The aftershocks of the massacre at Virginia Tech have hit the Korean community hard, leaving many SF State students worried that they might now be perceived in a negative light.

James Lee, president of the school's Korean Student Association, said he was shocked that Korea or Koreans are taking responsibility for Cho’s actions. “The Korean-American community does not feel at fault,” Lee said, responding the President of Korea’s formal apology to America. “He was just a guy with issues who happened to be Korean.”

Lee added that he feared the media will skew Cho’s actions, and point social issues at the Korean community as a whole.

Some students do not feel it was necessary for the media to mention Cho’s race at all.

“One of my professors said they focused on his race to deviate from the security problem,” said freshman Jackie Ho.

“He is one person, he does not represent all Asians out there,” Annie Dam, a freshmen, said about the discrimination Asians might be facing.

SF State Korean-American history professor Grace Yoo thinks that it is not race that is the issue but the public's perception of those of foreign descent.

“When people saw the video clips of Cho, they assumed he was an international student,” Yoo said. “The media did not know if they should call him Seung-Hui Cho, or Cho Sueng-Hui.”

Lack of education about mental illness in the Korean-American immigrant community is also a problem, Yoo said.

In a 2005-'07 study Yoo conducted, she found that 30 percent of the Korean immigrant community in the Bay Area and Los Angeles were uninsured. The other 70 percent that were insured were underinsured. Cho’s family is uninsured, according to Yoo.

“Cho was mentally ill, a paranoid schizophrenic and I think his parents had no idea, they did not know the symptoms,” Yoo said.

The issue of race, if it did come up was that Cho was seen as a model minority, “because he was Asian, he could not do anything like that. The problem is how people perceived him, the signs were there,” Yoo said.

Yoo does not think there is enough education among college students on how serious mental illness is or how to notice it. “I could see that happening at SF State, with the lack of education,” Yoo said.

Kevin Keeshan, news director at ABC-7 News, commented on the role race plays in reporting a story. “In the newsroom, we always ask ‘what’s the journalistic purpose?'”

Keeshan’s general policy in reporting a non-identified crminial suspect is to identify any characteristics of the individual, so if the public should see this person, they could notify authorities.

“Especially with all the immigration stuff going on, it was important to mention that Cho was a legal immigrant,” Keeshan said.

Cristina Azocar, the director of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism and who teaches courses in diversity, strongly disagrees with the fact that race is involved in this tragic event at all.

“It raises the question, ‘why does the Korean government feel the need to make a statement, or had it not been reported that Cho was Korean, would they not feel the need to make a statement?'” Azocar said.

Azocar disagrees with Keeshan on the importance of mentioning that Cho was a legal immigrant.

“The fact that he was a Korean immigrant is irrelevant, he was an American student studying, with severe mental issues,” she said.

In response to professor Yoo’s comment about the tendency of Koreans to hide mental illness, Azocar says that “mental illness is hidden all over America out of shame. Look at the homeless in San Francisco - they are mentally ill and we ignore it. There is no intersection between race or culture and mental illness.”

Lee said that at this time, education is more important than ever because it is important for people to understand that race has nothing to do with it. “We are lucky we live in San Francisco, being Asian here feels safe,” Lee said.

Edison Dominguez, a senior studying drama, says that SF State student and all American students should try to adopt a postive reaction.

“We are all students and we all feel how Virginia Tech students are feeling. We have to connect with other people, we can’t isolate, it is the only way to prevent this from happening again.”