V-Tech Shooter’s “Very Different Sister”
by Richardson ~ April 19th, 2007. Filed under: America, Koreans in America.When dealing with a disturbed killer like Cho, one wonders at times about the parents. One might ask, “What kind of parents produced a monster like this?”
All reports from Korean and the US media portray people who had a hard life in Seoul and left Korea for the United States in search of a better life. They operated a dry cleaner in Virginia. I have little doubt that they worked very hard and sacrificed much to make a good home for their children and provide educational opportunities for them.
Both parents are reportedly very distressed, perhaps even attempted suicide after the shootings.
It might be worthwhile to note that Cho has a sister who turned out very differently. Chosun Ilbo has a short article titled “Very Different Sister” (in Korean). I do not have the time to translate the whole article precisely, so I will summarize the major points.
According to the piece, the sister has been a laudable youth by all accounts. She graduated from “Centreville High School” in 2000 and studied economics at Princeton. Although it was initially reported that she works for the State Department, in reality she works for a contractor for the State Department in Springfield, VA. She has taken a leave of absence to deal with the trauma and shock in the aftermath of the shootings.
After her third year at Princeton, she interned with the economic section of the US embassy in Thailand. While there, she surveyed the labor conditions of young Burmese girls on the Thai-Burma (Myanmar) border and found the situation shocking. This was a profound life experience for her.
After 9/11, she volunteered for the “Princeton Organization” which provided aid to young people traumatized by 9/11. The article ends with “She graduated from an Ivy League university and has a good job, but now her American dream may crumble.”
I, of course, do not know the internal dynamics of the Cho family, but I would assume the parents provided similar parenting to both children. Yet, the sister built her American dream while the brother became an inexplicable mass murderer.
April 20th, 2007 at 4:57 am
The American dream angle I guess worked fine enough in the Korean context, but of course, as an American, it made me want to wack the author upside the head with paper.
The parents were the one with the American Dream, and it worked. They made it work (as far as we know — meaning unless it turns out they were sadistic to the son or whatever which it seems pretty sure they were not).
They came to the US and somehow got the capital to start their own business, and as you noted, like other small business people, especially immigrants, they probably worked their asses off in that business…
And by doing so, they gave their children what many immigrant families for centuries in the US have hoped for: the chance of a better life.
Both childern went on to college (and I know plenty of examples of kids in my family and my area who couldn’t afford to go to college or dropped out in this working class area of Georgia).
One went to an Ivy League school and has done very well.
The other could have.
The American Dream is about having the opportunity to make your way in life. The freedom to suceed through hardwork and ambition as well as the freedom to live your life as you wish.
The American Dream didn’t fail for this family - their son did for whatever reason.
The “American Dream” angle as the Korean press have mentioned it could work if you could build an argument around the idea that — if the family had stayed in Korea, the son would have grown up to be a normal, productive member of Korean society, but, wanting more for the kids, the family moved to the US, but American society corrupted him and caused the dream to explode in a hail of bullets.
If you don’t try to build a case that it was the American Dream’s fault for what happened —-
—-then I’d say the son was also living that dream until his screwed up head caused him to toss it all away…
He was in college earning a degree which is part of a parent’s version of the American Dream….
April 20th, 2007 at 9:06 am
I believe the primary cause of Cho’s mental instability is physiological. As James Na pointed out correctly, the environmental factors were similar - same parents, same community - yet two very different outcomes. One of my siblings has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and after a very long year of erratic behavior, he is now much better thanks to a great doctor who supervised him carefully while adjusting his medication to the right combination and dosage. He had a hard childhood, too, growing up in poverty and losing our father when he was only ten years old. Later on, as a teenager, he had to live under the authority of an uncaring stepfather whom my mother thankfully divorced. As an adult, he faces the usual stresses of a challenging job and supporting a large family. Everyone has hardships of one form or another, and save for extreme stresses like war or extended abuse, these hardships alone do not explain mental illness. Stresses may exacerbate serious brain chemistry problems, but they do not cause them.
Rather than focusing on Cho’s ethnicity, backlash fears, or gun control, I’d like to see the media lead the way in promoting greater understanding and awareness of mental health.
April 20th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Another perspective on Cho from a childhood friend:
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2874668
April 20th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
After reading various articles on Cho, including the Joongang article posted by Sonagi above, a reader says by email:
April 20th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
I think we have to be careful about all these family members, schoolmates, and acquaintances of Cho’s coming out of the woodwork to offer their own perceptions years later. There is clinical documentation of Cho’s mental instability, and yes, the reader is correct that mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder can worsen over a relatively short period of time, often in the late teenage or early adult years. My brother was always a little moody, but otherwise, he was a normal person, very popular, athletic, academically and socially successful. His erratic behavior escalated considerably over a period of about one year in his late twenties before he was finally given a series of tests and examinations that would lead to his diagnosis. Judging from what has been reported in the media, Cho had shown unusual behaviors for quite awhile.
I do think we should be careful about Monday morning armchair quarterbacking. His unstable behaviors at VT were reported and he was briefly hospitalized but released in accordance with the law. Hopefully, mental health professionals and school personnel with access to records will cooperate to see if there are any lessons to be learned from this tragedy.
Post-Columbine, schools across the country re-examined their facilities and security procedures to make their campuses as safe as possible given the conditions of the surrounding community and the law.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:00 am
“Stresses may exacerbate serious brain chemistry problems, but they do not cause them.”
I have no sound basis for this, but I have a feeling 25 years from now or so, we will be thinking differently on this.
If the key word is “serious”, I think we’ll end up seeing DNA (or what we might call “nature”) is the dominating factor, but with most usual, even troublesome, brain chemistry problems, we’ll find environmental factors, including factors of personal choice, have a lot of influence on our brains.
For example, it seems this guy endulged in his warped fantasies. I bet years from now, scientists are telling us much more about how such endulgence alters brain chemistry over time.
Basically, what I mean is, it seems today we have a general idea that you are born with one chemistry and doctors can medicate you to adjust that chemistry day-to-day to a more proper setting.
But, 25 years from now, I think we’ll see an equal amount of emphasis on the individual’s ability to regulate mental health (including brain chemstry) through therapy and other means that stress behavior and environmenal regulation rather than medication as the only primary key.
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:31 am
I am with “usinkorea” on this one. I do not believe the brain chemistry, or “wiring,” is completely set. I do believe repetitive behavior and self-conditioning affects and re-conditions this wiring.
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:48 pm
I should clarify. I don’t think it’s all inborn brain chemistry, either, but an interaction between brain chemistry and the environment. Physiological responses to external stresses can send somebody on a downhill path.