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"We just really knew him as the question mark kid..."

From a classmate, describing Cho Seung-Hui's first day in an English Class last year. Cho had penciled a question mark on his sign-in sheet, and didn't respond well to other students. He's described, like many troubled killers, as An Anonymous Loner.

South Korea is a morally conservative country, compared to the US. Cho Seung-Hui arrived in Washington D.C. when he was 8, growing up there. Did he live in a strict, moral South Korean family? That's a question, one of many, that's going to be asked over the next few months.

South Korea doesn't tolerate some things that we take for granted, here. Sexual openness isn't seen as laudable. For example, here's some forum postings describing a problem some American Teachers created in South Korea, in 2005.
An online forum for teachers, the "English Spectrum", posted some 'party pictures' of some Korean women, in a state of semi-undress, with American men, and created some scandal...

"The scandal that rocked the website englishspectrum.com all began when some provocative party photos showed up one of their forums. The offending photos caused an uproar in the Korean internet community because it featured Korean women exhibiting wild behavior in the vicinity of Western men. Before the infamous photos were posted, englishspectrum.com was just a tame informational portal for english teachers looking to live and work in Korea, but after the inappropriate images aired, Korean netizens were crying bloody murder and demanding that the helpful site be shut down."

A furor ensued, and a new forum sprang un, the "Antienglishspectrum", to bring down and expel those teachers from South Korea:

"We, the proud people of Antienglishspectrum are here to postulate strongly immediate shut down of EnglishSpectrum.com.

"For many years, Englishspectrum.com has been notorious for its vile reputation all over the net. It has openly degraded Korean society and its honorable people in many forms of humiliating stigmas.

"Furthermore, It has a great responsibility of promoting promiscuous sexual conducts in Mary Jane's Bar few months ago. Regardless of what EnglishSpectrum.com is insisting on taking to reform its unreliable commitments, we the proud people of Antienglishspectrum are not pledged to accept such preposterous claims.

"In order to avert the evil from sprouting from its own root, once again we the proud people of Antienglishspectrum WILL take every legal mean possible to proceed with our noble agenda.

"Antienglishspectrum"

and, some interesting comments in that thread:

"Antienglishspectrum, this online community just simply reminds me of the Tennessean/Texan extreme Caucasian male group who were anti everything related to the interracial things(especialy BM/WF relationship) in 1960's and 70's."

Huh? Southern Baptists, in South Korea?

In a reply,

"Can you imagine any sexual relationship between teacher and his student in your country? We can never bear it in Korea at least. Englishspectrum has been acting as date coach to the "Pigs(quoted from the film MR. HITCH)" who want to F**K. Its act is TOO immoral. It made no reflection and no apology. There's no place for it in Korea."

We live here in a pretty straightforward nation, with little left to hide; we can look at these postings and wonder, what's the big deal? The women weren't even naked.

Did Cho Seung-Hui's sense of broken decorum help lead to his shattering? A loner, who by reports, seemed calm and straightforward while killing dozens of people, obviously has more than just issues with a girlfriend who moved along, or with 'rich kids', whatever that means. Cho was sick for a long, long time before this big crash.

Eventually, we will find out what his parents were like. As we see in many young adults who haven't settled well in their lives, we will probably find parental influences here that had some influence. You know, probably some strict-culture types who had little tolerance for our open-system, anything-goes meme.

We obvioulsy can't blame Cho's snap on American cultural influence...not entirely. Look for a strange brew, once this young man's head is posthumously examined...

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Update 4:31PM
There's a 'play' posted at The Smoking Gun, purported to be written by Cho, who was an English major at VT...

Sick stuff, if the thing's real. Did I just say, a few minutes ago, it would take 'months' to sort this stuff out? The internet is warp speed, man, so hang on...this ain't your '70's "Agatha Christie"-paced investigation...

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Update 4/20/07 8:50 AM

There's a Washington Post article today, with some insights into how Cho was seen...by others.

"He often spoke in a whisper, if at all; refused to open up to teachers and classmates; and kept himself hidden behind a hat, sunglasses and silence."

and

Cho appears first to have alarmed noted Virginia Tech poet Nikki Giovanni in a creative writing class in fall 2005.

Cho took pictures of fellow students during class and wrote about death, Giovanni said in an interview. "Kids write about murder and suicide all the time. But there was something that made all of us pay attention closely. None of us were comfortable with that," she said.

The students once recited their poems in class. "It was like, "What are you trying to say here?' It was more sinister," she said.

"When we read Cho's plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of,"

now, this is damning, if you ask me...

Days later only seven of Giovanni's 70 or so students showed up for a class. She asked students why the others didn't show up and was told that they were afraid of Cho.

"Once I realized my class was scared, I knew I had to do something," she said.

So, she had a volunteer teach Cho, so as to "spare her colleagues".

That's not good enough.

This kid had problems, and it seems that people knew about it.

When a majority of Cho's class didn't show up for fear, that simple fact should have alerted someone in responsiblity to get Cho some attention. Have we become a society that is so 'locked down' in fear of 'hurting someone's feelings', that we ignore obvious clues to their mental state? When a preponderance of people have bad feelings about someone's mental health, at that point some intervention is suggested, whether or not we feel that individuals 'need their space', or whatever other politically correct reason we can invent.

Would the reason for ignoring these clues, perhaps be, because Cho was a minority? If this had been some caucasian kid, would these documented alarm bells have brought potentially life-saving questions?

I hope that, if anything comes out of this mess, it can be some good outreach programs that actually do something to get help to whoever needs it. This article practically damns the VT English Department, and the 'safety net' that should have been there, in place, to help Cho before he went over the edge.

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UPDATED 1:15PM
Drudge links to an Austrailian site that reports Cho's parents are hospitalized 'with shock'.

"The parents of mass killer Cho Seung-hi were hospitalised with shock and had not attempted suicide, contrary to reports in Korean media.

"Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that Cho's parents, who ran a dry cleaning shop in Centreville, Virginia, had been hospitalised after learning of ther son's killing rampage at Virginia Tech University.

"Rumours earlier spread through Korean media sources that Cho's parents had attempted suicide.

"The Korea Herald, quoting Radio Korea in Los Angeles, reported that Cho's father tried to slash his wrists. His mother had reportedly swallowed a toxic drug.

...

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