.m. ET on Apr 19, 2007 by Anonymous
You should know that the identity of the Asian man in this photograph is actually a Chinese American student, Shaozhuo Cui, who was taking photographs for the Collegiate Times (Virginia Tech's student newspaper) when police detained him.
http://www.splc.org/newsflash.asp?id=1504
I find it interesting that the newspapers would allow his photo to be widely distributed (through Associated Press) without even following up with the information that he had nothing to do with the shootings. I, for one, would be mad as hell for the news media even *implying* that I was the VT shooter.
Posted at 2:09 a.m. ET on Jul 02, 2007 by SC
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