Letters to the Editor
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Cho's Ethnicity & Nationality is NOT a Red Herring...
Sorry Mr. Yang, but Mr. Cho is NOT a Korean American.
Unless I am mistaken (and I've just checked) Cho Seung-hui is a Korean resident alien here in the United States of America. His grandfather is back in Korea, as undoubtably other relatives as well. His parents moved to the USA when he was eight... He is still a Korean national and as far as we've been told, has not taken steps to became a citizen of this, our country.
Yes, Mr. Cho is alien and of his own choice, inscrutable... We now have only his actions and his manifesto with accompanying audio visuals to try to understand who and what he was, for he has returned to his ordinary silent mode, albeit deeper and more permanently now... He opted out of the conversation when he took his own life and ended it. Ultimate manipulation to end a conversation that way, no?
Korea and traditional Korean culture is very different from the USA and the crazy mix of cultures we enjoy. It sounds as if Mr. Cho was having difficulties negotiating the additional strains that cultural clashes add to one's life. Any knee-jerk politically-correct insistence on treating Mr. Cho as an individual separable from his natal family culture is misguided, foolish and unhelpful. Sociology as well as Psychology must inform our attempts to understand this tragedy.
But thank you for sharing, Mr. Yang... You are taking the courageous step of opening up and sharing your experience from your own perspective. Such sharing has a salutary effect on me... And you... On all of us. Dialog and conversation evidently is the antithesis of what was Mr. Cho's life; and it is a way for all of us to follow in our attempts to work out a safe, civil, free, creative, egalitarian society.