CENTREVILLE, VA. — The three-story beige town house on Truitt Farm Drive stands as the Cho family's symbol of middle-class success, precisely what they were searching for when they left a dank basement apartment and a life of struggle in South Korea 15 years ago.
But the dream house is empty now, abandoned by a family on the run, not from the law but from a world seeking some sort of explanation.
Like millions of other immigrant families, Sung-tae Cho and his wife, Hyang-im, struggled to speak English, worked grueling hours and made countless sacrifices to lift their young family upward.
Out of that tough and potentially scarring experience came two very different children: a scholarly, idealistic daughter who graduated from an Ivy League university and a friendless, brooding son who retreated into a dark world of his own and committed the worst mass shooting in modern American history.
Seung-hui Cho's rampage at Virginia Tech Monday killed 32 teachers and students and wounded more than two dozen others. It also left the Korean American community and the rest of the world to wonder what went so horribly wrong. Family members have offered few answers, speaking only to the FBI for the first few days and then saying in a emotional statement Friday that they felt "hopeless, helpless and lost."
No one can know what went through Cho's mind as he prepared and carried out his grisly acts. But there are clues.
Cho, 23, grew up on a quiet cul-de-sac where neighbors waved a friendly hello, but would later say they hardly knew he existed. He attended a mostly white high school that installed round tables in the lunchroom to encourage students to interact, but Cho barely spoke a word. And he was raised in a South Korean family and culture that so values boys his mother once told her employer that she wished her son had attended Princeton instead of her daughter.
Asian immigrants tend to emphasize education and success, and by all accounts, the Chos were no exception. From a South Korean immigrant's perspective, said Edward T. Chang, professor of ethnic studies at UC Riverside and an immigrant himself, you are either a success or a failure.
"There is no middle ground."
Poor, rural roots
Cho's parents have always struggled to make ends meet.
Sung-tae Cho, the killer's father, came from a poor rural area. He was a "country bumpkin" and considerably older than his wife, the daughter of a refugee, said Seung-hui Cho's great-aunt, Kim Yang-soon. "We practically forced her to get married."
