South Korea in shock over Virginia Tech shootings
President Roh Moo-hyun held a special meeting with aides today to discuss the US campus shooting, as the public expressed shame over a South Korean citizen being identified as the gunman.
Roh would speak publicly about the tragedy later today, his office said.
The presidential Blue House has issued a condolence statement saying Roh “was shocked beyond description again over the fact that the tragic incident was caused by a South Korean native who has permanent residency” in the US
The shooter at Virginia Tech University was identified as Cho Seung-Hui, a senior in the English department, who the South Korean foreign ministry said had been living in the US since 1992.
Cho was the only suspect named in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern US history, which left 33 dead including himself.
South Korea’s largest newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, said Cho’s family was poor when they lived in a Seoul suburb and decided to emigrate to the US to seek a better life.
The family lived in a rented, basement flat – usually the cheapest unit in a multi-apartment building, the newspaper said, quoting building owner Lim Bong-ae, 67. Police identified the gunman’s father as Cho Seong-tae, 61.
“I didn’t know what (Cho’s father) did for a living. But they lived a poor life,” Lim told the newspaper.
“While emigrating, (Cho’s father) said they were going to America because it is difficult to live here and that it’s better to live in a place where he is unknown.”
The case topped the front pages of nearly all South Korean newspapers, which also voiced worries that the incident may trigger racial hatred in the US and worsen relations between the strong allies.
And a sense of despair prevailed among South Korean public.
“I’m too shameful that I’m a South Korean,” wrote an internet user identified only by the ID iknijmik on the country’s top web portal site, Naver – among hundreds of messages on the issue.
As a South Korean, I feel apologetic to the Virginia Tech victims.“
Kim Min-kyung, a South Korean student at Virginia Tech reached by telephone from Seoul, said there were about 500 Koreans at the school, including Korean-Americans. She said South Korean students feared retaliation and were gathering in groups.
South Korean foreign minister Song Min-soon sent a letter to US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, expressing condolences and sympathy for the victims, the ministry said.
South Korean diplomats were travelling to the shooting site, foreign ministry spokesman Cho Hee-yong said.
Despite being technically in a state of war for decades against North Korea, South Korea is a country where citizens are banned from privately owning guns, and where no school shootings are known to have occurred.
However, it has not been immune from shooting rampages.
In 2005, a military conscript believed to be angered by taunts from senior officers killed eight fellow soldiers, throwing a grenade into a barracks where his comrades were sleeping and firing a hail of bullets.
