The perfect comment

Commenter Susan on the Metropolitician's blog knocked one out of the park on the role of Korean American culture in Cho Seung-hui's mass murder, the needless and ridiculous apologies coming from all corners of the Koreasphere, and several other related topics. Some highlights:

He arrived in the US when he was 8, and he lived here for nearly two decades, he was Korean-American, and truth be told, those two cultures mesh poorly.

It has been my experience that Koreans (fine, MOST Koreans, not ALL) hate everything black. They hate all races, including other Koreans, but they're most scathing vitriol is directed at blacks. I suppose the LA riots didn't help - and I speak from experience. My parents' grocery store was looted. My father was indeed one those badass Korean men in a vest, gun in hand, on the roof of his store, firing shots into the sky. Thankfully, no one was killed, but the hatred lingers.

I want US, Korean-Americans to talk about it, because something is indeed rotten in Denmark, or Korea, or Korean-America, whatever. The funny thing is, a friend and I, another Korean-American (a male, by the way, who despite his parents best efforts managed to turn out okay), were discussing the shooting, and the first thing both us said was it was totally his parents. Here's the profile they don't talk about: 23 year-old UNDERGRADUATE SENIOR at VIRGINIA TECH with a history of MENTAL ILLNESS. His older sister is a graduate of PRINCETON and works in some private subsidiary of the State Department. Look, my parents made it very clear that college lasts FOUR years, i.e., you finish at 21, because you go in at 17, if not earlier, and you have approximately ten choices of college - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford being the top four - and allowances wil be made for schools like Columbia, UPenn, Williams, Cornell, UCBerkeley, UCLA, and that's about it - VA Tech, while I'm sure is a fine
institution in its own right, was probably akin to community college to Cho's parents. Before anyone complains that I'm stereotyping and generalizing, please, don't even start - you can't bullshit a bullshitter.

Why is it that when a Korean-American high school student makes 1600 (or 2400 now) on the SATs it is on the friggin FIRST page of the Korea Times (LA Edition)? Can you imagine any mainstream American publication, e.g., LA Times, NY Times, writing an article like that (and I'm not talking about those self-aggrandizing, voluntary "announcements" these papers have in the back celebrating weddings and the like). And add insult to injury, Cho had psychiatric problems - to my parents depression = not studying hard enough. Fine, I don't really know what went on in his house, I can only make assumptions and educated guesses, but I'm thinking his parents weren't all that supportive, loving, and actively seeking their son help. More likely than not they probably called him a dumbshit on various occasions asking him why he couldn't be more like his sister. So he withdrew into the voices in his head. He became delusional, and progressively more violent until he decided to shoot up thirty-two innocent students and himself.

There is something very wrong with Korean-American and we are in deep denial. We pretend we don't see our fathers smacking around our mothers, we pretend that it's somehow okay to be told you're stupid because you only managed to get an B+ in AP Calculus, we pretend it doesn't hurt when our parents wave around some article in the Korean newspaper about the latest Korean-American whiz kid and demand to know why we're not like that - yeah, I'm generalizing and stereotyping, but I dare anyone who says that they're Korean-American to tell me that their childhood wasn't littered with episodes like that. I have several Korean American friends, probably because they grew up exactly the way I did, and we laugh about our childhoods. Our non-Korean friends look at us with confusion and at times, something akin to horror. But my Korean-American friends laugh hysterically, because what is the alternative - despair, depression, withdrawal?

And I'm pissed off with all of these Korean people apologizing for Cho's actions. What exactly are you sorry about? That he killed thirty-two people? Or are you really sorry that he brought SHAME upon our good name? Those are two different things. And words without actions are meaningless. The candlelight vigils, the trusts in the name of the injured, the tears, the mea culpas, blah blah blah . . . worthless. If we want to truly show remorse, we need to take a hard look at ourselves. Why is it that domestic violence runs rampant in Korean America? Why is it that so many second generation Korean American females avoid their Korean American male counterparts like the plague? Why is it that college students would rather hang themselves in their dorm rooms than face the scrutiny and castigation from their parents at poor grades? And why is it that we don't talk about it . . . EVER?

And for anyone who wants to challenge the assertion that Korean and Korean-American culture is mysoginistic, sexist, and often abusive, stop lying to yourself. And I don't just blame the abusive SOBs, I blame the women too. Why? Because ladies, we take it. Our mothers take bullshit from their husbands, and then they pamper and baby their sons. And for the most part, their sons turn out just like their fathers, and their daughters turn out like their passive-agressive mothers. Yes, there are exceptions - I KNOW, okay?

I'm not just angry at the "Korean" side of Cho. There's a lot that's screwed up with mainstream American culture too. . . Cho, like me, like so many of us, walked that fine line where he wasn't just Korean, or just American. He was both, and unfortunately, it seems like he absorbed the shittiest characteristics of both cultures.

There's more but it has to be read in context. Check out the Metropolitician for some of the most insightful interpretations of Cho.

"The most ridiculous hypothesis yet"

That's what Bob Cesca called the idea that Cho Seung-hui was reenacting the movie Oldboy when he massacred all those people at Virginia Tech. I agree.
First of all, the 'evidence' is one picture of him brandishing a hammer, like Choi Min-sik does in that movie. I counseled everyone I know in Korea that Americans are smart enough to know that this is a home grown violence problem and that no one would be stupid enough to try to make a connection between Korea, Korean culture, and Cho Seung-hui, but obviously it's true what they say about underestimating people's ignorance and stupidity.
Oldboy had nothing to do with this killing. The scene that they claim the picture is reminiscent of is one in which Choi Min-sik, having been imprisoned for 15 years in an illegal 'private prison', fights his way back in through a long corridor of thugs armed only with a hammer. It is something truly amazing to behold, and if you were a psychotic young would-be murderer you may seek out such entertainment. The picture shown in the above link doesn't even show Choi Min-sik's character, who never, if I recall correctly, holds a gun.
This kind of thing really disappoints me. Incidentally, here's the scene. Enjoy.

More apologies for Cho Seung Hui

Incidentally, 'Seung' has the vowel sound of the word 'foot' and 'hui' is pronounced 'he'.
Yesterday a student apologized to me from the bottom of his heart and said that the Korean government should compensate the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre's families. I started the morning with another heartfelt apology from one of my other students. Interesting that both are older men, although the sentiment seems to be ubiquitous.

I don't want to suffer the fate of David Sedaris, so I'll just say up front that the following story, a complete work of fiction, is completely 100% true.

Sally Cho was in shock to discover that the perpetrator of the deadliest shooting in American history was a Korean, and not only a Korean, but one that shared her last name and initials, S. Cho. When she heard the news she was floored, and spent the evening worrying what her schoolmates would say. "You're a crazy maladjusted foreigner" sprang to mind. She clutched her stomach in pain. Her parents had been fielding frantic telephone calls from Korea for the past hour. "We just heard the news. Are you safe? Is there a palpable sense of menace?" The family was in an uproar. Then she realized that her friend Choi Sung-hui must be doing even worse, his name almost the same as the killer's. It was a tense night at the Cho residence. A church leader called to say that Saturday's Korean language class was canceled.
The next morning before school Sally's stomach was in knots. As she waited for the bus she thought up a million nightmare scenarios. A circle of children pointing accusatory fingers at her. Her cousin Sunny getting her green card revoked. The teacher singling her out to talk about the event. It was driving her mad in homeroom, but nobody said anything. Too polite, she guessed. It was like that all day. She wished the feeling would go away and someone would say what everyone was thinking. Sally is a Korean, just like that mass murderer in Virginia. Eventually she felt that the wall of silence would never fall unless she brought it down herself, confronted it head on. In eighth period AP History class, the Rockville High School version of NPR's Talk of the Nation, Mr. Pope initiated a discussion about what had happened at Virginia tech. He asked the class how they felt about gun control, about problems fitting in and academic pressure. Sally was desperately looking for a way to bring up her Korean ancestry, get it out in the open where, under the tempering influence of Mr. Pope, perhaps convince her classmates not to believe all Koreans were like that. "My parents are from Korea and all the Korean Americans that I know were really shocked and sorry about what happened."
A voice from the back of the class said "Nobody cares."

Who's sorry now?

All the wrong people, it turns out. Like most people with the Korean connection, I'm wondering what's up with all the apologies for the Virginia Tech shooting from Koreans in and out of America. It all seems very obsequious to me. Why should you be apologizing? To top all the apologies, one of my students, a man in his fifties, told me the Korean government should compensate all the victims' families. Weird.

Update: I imagine, as many have said here, that the Koreans are projecting what would happen if a foreigner did the same in Korea, namely mass anti-foreigner sentiment would flare up, as it did in fall of 2002 after two girls were accidentally run over by an American tank. This is the result of that event

This also includes some of the anti-American sentiment left over from Japanese American Anton Ono's Olympic victory over a Korean speed skater.
Check out the original, supposedly produced by the North Korean government but popularized in South Korea, here.

Cho's parents' suicide?

The buzz here in Korea is that mass murderer Cho Seung Hui's parents have committed suicide, but apparently this is not the case. I assume that's just what people here either imagine or wish they would do, since they seem so sure that this will be the end of South Korean-American relations for all time.

After VA Tech shooter, the deluge

So the shooter who murdered 33 people at Virginia Tech was a Korean. I just woke up and I don't have the time or will to spend the time it would take to personally read every single thing that has been said about this situation in Korea, but luckily Robert Koehler Korea's premier English language blogger did it already, so check this out if your curious how Korea reports on such a thing.
Like a person witnessing a nuclear bomb blast in the far of distance, I can see the firestorm of shoddy logic, pat answers to 'why he did it' and near-sighted national soul searching that is flying intractably towards us and will commence today. Hours of magazine shows about the state of Korean America, the practice of migratory fathers (기러기 아빠) who live in Korea while their wives and children live abroad, the Korean education crisis that is driving kids abroad for education, and a number of other things that will be talked to death and persist unchanged. Does Seung Hui Cho (or Cho Seung-Hui or 조성희 or 조승희 or however you pronounce his ambiguous name) have anything to do with these Korean societal phenomenon, seeing as how he has lived in the U.S. since the age of three?