Before Deadly Rage, a Life Consumed by a Troubling Silence

[Ian David]

<snip>

And yet when he and others heard from Mr. Cho’s mother, it was the same dismal story, a buried life of silence. In church, she told them, she prayed for God to transform her son.

<snip>

In 1984, relatives who had moved to the United States invited the family to join them. It took eight years to get a visa. In 1992, they arrived in Detroit and then moved on to Centreville, Va., home to a bustling Korean community on the fringe of Washington. They found jobs in the dry-cleaning business and worked the longest of hours. Dry cleaning is a favored profession among Koreans — some 1,800 of the 2,000 dry cleaners in the greater Washington area are run by Koreans — because it means Sundays off for church and sparse need for proficient English, exchanges with customers being brief and redundant.

<snip>

They lived in a nondescript row house in a modest section of town, friendly but not overly sociable. Jeff Ahn, president of the League of Korean-Americans of Virginia, said the family was uncommonly private among the throbbing Korean-American community of about 200,000 in and around Washington. They shunned the more prominent Korean-language Christian churches, and prayed at a small church outside of town.

<snip>

In death, Seung-Hui Cho finally spoke, but it was through the QuickTime videos received by NBC and broadcast on Wednesday. A pastor at a Korean church in Centreville watched the tapes on television with his family. He told the Seoul newspaper JoongAng Ilbo, “All my family said that was not the Seung-Hui we knew. It was the first time we saw him speaking in full sentences.”

More:
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20070422/ZNYT02/704220418/1004



Well, so much for THIS theory...

Massachusetts GOPblog says Virginia Tech happened because people didn't pray enough
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/IanDB1/2705

[marions ghost]

1. this article

in the Tuscaloosa News is the best I've read on exactly how he got his guns and ammunition.

We need to accept that this was a huge failure of laws to offer protection to citizens.

I don't think even the most avid gun promoter can argue that if Cho had NOT been able to buy guns from the internet and a walk-in gun shop, and ammunition from a local firing range, also from Wal Mart and Dicks Sporting Goods--this would not have happened.

The fact is, Cho was so socially withdrawn that it would have been nearly impossible for him to convince any other purson to make the purchases. He would not have been able to carry out a mass killing.

The simple facts about his life and his ability to easily acquire weapons is an indictment of Virginia gun laws and by implication the gun laws of most states.

We are leaving ourselves and our families completely unprotected from this kind of killer. We have better laws protecting us from slipping on a wet floor.

He could have been helped and he could have been stopped.

This to me is the message of what happened at Va Tech.