Killer's parents hospitalised 'with shock'

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=261805


The parents of mass killer Cho Seung-hi were hospitalised with shock and had not attempted suicide, contrary to reports in Korean media.

Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that Cho's parents, who ran a dry cleaning shop in Centreville, Virginia, had been hospitalised after learning of ther son's killing rampage at Virginia Tech University.

Rumours earlier spread through Korean media sources that Cho's parents had attempted suicide.

<snip>

Cho was a permanent resident of the US, who came there to live there with his parents in 1992. His sister was a graduate of Princeton University, according to the Korea Times.

I can't even imagine what they must be going through right now, knowing what their son did.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=261850

The family lived in a rented, basement apartment - usually the cheapest unit in a multi-apartment building, the newspaper reported quoting building owner Lim Bong-ae, 67. Police identified the shooter's father as Cho Seong-tae, 61.

"I didn't know what (Cho's father) did for a living. But they lived a poor life," Lim told the newspaper. "While emigrating, (Cho's father) said they were going to America because it is difficult to live here and that it's better to live in a place where he is unknown."

<snip>

Kim Min-kyung, a South Korean student at Virginia Tech reached by telephone from Seoul, said there were about 500 Koreans at the school, including Korean-Americans. She said she had never met Cho. She said South Korean students feared retaliation and were gathering in groups.

South Korean diplomats were travelling to the shooting site, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Hee-yong.

I hate the fucking generalization that happens so often when things go so horribly wrong.

Thanks for the additional info, rainbow.

has committed.

I've only heard Republicans deny the existence of mental illness which this young man so clearly displayed.

The brain is an organ, like the kidney or heart, and can malfunction. To demonize a boy because of an illness is pretty archaic.

It is obvious this killer was disturbed, but what I do not understand is why you are offering up excuses for EVIL, yes EVIL behavior.

Some people are just rotten to the core, why is that so hard to believe?

Some people wish to live in the dark ages.

that's for sure.

Bush and Cheney are evil. Evil is goal-oriented and doesn't care who it tramples underfoot to achieve its goals. It is purposeful and patient and can wait for decades if necessary until the moment is right. The goal does NOT involve self-destruction, although evil people have been known to commit suicide like Hitler in his bunker when they fail.

The VTech killer was mentally deranged, not evil. If he'd been sane, he would have known that his behavior would inevitably result in his own destruction, and he would have avoided it.

"I don't know how to define it, but I know what it is when I see it."

"I don't know how to define it, but I know what it is when I see it."

So this person has asked you to define evil....

Well let me give "it" my version...

Someone who is evil will attempt to destroy you any through means....

Generally they are very aware of their victims, and will have by this time, identified their weaknesses, for whom they feel passion, and the ardent principles they stand for.

People that have evil intentions will then attempt to destruct this person from each level of de terminating strength you have.

They will plan your destruction in a methodical, systematic, and premeditated fashion.

These are very sick, but talented individuals in so much as they are able to observe and emotionally dissect their victim. And they gather information that will be influential for their ultimate goal

These are generally people that have a personality disorder that has been described as Narcissistic Personality Disorder. They are dangerous people, however, I have had great experience with them. In fact I have two ex-husbands that are both afflicted.

That describes Cho pretty well. Cho was evil.

If a tree falls on a car, you can't blame the tree for being evil. If the driver is distracted and causes an accident, that is negligent and selfish but not intentional, doesn't quite fit with the idea of evil. Same as if the mechanic didn't put the wheels on right and they fall off on the highway, he didn't intend for it to happen so it's negligant and certainly worthy of punishment but not proper GOP evil. If the car is defective and the manufacturer never issued a recall because they did not consider it to be worth the money, now we're getting into evil territory. If the mechanic deliberately sabotaged the vehicles he worked on because he got off on the idea of people dying in flaming metal coffins, that's true evil.

When you're looking at mentally defective people who do horrible things, you have a hard time even finding a rational person to blame there. Someone like an Andrea Yates, by her own mind she was doing what was best for her kids because she feared they would go to hell if they continued to live in her presence. Killing them now sent them to heaven.

True evil requires a sound, rational mind, a person who is completely responsible for his actions and is aware of the consequences. Some evil simply does not care for who gets hurt such as Enron executives fucking people out of their life savings, it's a means to an end. Some evil sees the harm as an end unto itself like a serial killer, the pain and terror is what gives them pleasure.

I go back and forth between which I feel is the worst kind of evil, is it the mafia hitman who does what he does because it's "business" or the one who kills because he enjoys it and doing it for the mafia just pays the bills.

There was a news story years back about a father who was pure evil. His girlfriend at the time did not show proper sympathy when the guy's father died so he held that against her in his heart and laid out a plan. He continued dating and married her. They had a child together. He let her have a year with the baby to get good and bonded, properly in love. Then he nailed it to a tree. "Now you know how I felt about my dad you bitch." The high level of functioning required to do something like this, you cannot blame simple insanity. This goes so far beyond that.

The neocons are the manifestation of evil. Evil is soulless, cynical, manipulative and overarchingly destructive.

Bush (All of them!)
Cheney
Wolfowitz
Perle
Feith
Rove
Libby
Rumsfeld
Gonzalez
Ashcroft

are all evil.

Cho was schizophrenic.

This kid was mentally disturbed. I will guarantee you that. No one saw it coming, not even his own parents.

So fucking lay off

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

A 23 year old young man decided it was better to be dead than alive and you don't think he was ill? He was showing signs for months and months and one of his professors was desperately trying to get him help or get him restrained before he acted, and that's your Bush-like analysis? "He was evil."

Evil is a good name for a society that will not help its mentally ill, except to provide them with guns.

There is a difference.

And to answer your question about evil--to be evil, a person has to have a choice between good and bad actions. They have to have a brain that functions clearly enough to make those choices. This man's actions were evil, no question. But it isn't clear whether his brain functioned enough for us to call him evil.

Those around this shooter picked up that something was wrong with him, even predicting he would do something like this. Most are calling him "shy," but if you've ever been close to a paranoid delusional schizophrenic, you see that behavior. It's not "shy," it's being unable to form normal responses in the brain to social situations. A PDS learns not to trust his or her brain, not to trust what's happening around him. His brain doesn't work--the chemicals and electrical impulses literally don't function as they do in healthy people. The people around this shooter picked up bad vibes. But they aren't describing him as evil, but as sick, troubled, dysfunctional.

I've been very close to evil, and very close to mental illness. You know the diference when you've experienced both. Evil manifests itself in other ways. Evil people torture animals, or threaten to shoot people, or talk about revenge over trivial things. Evil people act evil, they don't act painfully withdrawn and troubled.

I don't know which this shooter was, but the sketchy details so far sound to me like an unmedicated (or misdiagnosed) paranoid delusional schizophrenic.
This shooter may turn out to be something else. Maybe he is just an evil, selfish, Republican type. But so far that's not what those who knew him are revealing. The shooters at Columbine, Killeen, and San Ysidro, I can describe as evil. They were petty, self-centered, and spoiled. Like Bush, they thought everything should go their way and they were going to make the world pay for not putting them in the center of it. This shooter, so far, seems quite different. We need to learn the difference, because it's obvious this man gave off every warning sign possible. This should have been prevented. We need to get over our cultural stereotypes and learn the signs, and maybe save a few lives. Act like the civilized nation we pretend we are.

I'm not excusing him, or making excuses. I'm just explaining possible reasons he did this, so that maybe we can stop others from doing it.

(Edited last line a little).

Evil people "threaten to shoot people."

Mentally-ill people actually do it.

:wtf:

Best for you to avoid this site. Thinking people post here.

We've heard about the psych drugs that can completely change a person's personality and induce suicides and violent behavior. Friends and family will say this is not the person they knew and they couldn't have been such an actor as to fake being good. We've heard about how brain injuries and tumors can cause radical shifts in behavior.

We like to think of character as being immutable, a core part of our being. So what do you have when a good person goes over the edge and it was the drugs? How does that compare with a lying, thieving puppy torturer who has been a devil since childhood who goes over the edge and kills someone?

Science says nothing about souls and an afterlife. All we really have to discuss are the concepts of nature vs. nurture. There are kids who grow up in horrible situations and turn out good, there are kids given everything who turn out bad. Someone like Jeffrey Dahmer was born into a wonderful family and yet was also born a monster. Our vets were born in wonderful families, raised up right, and come home from the war fucked up enough to kill themselves and maybe take a few people with them. Were their actions even theirs to choose at this point?

I think evil comes down to choice and freewill. If someone can choose to do evil, then they are evil.

Some define the basis of evil as a lack of empathy. I would say that it's the willingness to put your interests ahove another person's and the ease with which you can do that could be due to a lack of empathy. Taking the last cookie and not sharing is inconsiderate, taking someone's life because it gives you pleasure is evil, but you can see how it's still the same idea.

like that...

to a more educated understanding of the human condition. Now, most people understand that mental illness is to blame for such incidents, not EVIL or some such silliness.

Your anger makes you look kinda stupid. Babbling semi-religious BS about pure evil and how they don't deserve understanding or compassion is both wrongheaded and un-Christian, and is guaranteed to do NOTHING to prevent future similar tragedies from occurring.

What we need to focus on is understanding that this mentally disturbed young man was clearly troubled for a long time, and professors and fellow students were aware of it to the point of referring him to counseling and notifying the police, but nothing was done.

Instead of firing up the pyre or tossing his corpse in the lake to see if it floats, perhaps we should all ask each other to keep a better eye on the troubled people around us, and ask that mental health treatment availability be better funded and advertised.

:thumbsup:

It can be applied to Bushco or other big shots in the world who do so much damage without getting their own hands dirty, perhaps - it only means supremely selfish and able to get away with it.

There is a certain comfort in calling someone like this shooter "evil" because it lets the person belief there is a subset of people who can be identified as "evil" and once that can be done, all violence can be prevented by locking up or killing those people - but reality is far more complex, and none of us knows what we might have done had we been born into and brought up in certain situations or experienced certain things.

it is an ignorant, uneducated point of view? Which you are completely entitled to, of course.

Spot on.

Furthermore, there was no opportunity afforded to throw him into the lake and see if he floats.

So, unless you have firm evidence, at least as good as a cluster of three hairy warts close together upon his face-- then your accusations of demonic possession are baseless.

However, there are several DUers who have come to me and said that they did see YOU dancing naked in the woods with a dark figure...

It has only been a few days, all of the facts are not out, and you are already passing judgement.

People that have severe heart attacks clutch their chest and collapse. People with diverticulitus grab their side and wince in pain. PEOPLE WITH UNTREATED MENTAL ILLNESS DO CRAZY UNACCEPTABLE THINGS.

If his brain was not functioning properly, and the signs were apparent, why wasn't he helped? Why do we have a society that allows a mentally ill person access to a gun?

This whole fucking thing is so sad, and it raises questions...please don't resort to reducing the entire matter to a talking point by calling him a demon spawn.

great post.

down about this.

I would think that by this time, people would start getting a handle on what it means to have a mental illness.

I will bare my soul here a little. I was hospitalized for depression once, severe depression, brought on by another medical condition. I was so depressed, I had no freakin' idea what was happening to me. They roomed me with a gentleman with schizophrenia, who had decided to stop taking his meds. he spent the whole night talking to voices that only he could hear, and repeatedly removing all of his clothes, then kneeling to pray, then putting his clothes back on.

It was THAT MOMENT that I understood the brain as simply being another organ, that can fail like any other.

demonic possession.

I can't even imagine what they must be going through. They are his victims too.

I am sure the folks held out hope. It is sad the police didn't follow up on the teacher's recommendations after she acknowledged how troubled he was.

It's a very sad tale.

Even this family with a business couldn't find decent housing. Tells you something, doesn't it? Looks like they tried to do right by their kids. Mental illness can happen in any family.

thought she was Virgin Mary. I am dead serious. The girl had to be watched constantly and kept on heavy meds. She had no sense or reality and was eventually institutionalized. Her family was well to do. Unless you've been there and seen it you don't understand.

PRINCETON.

Money was not their problem. They lived in a comfy-upper-middle suburb of DC. In a nice townhouse, in an excellent neighborhood, close to amenities--a desireable location.

Their mentally ill son was their problem.

And we have no idea if they tried to do right by him or not, yet. We have no idea that they didn't, either.

For all we know, they could have told him to "suck it up and act normal." Or they could have been astute, aware "made-for-TV-movie" parents who do all the research and pester the doctors for help.

There's no information out there to support either thesis.

Peeps go beserk across the globe......

Again, the brain is an organ, and can become sick. Why blame the person?

sick brains.

Where is the help/solutions/etc to reduce/cure sick brains?

http://www.rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thesmokinggun.com%2Farchive%2Fyears%2F2007%2F0417071vtech1.html


his play reads like a storybook kid who was raped and a family who just really did not help the boy get help.

shock yes. sadness more the case for me that we live in a society that perpetuates ignorance around the power of psychiatric help for the ever rising cases of childhood rape.

Not only is the story twisted, but it sure doesn't read like it was written by a senior English major in College. More like a freshman/High School. I can understand why the teacher suggested counseling...if this was representitive of his output, I don't know how he made it this far.

very strange topic.

It is probably a very likely scenario. Chemical imbalance coupled with abuse. I have read a few true-crime novels about people that are horribly abused as children that go on to be serial killers.

in that one too.

http://news.aol.com/virginia-tech-shootings/cho-seung-hui/_a/mr-brownstone-title-page/20070417141309990001

that he doesn't catch a few grammatical errors that he should have, had he gone back and checked. He was probably pounding away at the keyboard, really INTO that story...for whatever reason, quite possibly the one you postulated. The bit about the Catholics was certainly curious, too. I didn't read the whole thing, but when the mother enters, he's plainly all wound up when writing that bit.

I hadn't heard a squeak concerning them, except that their house is an off-white. :eyes:

So much for the spin by the MSM sycophants! I wonder how they missed the suicide angle! :sarcasm:

I feel really bad for the parents of Cho Seung-Hui too. They must be devasted.

After all, they also lost a son....

The obvious horror and the dishonor to the family. I can imagine they are freaking out.

the part of the article where people back in Korea said that one of the reasons the father wanted to move here ot the US was to be where no one "knew him"..and now this happens. But then the comment also started me thinking what, if anything, in their life back there made him want that?

(see post #4 for the article that has that info)

I suspect there's some very dark secrets in this family.

It's a strange thing to say. It could be something more innocuous that got garbled in the translation from Korean to English.

Maybe the family was very troubled, and maybe they weren't. But in the absence of any real evidence of abuse, my heart has to go out to his parents right now. I can't imagine living with the knowledge that your own child did something like this.

mkultra...

and many people have contacted me with the same thoughts..

fly

and multiple personality conspiracies. sheesh.

:tinfoilhat: :puke:

...since I would think that the best thing for the parents to do, if they could do so without other major problems, would be to return to South Korea, where few would "know them" as the parents of the boy who committed the worst school atrocity in history.

:-(

this might cause further harm to a family that no doubt is in absolute, unbelievable shock. The dishonor may be enough to ultimately push at the least the father toward suicide...and taking the mom with him as is his role as head of household.

My blessing of peace and ultimate understanding go out to these parents...all of them..but particularly these two.

I simply could not wrap my mind around it if this was my son. I tried to imagine it yesterday, and could not get very far into it without shaking my head and simply shutting down my train of thought.

...that it can happen in any family.

Two separate families I've known -- where the parents were friends of mine -- in each family one child had a psychotic break.

The first time, I watched the mother be so distraught because she was not financially or legally able to more than minimally intervene to help her child, who had just turned 18. Fast forward 10 years: this is one self-aware young woman, highly artistic, who also appears to maintain herself adequately on meds. But her life and point of view will never be "normal".

The second time, it was the father who was my friend, and they had all the money anyone could want. They tried everything, they pleaded for help, as their son spiraled downward, even placing him in a residential clinic for a time. But at the age of 19 he knifed his stepmother to death in the yard of their home and took off to catch a bus, covered in her blood. He will spend the rest of his life in a mental hospital. His father is destroyed.

Mental illnesses like these are chronic, lifelong, and have a physical cause. Very often the mentally ill are NOT violent, but thanks to the cost of care and the legal system, they often end up in bad circumstances anyway.

We don't know what the Cho family has already gone through, only that they are suffering and will continue to suffer forever.

There's an awful lot we don't know about their son, but at the moment it appears he was mentally ill, not participating in some jihad. So, no, I don't think of him as "evil". I'd have to know a lot more before I could reach that conclusion.

Hekate

It's best not to be quick to rule this out in any family. You never know.

including the Cho family. What a tragedy.

This reminds me of the sad story involving the death of a local teen. The young person had been killed in a shooting, but the police weren't able to locate her parents...they had gone out for the day...in the meantime someone released the name of the deceased to the local media who then sent their newstruck...followed by others...to their house. The girl's parents came home...still not aware of what had happened to their daughter...and saw this horde of people sitting in front of their house. Imagine that horror. I still can't phatom what went through their minds or how degrading/frustrating it must be to be the center of such a story.

For years I worked with Koreans and have known several families...it's a very close and disciplined society...and in many ways very insulated from American culture. I suspect we're going to learn in the days/weeks ahead of a young man torn between two cultures and identities. Hopefully the corporate media will allow his parents to grieve quietly and privately...enough victims are enough.

In the Korean culture this is a terrible dishonor. It's just a shame for everyone involved.

It would sure be nice to see the victim's families reach out to THEM the way that the Amish did to their shooters family.
They are victims too.

these oarents lost their son as well..

there is survival guilt victims as well..and all the students and faculty are victims as well..who survived..

lets not judge..lest we be judged.

we can be angry..that is normal..

we can be sad..that is normal..

we can cry ..that is normal..

but there are many many victims in this..

fly

So now everyone knows where they live, and every freaking bigoted yahoo knows where to find them.

Pierre Thomas of ABC posed RIGHT UNDER the street signs at the corner, so you know exactly where their townhouse is in Centreville. Someone even interviewed the couple's MAILMAN.

GOD! Restraint is a foreign term in television news!

For them, and the parents of all the victims, a poem: