I still remember Tuesday, April 17, when my wife called to tell me that the shooter responsible for the Virginia Tech massacre was Korean. “Oh, my God,” was all I could say.

While the news revealed more about Cho and his background, I couldn’t help but think about my own childhood. At 12 years old, I immigrated to Eugene, Ore., with my family. Suddenly a foreigner, I felt isolated in my predominantly white community. Four years later, when we moved to Oxford, Ohio, I felt the same thing. There were times when I felt that no matter what I did, I could never get ahead of my classmates. I was made fun of because I had difficulty pronouncing certain English words. I tried my best to excel at piano, math and basketball, but I still felt that I was looked at as a foreigner. There were even a few who threatened to beat me up. I often thought about how I would one day show those people up and would dream about becoming financially successful and driving into town in a Mercedes Benz.

I think a lot of immigrants can relate to these experiences. Which is why I think many of us understand the feeling of solitude that Cho may have experienced. At the same time, what Cho did is incomprehensible. I’ll never be able to imagine the terror those Virginia Tech students and professors went through, and my heart goes out to the victims and their families.

In the days following the shootings, my e-mail inbox was filled with comments and questions related to Seung-Hui Cho from readers as well as my friends. It felt like people were looking to KoreAm to comment or engage in dialogue about people’s fears and questions. We were also contacted by local news stations looking for a Korean American opinion on Virginia Tech. And then, sure enough, I also received an e-mail that stated Koreans are “rude, selfish and racist.”

But it was the Korean community’s visceral response that made us restructure the entire magazine and change our cover story to this national tragedy. While we were already in production at the time and had little more than a week to work with, we knew that Virginia Tech would continue to be on the minds of many.

 

 

 

 

James Ryu

Editor in Chief