I need to get this out of my system because it's been jumbling in my mind for the past few days. The reason I'm making this thread in Korean chat is because maybe you guys may be the most willing to at least try to understand it from the perspective of the killer. I'm only going to get ridiculed in the AF Lounge because a bunch of self-righteous retards eager to prove how morally superior they are enjoy taking it out on people like me who like to be vocal about these kind of issues. I could be wrong in what I'm presuming and that Cho Seung Hui may truly be a psychotic killer who was going to commit some heinous crime regardless of his upbringing and his circumstances.

The reasons for Cho having snapped may be deeper than we thought. It's easy to label him as just a loser who had no friends and only had a girlfriend because she took pity on him and so he became obsessed with her. And obviously, he is naturally mentally unstable as a person who is prone to depression and hateful thoughts. But so are many people yet why have they not all snapped?

I believe the reason lies in Cho's background and upbringing. Cho's father said that he left South Korea because he wanted to live somewhere where he was unknown. He and probably his wife as well were isolationists. They didn't enjoy living under the scrutinizing eyes of their relatives and friends and people who knew them for years. This kind of community is very common across Asia and there are some asians, including my parents, who dislike it and is part of the reason why they chose to emigrate.

His parents moved to Virginia and they probably were not religious either. Unlike many overseas south koreans, they most likely did not reach out to the korean community by going to a korean church. Now this is all very good FOR THEM. If that's the way they wanted to live their lives, then good for them. However, this is NOT GOOD for their children. Imagine the cultural confusion and the sense of feeling like a social outcast he felt growing up. He probably had very little connections with other Koreans and Asians. And anybody who has gone to an all-white high school in the US can tell you that its very difficult for an Asian guy to fit in.

His parents brought him up the Korean/Asian way. It was probably a very depressing home life. Families that tend to isolate themselves and have little to do with community tend to become insular and it has a psychological affect on all the members. So he had a depressing home life and out in the real world, he did not fit in in American society and culture. These circumstances conbined with his volatile mental nature set him down a very dark path. He didn't just suddenly snap one day. This has been a long mental process and has probably been living in a very dark place for a very long time.

If you combine this with his natural tendency to be mentally unstable, you've got the makings of a very hateful, angry, and hurt person. Now many of us probably have felt this way but we wouldn't actually hurt anyone.

But what I'm saying is, if Cho's parents had not been so isolationist, if Cho grew up having known more koreans and asian friends, if his parents had been actively involved in the korean community, Cho may not have done something as drastic as what he did. Maybe he would have done petty crimes or start fights but not something like shooting so many people to death.

The American media will ALWAYS pin the blame on the individual. Western culture is an individualistic culture. It's the individual's fault. But we Asians think differently. We're collectivists. In Ancient times, if one family member commited a crime, the entire family was punished. This type of collectivist thinking has carried on down the times.

So I am not so naive to believe that the fault lies entirely with Cho. I believe his parents, his upbringing, his social circumstances, all had an effect.

For those of you who think I'm blaming this too much on the parents, let me tell you that my parents are very similiar to Cho's and that I was brought up in a very similiar way to him.

My parents grew up in Asia and were part of the type of community where everyone knew each other. And like many other Asians, they did not like this. They didn't enjoy living somewhere where they were always under observation and scrutiny. They took for granted the emotional comfort of having a community and having people know who you are and having people to call for support in difficult times.

My parents emigrated and they led isolationist lives. They made little effort to establish contact with the Asian community. If that's the way they preferred to live, then good for them. But it had an enormous impact on me, mostly negative. I grew up in an insular, depressing family life and had little or no Asian friends. I did not fit in with western society due to my parents' methods of upbringing as well as the Asian values they instilled into me.

The years go by and it's still this way and I still have little or no connections with the Asian community. It's this constant feeling of fitting in nowhere that really tears at you. It still bothers me greatly to this day.

Now I don't think I will go on a shooting spree or lash out at innocent people. But let me tell you this. I HAVE thought about it. There were some really dark times in my life when I was in a very bad place that I imagined in my head some very hateful things. Thinking about it and acting on it are two different things.

Unlike Cho, I have some things going on in my life that keep me going. Little things. It's barely enough but its enough for me to have some vague sense of hope. But if soemthing were to happen and I lose all that hope, it would set me down a very dark path that may lead me to do some very disturbing things.

So I dislike it when the media and stupid people on AF label him with shallow terms like "psychopath" and "loser" and ignoring all the environmental impacts that contributed to his downfall.

To me, the Asian-American experience can be really good or really $hit. For some asian-americans who grew up with a good support network of Asian friends and relatives while at the same time taking advantage of all the economic and societal advantages of Western society, thats the dream life.But for those of us who had little or no connections with the Asian community and growing up in a western culture that we do not belong, it is a very isolating and lonely experience and it takes a strong person to be able to go through with it.

Blue Away, while I appreciate your thoughts and it was a good post, I think there was something deeper mentally wrong with this guy. Psychopath is a term thrown around a lot but in this case, it would apply. This person clearly had mental issues and considering a lot of the other things you hear about his family they were likely more than just issues with his parents. His sister went to Princeton, his parents were thought to be friendly and well liked people from comments in the community that I've seen.

Yes the guy was a psychopath but that is a vague term in itself. Since he's already dead and no psychiatrist can test if he was truly psychotic, we will never know.

And of course everyone is going to say good things about his parents. His parents were normal Asian parents. They worked hard, minded their own business, courteous to neighbors. And they suffered such a huge tragedy. Why would anyone say anything bad about them?

What I'm saying is, had Cho's parents been less isolationist and had Cho grown up having a support network of Korean/Asian friends and been more involved in the community, this may have been averted.

Blue,

I was disappointed that the gunman is not you. I think you can do better than Seung Cho Hui. You can probably kill 50 people.

1) He's from Fairfax County, there's loads of Koreans there.

2) What makes you assume his parents were isolationists? What what I've read, his parents were friendly with the community, nothing like that stupid psychopath.

3) He's a psychopath before he's Korean. Psychopaths can be any ethnicity. This stupid idiot represents no one.

4) You're right. Loners will be more prone to violent outbursts like these. Which is why YOU, Blueaway, have to find a community you fit in to. I've read your posts in the Chinese chat, and for the good of everyone here, please find a community you can belong to.

people like you who like to ridicule me every chance they get probably realize deep down that what I say is partially true otherwise you wouldn't be so offended. If ridiculing me and my opinions makes you feel better about your own life and helps you continue to live in denial that your own life is sad and pathetic, then by all means do so.

That's so mean of you!

Blue,

I've heard of one of my friends that he wrote scripts 'bout how to kill his father! So he really was a psychotic and I don't think that his youth got much to do with it. Being a psychotic can be genetically settled...

This comment is inappropriate at a time like this. This situation is not a joking matter and anybody who thinks it is should honestly get there heads checked. Its kind of ironic because comments like these are probably what drove cho to go on his rampage and now you have blueaway whos trying to spill his heart out and you just joke about it. Some people never learn.

double post

Yeah, but people can put a different face on in public. And the parents were running a drycleaning business and dealt with the public - they couldn't exactly be unfriendly - not if they wanted to keep customers. These comments by outsiders don't really tell us much.

And sometimes the most outwardly normal families are the ones that crack up the most spectacularly. Actually when you think of it, it's normal for families to fight, have feuds; dysfunctional families seem to be the norm really - the family that fights together stays together kind of thing - and how many people can really admit to having harmonious Christmases with their families every single year?

A family that NEVER argues is somewhat strange - things get held in, issues and problems aren't aired, it's unnatural - there's bound to be an explosion.

And I think the parents of Cho were abnormal. I mean I only heard about him two days ago but I was able to pick up by reading about his history prior to the killings he wasn't normal. But his parents who have lived with him for most of his life weren't able to see that. Probably too busy making money living their version of the American dream. I swear some people like the Chos are so myopic: they miss the forest for the trees. I guess though I have never been really poor and for people who have experienced poverty, making money often becomes an all-consuming obsession.

Nobody is disputing that Cho was seriously psychologically disturbed, sfca-scot. What we're trying to understand is why he wasn't recognized to be as such and properly evaluated and maybe taken out of university and put in a mental hospital. It wouldn't have been hard for a mental health professional to see that the man had suicidal-homicidal thoughts/was teetering on the edge and that he needed close monitoring. Instead he was left to his own devices and treated like a normal student. (All the signs were there: the fact he put a ? instead of his name; he never participated in class discussion, didn't respond to people who said hello ....); and if there was anything in his environment that exacerbated his emotional problems, like the family cutting themselves off from other people, especially people from their own ethnic community. I think Cho's father's comment that he wanted to move his family away somewhere where they were unknown is telling.

I don't think people turning to the church is the answer. There was a Korean family that were regular churchgoers, almost fanatical in their church attendances, very religious, also outwardly 'normal' and friendly and the father of that family ended up committing murder-suicide. I think belief in any false cult is ultimately damaging no matter how beneficial it seems to be initially.

Joining a religion is about personal conviction anyway and not about being a sheep and going to church because all the other migrant families are doing it or because doing so will be socially useful. BTW, I bet you anything Cho's family were Christians.

The other aspect of this tragedy is that I think the negligence of the police and university officials contributed to the high death toll.

DR has quite an imagination. His sadistic thoughts are probably beyond your reach and something you couldn't possibly fathom, but who can really tell by what he posts? He's not crazy enough to go on a killing rampage though.

I sort of made a similar post the other day:



I have sincere sympathy for this guy because very few of us endure an unbearable life in solitude. His parents are probably like mine. They started going to a Korean church when we were young in order allow us to integrate ourselves with the Korean community. I felt more comfortable in the new environment and pretty much left all of my prior friends who were all white. My parents decided to cease going to church and all our family ever did was live very isolated lives henceforth. THey just didn't care to force themselves to keep going to church for us since they're both atheists, and they like to keep to themselves. I got all hell from my korean friends and it was a difficult thing to grasp when you lose your network of peers. We have no family here whatsoever. It's just my dad, mom, brother and me and we all live separately at that. I don't know anything about my dad's family and infrequently visit my mom's side of the family in Seoul since we all live busy lives and don't really keep in contact with each other.

I know a lot of us did, but I also grew up with a very emotionally and physically abusive dad and older brother. I couldn't even make it to school sometimes because of various injuries and my mom just perpetuated it by passively standing close by or even perpetuating it by going to my dad whenever I lashed out just a little. It's a difficult thing to be constatly victimized by your own family member when you don't really have anyone to confide in. It's a constant struggle to try to forget everything and try to live a life of normalcy.

From the outside looking in, yeah, his parents probably appeared to be a normal hardworking immigrant family, with sweet parents. People think my parents are angels by the way they conduct themselves outside. People have no idea what fu-ked up $hit can occur under another's roof. In the meantime, there's only a one-sided view of things and the truth never gets out.

Sometimes my parents have difficulty understanding why I go in an out of being depressed becuase they think that the material things they give me should be enough to make me happy. I even got in a fight with them the other day because I was trying to explain things, and I'm glad that I'm at school because my dad got really heated and thinks I'm just an ingrateful b!tch.

But this case is a bit different. There could have been some favoritism going on in his family and no encouragment for the son if he wasn't living up to their expectations. It's also difficult when your very introverted from the start and have difficulty making friends when you're young. His inadequate social development as a kid probably just affected his mental wellbeing as an adult.

And I don't doubt that he was mentally ill in the first place. There was a korean girl named Young Mi at my elementary school. During recess she would just stand of to the side and not participate and was sort of dazed in her own world. In high school, she started calling everyone and threatening them with some witchcraft bull$hit and threatening to kill everyone. Her parents pulled her out of school and was home schooled and was visiting a mental facililty after that. No one has heard about her since. In this case, her parents were very outgoing people and were very much involved with the Korean communitiy. Everyone knew them and her sister was quite popular amongst her peers.

Like I said, it's just a culmination of a variety of different factors but its rather saddening since very few people can sympathize with CHo.



It's funny because everyone is claiming that people like him are always blaming others when its their fault alone. I've heard this countless times already on the news.

wow you are so ignorant.

It's not always about personal conviction. Sometimes it just gives a sense of community and soldarity for Korean immigrants and if its goingn to be socially beneficial for the kids, then there's no reason to avoid it.

Sometimes when I attended class, I wanted to murder people by going classroom to classroom. Weird, this guy actually did it.

BlueAway--

I was just checking how Koreans react on Cho Seung Hui’s case. I found your post is really interesting.

Even though, we still don’t know what really turned Cho to be, but your post is real. The true feelings from a child who lives in the US with Asian parents who avoid Asian community, but somehow still raise you in Asian way. So you can’t really fit in with anyone, neither Asian nor Western.

Your parents remind me of myself. I don’t have any problems back in my home country, but sometimes, by avoiding my own community, I enjoy that no one keep an eye on me all the time. Yeah…It’s good for me, but from now, I have to be more careful if I will raise my child in the future. Thanks for sharing your true feelings.

I don't know why they moved to Centreville, Virginia that is basically a little Koreantown in Virginia.




Westfield High is 30 -40% Koreans and there are a lot of Korean fobs.

Stop assumming.

Wow, very deep and insightful post.

I agree with you. And I just want to tell you that things can get better for you. Life is always changing. Also, did you ever considering counselling for yourself? I had/have anxiety problems sometimes and I found counselling to be helpful.

@BlueAway, i could fully agree with your post, but that's only from my perspective...in the
end you have to deal with yourself then the environment. I know a lot of asians who are not have many 'asian' friends or feel connected with the 'asian' community..still they
can fully enjoy their life with their non-asian friends..

i think the cause was some more complex..but you're quite true (in my perspective) about parents wanting to isolate
from their relatives and friends because of collectivism in the family. The kid probably
picked it up as social fobic, also avoiding human contact.

It's one think to think about doing it, it's another thing to actually do it. Everyone has thought about doing something malicious; to actually carry it out is something else.

i was watching an interview with cho's roommates yesterday. They seem to have the most knowledge of him. Cho was really strange from what i heard. They said he barely barely talked. But one day they drank and he said he had an imaginary girlfriend named jelly and his name was spanky. Also he kept calling his roommates on his cellphone saying his name was question mark and he was not Cho. and when they came back to the dorm he would act like nothing happen. Also his name was question mark on his AIM. And he found out about this girl's house and would IM her with the name question mark. And it would freak the girl out. Then one day he went to the girl's house in person and said he was question mark and the girl would get freaked out and call the police. Also one day Cho told his roommates that he knew a girl is cool if he looked in their eyes and could see promiscuity in their eyes. The roommate said it was wierd. Also Cho kept taking pictures of people with flash and it was irritating.

Actually thinking about the song Collective Soul - Shine Down (the song which Cho listened a lot to) makes me think more about how he felt living in America.

lyrics:

Give me a word
Give me a sign
Show me where to look
Tell what will I find ( will I find )
Lay me on the ground
Fly me in the sky
Show me where to look
Tell me what will I find ( will I find )

Oh, heaven let your light shine down (x4)

Love is in the water
Love is in the air
Show me where to go
Tell me will love be there ( love be there )
Teach me how to speak
Teach me how to share
Teach me where to go
Tell me will love be there ( love be there )

Oh, heaven let your light shine down (x4)

Im going to let it shine (x2)
Heavens little light gonna shine on me
Yea yea heavens little light gonna shine on me
Its gonna shine, shine on me
Its gonna shine, come on in shine

^oh yeah, i remember they said thats the song he would always listen to. He would play it over and over. Also he would always write the lyrics on the wall too. i didnt know the song, but now that i read it, its kinda sad.

A lot of people don't realize what a little feeling of community and belonging can do to one's mental health. We humans thrive on the little things. It's the little things that give us hope and something to look forward to so we can continue to live our lives.

I know of Asians who would normally be pretty normal, upbeat people if they had a proper upbringing. But instead, they're extremely unhappy and whats worse, they see no way out and can't even make little steps to improve their situation.

And it's the same with me. I was a happy child. I was never depressed. I had a huge imagination, a bit of a dreamer at times and a bit of a loner, but I was never depressed or unhappy. Until my parents turned my life upside down and sideways. And now its tough to recover. Anyway, I'm not going to go into the details of how fu-ked my life is but what i'm saying is that had my parents been more involved in the asian community and I had grown up with people similiar to myself, things wouldn't have turned out so bad. Now its too late.

What makes it worse is that my parents don't understand. I tried telling them but they don't get it. They think materialism is everything. I don't know why its so hard for them to see it from my point of view. I have a lot of unresolved issues with them and its gotten to the point where I can't even have regular conversation with them. So much for Asian family values. And now that its gotten to this point and its gotten so bad, they STILL refuse to apologize to me or see the mistakes they have made with me. I'm not looking for retribution. I just want them to admit what they did was wrong. But they won't.

Whatever. I'm strong enough mentally as a person and as a individual to handle my depression and to go on with life. But that doesn't mean I'll be happy and it won't stop me from feeling sympathy for people like Cho Seung Hui, even after what he's done.

^
This guy had too much bottled up inside and just snapped.

You're circumstances are pretty cruddy too with having to move back to Singapore and coming back to Canada with the addition of having isolationist parents who don't care to assimilate with the Chinese community, but are you really as lonely as this guy?

There isn't one single person from Westfield or VTech who had even been anything close to an aquaintance. Being introverted, he probably didn't have a single friend from when he was came to the states at the age of 8 to 23. That's 15 fu-king years of barely speaking a word. Asian parents don't believe in mental illnesses and they probably felt ashamed that they had a social reject for a son and just perpetuated his anger. My dad would beat the living hell out of me if I even bothered to mention anything about feeling depressed.

You at least go out with friends from time to time and have people to converse with although you don't really consider them to be your ideal group of people. This guy lived his life in complete silence and he didn't have single goddamn outlet to express his thoughts or frustrations who he felt comfortable with. I'm just assuming here, but he could have been exposed to a variety of other cruel acts. It's difficult to tell.

I'm interested in what the sister has to say if she decided to come out and make some sort of statement about her brother.

Anyways, everyone at my school in VA is in shock since a lot of us have siblings over at tech, hopefully all of you are taking it well.

i never thought about suicide or killing others even when i felt really $hitty. i thought about beating the $hit out of people that pissed me off or imagined that they got into a horrible deadly car accident before. but thats only to vent my anger.

i believed, cho on the other hand, was suicidal due to maybe a $hitty life and was selfish enough to kill others whom he felt was living it better than he was.

The whole incident has less to do with his upbringing; his sister turned out to be different; she went to Princeton, had an internship overseas, and works with State Department. Cho was mentally ill; he was quite similar to a dormant volcano waiting to explode, and he did. However, OP's opinion is totally valid, the scenario could have turned like what OP wrote, but evidence (his behavior, family background, favorite song, etc) hints that he was more of a sinister individual, sorta like EMO wannabe.

Personality traits can be a huge factor. Even if his parents were isolationists, his sister could have been an outgoing person and had no trouble making friends when the family moved to the states. HE was probably extremely introverted early on and just had trouble socializing from the start and nothing every changed throughout the years. His parents just probably thought of him as a socially inept disgrace. There was no one to help him.

there are millions of other people who also were raised in isloation from the rest of the society, but none of them did what this guy did. I'm sure this guy's upbringing was one of the element that may have caused all of this, but what about others who probably have gone through similar enviroment or worse. In the end, this guy is just fvcked up in the head, a brain mutant. Look at his sister, his sister seemed turned out just fine, went to princeton and now working for the government. I mean, evey once in a while, a genetic defect is born, you can't blame this kid's action on the society or his family, all your explaination of his parents are fu-ked up and he grew up in total isloation are mere speculations at best.



from thinking about killing people to actually carry out the action takes a giant leap, i'm sure many people have thought about killing someone, but I doubt even less than 1/1000000 of those actually acted on that thought.

Here are Mr. Cho plays that he wrote in college

Richard Mcbeef
http://news.aol.com/virginia-tech-shooting...417134109990001

Mr. Brownstone
http://news.aol.com/virginia-tech-shooting...417145009990001

Doesn't offer me any insights to the guy. Seems like pretty normal stuff a kid raised on Quentin Tarantino would write.

I'd say they're some pretty $hitty examples of literature.

This guy listens to Guns'n Roses. Oh $hit, another thing we have in common.

It is inappropriate at this time, but I am sick of DR recycling his old posts.

If your kid exudes strange behavior, is a loner, and seems emotionally distraught, then it's your responsibility as the parent to try to help the them out. If people did give him a hard time for being strange and there is no doubt that they did, then the kid wouldn't have had so much built-up angst.

Some people don't have any fears, emotions, and emotional attachment to people whatsoever. I have to see people die all the time right in front of me at the hospital during internships, and I don't feel a single thing while others have a more difficult time holding back their emotions. He didn't give a fu-k about others and himself, so he went for it.

how the fu-k am I recycling my old posts? Stop trying to take back what you said. People like you enjoy jumping on me because it helps you feel better about your own $hit lives. If everything I say is emo and complete nonsense, then why the fu-k does it bother you so much? It must be because some of what I say must really hit home and so ridiculing me is a form of denial of your own inner pain.

Oh and if I ever lose complete hope and turn into a crazy psycho, I won't need to kill 50 people. I'll just need to kill you, motherfu-ker.

People, such as Cho, Tarantino and Stephen King, do embrace violence, but the problem was that Cho channeled his malice into brutal rampage, while the latter did something positive by converting all of those brutal scenes into work of art & literature. There are little Bonnie & Clyde in every single of us, however, it never implies that you may go trigger happy against others.

blue, that was a really insightful post. glad to be able to read another perspective on this issue.

i know some asians, who actually don't have that much asian friends, and still they're good ppl.

i know that family, friends (or none at all), community he lived in, and media can all influence him to become the person that he is. but it was his choice to accept the ideas of these ppl and live by them. or maybe he didn't and chose to live his way. *shrugs*

i have to admit that sometimes i wanna kill. that's when i get extremely pissed off at the world. but i can assure you that i'll never do it. for me it's easier said than done.

^It takes guts to even kill yourself, much less others. I've felt suicidal at various times of my life but I don't think I can actually go through with killing myself.

I'm a little surprised by the flatness or one-dimensional thinking ability and the lack of critical thinking ability of most of the members in this forum. I'm beginning to think most of you are around 12 years old and have had no life experience or any negative experiences. It also appears many can't connect two and two together.


His plays clearly suggest that child abuse in some form. He is 23 years old and he writes of "schoolteacher" which represents an authority figure and also writes about "killing" the teacher for molestation. His other play talks about an abusive father and his hatred towards him and his wish to "kill" him but because he is vulnerable the father or "authority figure" kills him out of "desecration and anger." He's explaining that he would like avenge his loss of self-respect and identity or gain it back from the one who took it. Evidently he felt he couldn't, evidently he began to see the world or the people around him represented those who mocked or hurt him and responsible indirectly or directly for his pain, which unfortunately is true in many ways. He actually went through with it. It's called symbolism.

Hello??? yoohooo...any brain cells around??? troubled kid, loner, do the simple math. People don't become like this overnight. Also, he called himself a "question mark", I think that is the most poignant and painful thing I've ever heard or read about a young person. To feel so "desecrated" that he didn't know who he was, to feel that much of a loss of self, to feel that raped, he refers to himself as a "question mark." That is what "desecrated" means, something precious, fundamental or intensely personal and private has been either taken from you or no longer exists. This tortured soul was hurting no matter how anyone on this forum, other forums, america or the world want to label him. He was a human being and a young man. I feel profound sympathy for this boy not just for the others. He made a horrible choice and he took his own life. Imagine what it would take for you to do something like this. He told people he had an imaginary girlfriend. He was so lonely but couldn't reach out because he felt that worthless(desecrated).

There are many who wish he was suffering in hell. I say they are blind fools. He was already in hell. Please have some compassion even if others are selfish and on a witchhunt.

I don't buy the lame argument that anyone will snap and go kill people if they were put under certain economic, cultural, and social environments. The reason why this guy went on a rampage is because he was wired up wrongly in his head. Many people in the world go through difficulties of various kinds but they don't buy weapons and start going on a killing spree. Cho was a very disturbed individual who needed psychological help but didn't get any on time.

I don't believe that his upbringing is solely to blame either. The guy had a screw loose (I don't know what clinical term to use...he doesn't quite fit the description of a psychopath or having antisocial personality disorder, so I just think of him as a nutjob) and his environment might have provided incubation for the seed. Yes, plenty of Asian families have isolationist domestic lives, but how come this type of incident isn't a trend within the Asian population? Most people are unhappy, but as you said, BlueAway, there's a difference between thinking and doing.

yeah I agree. the vast majority of 1.5ers are law-abiding citizens. even most people with mental problems don't do anything.

In my opinion the ultimate factor, the "sufficient" cause that kicks people like this over the edge is that they are born evil. Some people are just born evil.

A lot of people have experienced negative things while growing up but go on to live productive lives.

I'm not discounting all the other factors that everyone is mentioning. they all contributed.

another factor I'd add to the mix, and I'm speculating about his family life, might be an extremely abusive/sadistic father (either mentally or physically) and an wholly unsympathetic mother who enables the abuse.

add all the above up, the mental condition, distorted and alienated upbringing, his personal evil streak, etc., and we get a psychopath like cho.

i dont think this has to do anything with him being asian at all.

Well, also the question why he commit the act at this 23? It's about graduation age, why not earlier?
Actually 23, he's too old already for a senior.

english major, that's whities domain. what kind of job he can land?

maybe he realize after all those education, he's still a nobody, still unaccepted. He see no future ahead.
He could easily snap at age 20, 21, 22 but final yr of education might indicates something.
maybe he chooses the wrong major.

This guy was not a "psychopath". Psychopaths are extremely selfish and lack "real" emotions. This particular massacre was full of bottled-up anger. He was a socially isolated individual with a very low self-esteem. Even before BlueAway wrote this post, I thought maybe he would be sympathetic because he's in the same position as this gunman, only to a far lesser extent and that he's found a differet means to cope with it.

Stop the fight between Chinese and Koreans -.-||

It's true however, that an idiot like Cho could be any ethnicity. However, if the dude was Chinese, I can almost expect Koreans denouncing Chinese people and calling us names and $hit.

Stop turning this into a nationalistic issue. This is about Asian-Americans growing up in America, struggling to find their place in society. Not about petty ethnic battles.

Make a new thread if you have to but don't ruin mine.

psychopaths feel no empathy to their victims pain but they do feel anger. Thy can't relate to the victims pain but the original motive to inflict pain can be accompanied by anger toward the victim.

The emotional numbness of a psychopath has to do with inability to empathize with his victims not with other emotions, including intense hatred and anger, that has more to do with his mental condition.

A psychopath is also good at social manipulation. Somehow, I don't think Cho Seung Hui was capable of that.

good point, although when he was examined by a state doctor in 2005 the doctor declared that "His insight and judgment are normal." so there was an ability on his part for "social manipulation" when it was in his interest to do so.

His behavior in front of his classmates and teacher just reflected his disregard/hatred/anger toward them and his lack of empathy for what they felt at his behavior. When the chips were down it seems he could put up a good act in front of people who could affect his life.

here you go agian making ASSumptions you should look at the video he sent NBC.