‘It’s a story about all of us’

One week after the Virginia Tech shootings that left 33 people – including assailant Seung-Hui Cho – dead, William Paek led a moment of silence for the victims in the citizenship class he teaches weekly at the Korean Women’s Association offices in Lynnwood.

“We are very sorry for the tragedy that (families) have to suffer for a long time from now on,” Paek said.

“It’s a story about all of us, about our Korean origin in the United States.”

That story, he said, resonates with him as a South Korean immigrant.

“We have a lot of difficulties to survive here,” he said. “Most (South Koreans) came into the United States without any resources and they had to work hard.”

The day after the shootings, 21st District State Sen. Paull Shin, D-Edmonds, apologized to the victims’ families on behalf of the Korean American community during a private prayer meeting and in Senate Chambers.

In an interview later, Shin told the Enterprise that “within every person is a hidden secret” and that it is everyone’s duty to help expose those secrets for healing.

For Paek, a translator, the massacre led him to think about family dynamics among his fellow Korean immigrants.

He said most Korean immigrants work hard, coming to the United States so their children can get an education and join the ranks of the professional classes.

That focus on education to achieve a better life can be hard on the children, he said.

“Sometimes, it’s hard to achieve goals to live a comfortable life here,” Paek said. “I think (Cho) had been under a lot of pressure from his parents, from people around him at school. This guy didn’t know how to carry that pressure. I think that caused him to have a kind of antagonism to the world outside of him.”

Paek and his citizenship students talked about the story.

“We were talking about the parents’ responsibility and also, (that) it’s not good to put our children under so much pressure and we have to understand our children,” Paek said.

The tragedy on the Virginia Tech campus is a wake-up call to everyone, according to some who work with local immigrant populations.

Van Dinh-Kuno, executive director of Refugee and Immigrant Services Northwest, said Asian community members are not as reticent to seek help for mental and emotional problems as some people may think. Still, serious problems may fester to a greater degree in cultures where pressure to perform well in school and the workplace can be unbearably heavy, she said.

“When we see something like this (a troubled person), we need to step up … go the extra mile to report it … talk to a family member … talk directly to the person involved,” Dinh-Kuno said. In the case of Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, she said, “Nobody wanted to cross the line …”

Dinh-Kuno said it’s imperative that all people take an interest in those around them..

Youngsters “are not what they seem,” said Dinh-Kuno, whose organization provides English-language lessons, job training and placement, child advocacy and citizenship services. Around her own mother, she said, “I acted very well. But I did not always act very well.”

Dinh-Kuno, who has a college-age son, said that too often, “We just throw the volleyball from one person to the next. We need to stop. We need to take the responsibility and just stop it.”

Shari Song, treasurer of the Korean American Coalition of Washington State, said, “It’s not a Korean-American issue, it’s an American issue.

“(The shooting) wasn’t done by a community, it was done by an individual.”

The act had “nothing to do with his ethnicity …. it was his mental health,” said Song, whose coalition focuses on encouraging involvement in the political process. “I think it was a wake-up call for the mental-health community.”

Song said the state Legislature should be concerned with finding better funding for mental health.

The tragedy, Song said, prompted parents to “look at their children a little more closely.” She noted that in the past, the mind set of Korean parents toward their children has been “study hard.” Now, “other factors will come into play, too.”

Shoreline City Councilwoman Cindy Ryu, a first-generation Korean American, said although she’s disappointed and extends her condolences to the Virginia Tech community, attention must be given to preventing future acts of violence.

“As policy-makers and as a community, we have to look at what we can we do to prevent and reduce something like this from happening again,” Ryu said. “Unfortunately its not a particular community problem or even a Korean problem. It’s more of a system failure.”

Ryu is part of a generation born in Korea that immigrated to America as children.

“When Sept. 11 occurred, we, as a nation, took off on a war on terror,” she said. “Well, right now we have many mostly private battles with mental-health issues because they are leading to a lot of homelessness, substance abuse and, once in a while, it becomes public and we get periodic safety and security threats, damages, injuries and killings.”

She said that if more attention and funding are put into mental-health issues, possible tragedies will be prevented.

“I did ask Congressman Jay Inslee as well as (state) Sen. Paull Shin to please take a look at mental-health- care policy and funding,” she said. “In my opinion, it’s best to take preventative measures through funding and public education.”

She said strict gun control is a request of the Korean community.

“Of course with any kind of gun control, we need to look at the trade-off as in what prices we are willing to pay as far as gun control versus the Second Amendment right to bear arms,” Ryu said. “Obviously as Americans, we have to pay attention to the historical right to bear arms.”