Most Virginians would say April 16 was a bad day for them. For Mike Kim—a recent (by Virginia standards) transplant with no connections to Virginia Tech—it was one of his worst days ever.

“I have this unexplainable connection to what happened there, because he [Cho] was Korean,” Kim says. “Thank God his name wasn’t Kim.” Kim, being the Korean equivalent of Smith. . . “I mean, what are the chances?”

Kim, who owns a children’s hair cuttery in the West End, began tracking the story online when he got to the shop that morning. “It was 8:10, and Yahoo was reporting one dead and a gunman on the loose,” he says, citing the first element in the perfect storm that coalesced that day. “They hadn’t locked down the campus at that point, even though everyone on [reading] Yahoo knew what was going on.”

There’s been criticism and rebuttal about the university’s slow response following the first two murders. Yahoo’s header “Gunman on the Loose” should have prompted some safety measures. Yet university officials had no reason to think that the two hours following the initial double murder was just the calm before the storm; no idea it would escalate into the worst tragedy any American campus has ever seen. Worse than Kent State; worse, even, than University of Texas’ bell tower sniper. Kent State was about politics. Texas was about a loner who snapped. Cho, Kim believes, was taking out a lifetime’s worth of stored up anger on 31 innocents. Either way, the second element of the perfect storm was, perhaps, the single bad decision not to lock down right away.

Granted, Cho was disturbed. But the Korean factor, Kim says, plays more of a role than he cares to admit.

A little insight into the culture: Koreans are a very proud people, he says. For instance, that line from Cho’s great-aunt who still lives in Korea. “She called him an idiot. At least, that’s how the interpreter translated ‘eseeke.’” While readers on this side of the world think ‘mentally challenged’ when referring to idiots, Koreans, says Kim, use it more like “son of a bitch,” or jackass. “She was swearing him off,” he says of the great-aunt. “Koreans have a tremendous sense of pride. That’s why we all feel somewhat responsible.”

According to culture, he says, the parents are more ashamed than anything. “The family finally made a public statement,” he says. “From the daughter. Not the parents.”

Might they not speak English? “Whether they speak English or not, at this time of crisis, they don’t know English.”

Like Cho, Kim, 36, grew up in America with parents who did not. Unlike Cho, his immigrant parents didn’t face such a struggle. His father, a retired orthopedic surgeon, and mother now live in Southern California’s upper-upper-middle class Orange County. But growing up in northern Kentucky in the 70s and 80s, Kim was teased, relentlessly and maliciously. “I was a chink. We were chinks,” he says. His best friend was an Iranian kid who Kim still calls Big Al. Kim suffered through the hostage crisis by Big Al’s side. They never fought back. Except once when Big Al egged Kim on. “I lashed out and yelled back at these guys, and they came back and kicked my ass. Literally.”

After that experience, Kim narrowed his response options to two: He either could take it hard, or push on. “We as individuals have a responsibility to fight through it. But Cho couldn’t. Where was his family?”

And there, says Kim, is the third element in the perfect storm. The cultural gap that exists not only between peers but one that exists between immigrant parents and their Americanized children.

Even though the Kims consider themselves a close-knit family, they only speak about four times a year. It’s just the culture. “If you asked my parents who I am, they would have no idea,” Kim says.

Immigrants—Korean or otherwise—bring and create families here in hopes of providing them a better life. They work hellish hours. When they come home, they push their children to excel because, as Kim says, they know education is their ticket. They have little to no exposure to or understanding of the culture their children inhabit when they’re not at home. “Cho had no one to lean on. He suffered through years of this. Then he couldn’t take it. It got the best of him.”

Kim’s own assimilation was much easier. He says he fell in with a group of mostly white kids at his Jesuit high school for boys. With his boys behind him—and they remain close friends—Kim’s response to taunts was healthy. “I just figured they were assholes,” he says. His brothers, he says, didn’t fare as well, although neither ever got in trouble. “They experienced a lot of racism.”

Kim believes that the third element—the clash of cultures within an immigrant family—is what completed the storm. “Out of 26,000 people on the Virginia Tech campus, there’s more than one loner. I’m sure there are lot of other loners and losers who wish they could do the same thing, but they don’t.”
It was a kinder, gentler time in some ways during Kim’s formative years. Not so for Cho. “There’s a lot more violence in the media now. Columbine, all those things he referenced, contributed to what he did.

“His creative writing teacher getting upset about his plays? It was a creative writing class,” he says, exasperated. “They made a big stink about his plays and how violent they were? Aren’t movies today sicker than that? Quentin Tarantino is mentally ill, and nobody does anything about that.” Kim says his friends got him through. “He never had the friends I have,” says Kim. “I understand what he was going through, though.”

We’re still in the what-went-wrong stage on the Cho massacre. Regardless of the cause, Kim hopes the lesson will resonate. “What we have to learn from all of this is right under out noses. We have to look at ourselves and how we treat other people. Whether you want to believe it or not, how we treat people can make a difference.”

Besides the memorials for the victims, this is probably the most relevant article I have read on the Tech tragedy.  Kudos and thanks.