Prediction: the Korean press will describe him as a Korean who got Americanized and went crazy as a result (guns, etc.); the American press will describe him as a crazy emotionless Korean/Asian who like all Asians is obsessed with computer games.

Everybody loses!

Oh, and as C Bush pointed out on the phone yesterday, some perspective may be in order:

April 16: 9 dead in suicide bombing in Kabul:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007...

April 15: 34 killed in Baghdad through bombings and other violence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007...

April 14: Suicide bomber kills 36 in Karbala, Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007...

...None of this makes the event any less terrible, or the grief of those touched by it any less immediate or real. Nor does it suggest that these events are equivalent, since obviously the fact of daily suicide bombings makes any given one in Iraq not as interesting as the incredibly rare event of mass murder in the United States.

But it does, I think, offer some useful perspective on what death means, how numbers mean, and how the media reporting around this ultimately and unfortunately reinforces the norms of sympathetic distance that made the Iraq war possible as such.

One more thing. From Salon, an overview of internet reactions to the shooter's race:

http://www.salon.com/tech/h...

Money paragraph:

“Robert Koehler's excellent Korea-focused blog, the Marmot's Hole offers a way in. There, you can learn that the Korean government is worried what the news will mean for Korea's international reputation, and whether the killings will cast a pall on the almost signed-sealed-and-delivered Korean-U.S. free-trade agreement. In Koehler's comments area and on other English-language Korea-focused blogs, the battle is already raging over the truth-or-raciscm quotient of a stereotype that holds that Korean males are excessively prone to violent jealous rages. One blogger, demonstrating with embarrassing panache exactly why some people should not be given the keys to the Internet, has even declared that the calm efficiency with which Cho Seung-hui murdered so many people ”immediately suggested someone with a level of rigorous military training that only South Korean males can generally be expected to have."

Sorry, one more link: a very long post from an ex-pat living in Korea who has some smart things (and some not-so-smart). But all interesting:

http://metropolitician.blog...

Also, we've had our first searcher arrive via “crazy Korean” on Google!

On describing Cho as “a resident alien from South Korea” vs. “an immigrant from Centreville, VA,” see Angry Asian Man, who is also posting lots of updates on the developing story:

http://www.angryasianman.co...

So, Cho is an immigrant kid, whose parents run a dry cleaning business in the suburbs of D.C., and yet he's assumed to have rigorous military training. Yeah, cause that kind of ruthless efficiency has got to be genetic . . . they breed for that over there.

The fact that the media keeps restating the word “Korean” troubles me on so many levels. Beyond the obvious xenophobic considerations, I agree that it's a way to “distance.” Make him a “them.”

When someone on the net disagrees with me, then I'm “South African.” When they agree with me, I'm “American.” I've been here since infancy.

Now when most of the States, unfortunately, hears a Korean name, or a name they perceive as Korean, the first question will be “are you an angry loner” followed by “do you speak English” and “do you know karate.”

I've never read so many blogs about one subject, and it's so sad to read that so many people out there can rant the most racist, hateful language because they're sitting behind a computer screen.

And hardly ANYBODY will call them on it!

I wrote on my blog this is a sad day for so many reasons. Americans will use this tragedy to justify the deep seeded hate they already have.

It is a sad day for so many reasons.

It is indeed quite sad that the media and reportings are distancing the shooter from the mass. It's always 1 vs. the rest. I think it's much too easy to place blame on the 'alien' so that the rest can avoid self reflection during an event like this.

However, I must confess that the mentality of the visual minority isn't that much better. A friend told me that when him and his wife heard that the shooter was Asian, his wife, who's Vietnamese, wished that the shooter to be anyone but Vietnamese. At the same time, when I heard the same news about the shooter, I immediately thought how bad it would be had the shooter been Chinese.

Funny. My first reaction was to hope that the shooter wasn't Muslim, or from the Middle East, which was also my reaction when the Oklahoma City bombings happened.

But of course I don't really have racial shame in the United States, since I'm white, which is perhaps why I end up with the “impersonal” reaction (I'm neither Muslim, nor from the Middle East) whose context is global politics. (As the quotes around “impersonal” are meant to suggest, the impersonality of this reaction actually depends very much on my “personal” situation, i.e., being white means not having to feel racial shame and so I have a different “first” reaction than Lwan, SLK, or Lwan's friend's wife).

On something of a different note, here are a couple of thoughts based on a meeting I just came from this afternoon made up of students and faculty from our honors program.

1. The other faculty – me included – seemed somehow more put off by the shooting, which led me to speculate about the difference made by the fact that students of college age have more or less grown up with the idea of school shootings. For college seniors, the Columbine shooting and the Virginia Tech shooting have essentially tracked their progress through high school and now college. I would think that must affect their understanding of these events as compared to people only a little older who remember a time when a “school shooting” wasn’t a recognizable type of public trauma alongside tornados, hurricanes, plane crashes and the like.

2. I was looking at the news when the story broke yesterday and I was surprised at how quickly the question of blame on the part of the university emerged in the reporting. Prior to the identification of who had done the shooting, this was the locus of blame.

It seems natural enough (right or wrong) as a part of the day after reflection, but my sense is that that part of the story emerged alongside, or in fact in advance of, much of the actual details of what had happened. I’m not sure what that means exactly. From the perspective of victims, it’s certainly recognizable as part of an effort to make some sense of things by placing blame on the university because that at least implies that someone, somewhere had some level of control over the situation. But it seems odd that the news coverage would fold that element of the story into its presentation so quickly.

It felt to me – but maybe this is just me – like the story was being worked into the shape of the Katrina story from the outset: a disaster not caused by, but made catastrophic by sluggish official response. That the wire story running just hours after the attacks repeated, uncritically, a student’s accusation that the university had “blood on its hands” seemed unfair to me.

I agree with E Wesp: the story was initially framed in terms of how the authorities should have responded, and in my opinion unfairly.

In the second cycle, the story is being framed in terms of race. To me this shows in part how race is often used as a substitute for knowledge.

I'm tempted by but tired of the gun control angle, and I don't think it is meaningful to try to compare on the basis of raw numbers or place this event in the international context of a world at war.

If I had to say something about it, I guess my angle would be to try to understand the ambiguous role of fantasy as shown in the fact that the shooter had written violent stories for a creative writing class. Is fantasy a safe outlet, as I have always believed, or is it a blueprint?

Inevitably the “immigrant other” angle of this story will be discussed in the most deplorable ways, but I do think that the diversity of the victims, many of whom were themselves immigrants, may help ameliorate this familiar spin. Some news stories seem to be going in this direction.

Like you all, I've been following the coverage of the shootings to the point of distraction. And it is amazing to me just how tin-eared so many in the media, mainstream or otherwise, have been about everything. As noted, most of the major outlets moved to the blame/Katrina narrative rather quickly, despite various students saying otherwise in their endlessly looped interviews.

Even the bloggers largely disappointed. The whole gun stuff may be relevant eventually, but it's certainly way too soon for a tired political dust up. I found some on-line comfort really only from Andrew Sullivan (http://andrewsullivan.theat...), who struck me as striking the right note at about the right time.

I can't say the same for his guest bloggers who started today. Ross Douthat (love the name) took aim at one interesting aspect of this tragedy—namely the role that social sites such as Myspace, Facebook, and the like played in the aftermath. He charges that despite all the power and speed of the Interweb, even twenty-four hours later “nobody's managed to weave together a coherent narrative of what happened inside Norris Hall” (http://andrewsullivan.theat...).

But narrative building wasn't the point. The community part of those services finally came into their own in a deep way. People just used them to see who was okay and who wasn't, including some of my own students who jumped onto their cellphones and laptops simply to listen for heartbeats a thousand miles away.

Discipline shame:

Carol Iannone on the National Review Online's education blog:

“And, sorry again, but thoughts also arise on the killer's being an English major and on the spiritual emptiness of much education nowadays.”

... I don't normally pick this kind of low-hanging fruit, but I figured someone had to be thinking this.

It is morning here so it'll take a few hours for all the Korean netizens to be out in force... so far, I've heard comments like, “In Korea we consider him Korean but in the U.S. it won't matter so much what his race is, he will just be American” (I wish that were the case but it is not) and there's been some reflection on the way foreigner crime is portrayed here (whenever someone from the U.S. military rapes or kills someone).

I'm also seeing some comments on the strains on kids who immigrate, part of an ongoing conversation given the number of education refugees these days. I was actually writing something about the education system here for tomorrow, sort of.

E Hayot has provided links to two of the most well-read English-language blogs, which I'm sure will have updates throughout the day. I will see what I can glean and post back in a few hours.

As usual, leave it to Slate to do a better job than most to cover the angles. The piece by Michael Agger on students' on-line reactions to the shooting was refreshing.

And Bush's sermon about the whole bidnis was disgraceful.

Blame, that's always the name of the game. Whether it is to blame the shooter's race, educational background, family background, mental condition, etc. or to blame the school's handling situation, or gun control, etc. God forbid someone down the line finds that the shooter was a fan of violent video games. Instead of understanding the situation and using it to learn a lesson, media and whatnot quickly try to blame and separate the shooter from the mass. Even the materials written by the shooter blamed the masses. For once, it would be nice to see reflection instead of blame. But alas, it is not the case in the society we live in.

Hello from the printculture Seoul correspondent. I should point out that I am usually not an avid newswatcher or bulletin board reader, so take my impressions with a grain of salt... E, your prediction that the Koreans would disown him as Americanized are, I think, not coming true. There’s a lot of shame here that this man was Korean, and a lot of discussion about possible repercussions for Koreans in the U.S. — reports that parents are pulling their students from campus, that students are afraid to go out because of potential revenge attacks, fears that the U.S. will offer fewer visas to foreign students, etc. I’m also seeing (this from the netizens, not from the media) reflection about the widespread demonstrations that occurred after some military personnel were responsible for some deaths here, along the lines of “how can we be so angry about those deaths when one of us has perpetrated a far worse crime on that soil?” There were some false (I think) reports that the parents had committed suicide (a believable option here). The embassy is sending some taskforce to Virginia to find out the effects on Korean students. I’m filtering some of the more extreme and offensive takes... always hard to extrapolate netizen response to the larger social body’s opinions. I’m curious whether it seems to you all, over there, that there’s some backlash against Asians... it seems to be taken as a given in much of what I’m reading here.

I’ve also been reading some of the comments from the English speaking community which are equally interesting/disturbing. A lot of anger out there about the way that every foreigner arrested of a crime here becomes a big deal. A lot of discussion over the place of ethnicity.

A couple pieces in the LA Times on the killer's ethnicity today, one from a Korean-American prof of ethnic studies at one of the UC schools making many of the points already made here.

It does seem, reading his piece and looking at other reactions, that my prediction about the Korean reaction to Cho's ethnicity is wrong (as J Lee suggests).

There does seem to have been some racist reaction, but thanks to the internets, there's always racist reaction somewhere. My sense is that it's not that extensive — especially as we get past the first few hours' worth of reactions. My sense is that in the long run focus on Cho's racial background will be a bigger deal for Koreans and Korean-Americans than it will be in general.

Oh, sorry, I spoke too soon. Out come the crazies, from the Ayn Rand-inspired blog Atlas Shrugs, which notes that Cho had the words “Ismail Ax” written in red on the inside of his arm:

“ No one is talking about the ”Ismail Ax“ fact.. I mean no one. No TV, little print. I just watched the whole press conference and not one, not one, reporter asked about it. They asked about everything from soup to nuts (down to the class scheduling going forward) but not one query about Ismail AX. Am I nuts? The man had Ismail Ax written in red on his arm. Is that not deserving of some investigation or question?
They keep saying he talked to no one, that he was a loner and hung with no one but but but but he killed his girlfiend? But he was always alone.............
But back to Ismail? Is it not more than curious? And if it is why no questions?

UPDATE: He died with the words 'Ismail Ax' written in red ink on the inside of one of his arms, leading to speculation that he may have been a Muslim. In Islamic lore, Ismail is a reference to the 'son of sacrifice'.”

I talked to my mother last night, and she wanted to think of Cho as a kid who grew up in and thus was shaped by America. But mostly, she was horrified on behalf of his parents.

As E Hayot remarked above, I think Cho's ethnicity IS a bigger deal for Koreans and Korean-Americans than maybe for the public at large (except those on the fringes).

But I'd like to pick up on S Shirazi's question about the role of fantasy in this story, about Cho's creative writing that disturbed his teacher enough for her to recommend counseling. I don't know what to make of it. I, too, tend to think that fantasy and art forms are safe outlets, but at the same time, I can't deny that certain kinds of violent representations--certain expressions of misogyny, for example--disturb me deeply and it's hard not to see them as signs of danger. But where's that line? Are there lines?

By the way, I want to add to all this that a few years ago, I was frightened by a student who seemed to have developed a weirdly intense relationship to me. This included sending me poems (via email) in which he talked about killing his ex-girlfriend's boyfriend, though in a fairly “poetic” way.

My attempt to talk to someone in the Dean of Students office about this was met with total silence: calls and emails just not returned at all. It took me going to my chair to talk to him about it to get the Dean of Students to respond. The student eventually dropped my class, and stopped being in touch, though a semester or two later he behaved disturbingly enough in a class run by a female graduate student that our chair got back in touch with me about him. He was dropped from that class, I think.

Point being: (a) I saw “signs of danger,” felt threatened and creeped out by this student (despite the fact that like the rest of the Printculture gang I am good at talking about how literature is not reality). And (b) the initial response from the Dean of Students' office at my institution was totally dismissive and inadequate, from the perspective of my fear, but perfectly adequate given that nothing ever happened.

Another completely fascinating piece, on the Chinese government's reaction to an initial report that the shooter was Chinese, can be found here:

http://jamesfallows.com/tes...

Money paragraph:

What the Chinese media did next was bad in a predictable way. Many web links to outside news of the shooting were blocked to limit subsequent details from reaching China. As reported in this blog from Beijing, parts of CCTV and the other official news outlets downplayed all announcements about the shooting until they could be sure what the “correct” Chinese angle would turn out to be. Meanwhile some other Chinese press web sites reported the news — and the suspicion, emanating from America, that the killer was Chinese.

Obviously at this point this conversation has just turned into me posting links, but, here you go, from the material Cho sent to NBC:

“I didn’t have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled. But no, I will no longer run.”

...which proves that regardless of ethnicity, he belongs, like all people who do this sort of thing, to the general class of the narcissistic asshole.

It's interesting that this discussion started with race, especially since Cho figures uncannily well into the familiar narratives of all sorts of people: the Columbine shooters with their anger, the terrorist who claim they kill for the sake of their children in multimedia accusations, and other mass murderers with a sense of martyrdom for a larger cause. Cho figured himself into formal narratives as well - the image of him with a hammer, as NYT pointed out, chimes with that of the main character in the movie Oldboy
(http://thelede.blogs.nytime...).The Ismael/Ishmael references point to the Old Testament, and among his ample awful metaphors there stick out comparisons to Christ and crucifixion, and many others I am sure.

Maybe race didn't seem like the right card to play because we don't have a TV, and I did not see the TV media casting Cho first and foremost as a foreign other. Perhaps Cho's race didn't strike a chord because the first thing it reminded me of was a recent 'massacre' in Seattle by a young man from Montana. About a year ago he killed several teenagers who invited him to their house after a rave. Cho's story has the same narrative twists - he was a loner, he had guns in his trunk, planned it for days if not weeks, etc.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.c...

But the difference between these two lone actors is the massive amounts of information that Cho seems to have been able to communicate to the rest of the world, and the kinds of stories it contains. Cho doesn't seem like a misfit in his own narratives. In fact everything seems to fit together too well in his interpretation of what was going on in his life. NBC said that some of Cho's photographs were “almost artistic”. This, together with the facts that he was an English major who wrote plays and poetry, delivered what was practically a research paper to NBC (complete with visual aids), and most relied on figurative speech in his most vehement accusations, begs the question of his role as artist/author.

Cho was a bad author, but he managed to create something that to him was completely coherent. The problem is, no degree of piecing his story together will help it be the kind of story that can really 'make sense' to anyone but him. The simple answer is that he was severely mentally ill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007...

I am not aware of any analysis of the artistic products of other mass murderers, and perhaps there are many existing ones that provide a good frame of reference. But his plays, I think, are good examples of narratives that completely lack the kind of logic that makes a human being relate to its characters. In each play, the events and people in seem not to fit with to the young man's interpretation of them. The main character in the play simply rants. While as the intense insecurity and hate of an isolated subjectivity reminds one of Dostoevsky's underground man, the complete lack of dialog and empathy in Cho's creations exposes a Nabokovian bad author, a Humbert Humbert who writes others into his life as if they were characters only in his own world. I think that lack of empathy is what disturbs most in all of the materials Cho has prepared for us. The real mystery is what we will do with this multimedia bounty, left as it was in our laps. What kind of story will we make him a part of?

Great comment! Can't respond more now b/c I have a plane to catch but hopefully later...

As I understand it, Cho grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household. Whether he shared his mother's beliefs or not, I think this detail deserves some comment. What are the alternatives for disaffection if you accept the good/evil dichotomy that fundamentalist religion teaches?