1992년에 한국은 아시아의 호랑이라 불리는 경제국 중 하나였다. 그러나 조 씨 가족은 그 뒤에 처지고 있었다. 1년 전, 이들은 자신들의 1층집에서 이사해 몇 백 야드 떨어진 침침한 지하방으로 옮겼었다.
당시 집주인이었던 임봉애 씨는 지역 기자들에게 조 씨 가족이 돈 문제로 어려워했다고 말했다. 아버지인 조성태 씨는 집에 없었고, 어머니 향애씨는 부잣집 이웃집에서 청소를 했고, 아이들은 낡고 오래된 옷을 입었다고 그녀가 말했다. “계약 기간이 끝나기도 전에 이들은 미국으로 이주한다고 말했다. 이들은 새로운 시작을 하고 싶어 했다.”고 임 씨가 조선일보와의 인터뷰에서 말했다.
“남자애는 굉장히 조용했던 것으로 기억한다. 걔가 그런 일을 했다는 것이 충격적이다”라고 임 씨가 말했다. 이 아이가 어떻게 살인범이 되었는지는 많은 한국인들에게 불편한 질문이다. 특히 그의 집 근처에 살았던 사람들에게는 말이다.
서울 북쪽 지역으로 오는 택시 안에서 흘러나오는 라디오에서는 청취자들이 세계가 조 씨를 한국인으로 묘사하고 있다는 것에 대해 심하게 불평을 했다. “그는 아직 어렸을 때 여길 떠났다. 그의 특징을 형성한 곳은 미국이니까 그 사람을 우리나라랑 연관시켜서는 안 된다”는 것이 전형적인 코멘트였다.
미국 이민은 쉬웠을 리가 없다. 그가 신창 초등학교를 떠났을 때는 한 반에 47명이 있었다. 이들은 월요일부터 토요일까지 수업이 있었지만, 일주일에 25시간인 수업시간 중에서 한 시간도 영어를 가르치지 않았다.
한국에서 미국으로 이민 온 토마스 남씨는 “힘들 수 있다. 언어 문제도 있고, 놀리기도 하고, 갑자기 자신이 소수자가 되는 경험을 하게 된다”고 말했다. 열등감 콤플렉스는 이러한 환경에서 부자연스럽지 않을 것이다. 특히나 조 씨의 경우에 그는 이미 대부분의 이웃보다 가난했었기 때문이다.
프린스턴 대학 졸업생인 누나의 성공은 문제를 더욱 악화시켰을 수 있다. 왜냐하면, 유교를 믿는 많은 한국인들에게 아들은 딸보다 더 잘하도록 되어있기 때문이다.
센터빌
서울에서 7천마일 떨어진 곳에 버지니아 주 센터빌이 위치해 있다. 여기서 조 씨의 가족은 2층짜리 테라스 하우스에 정착하고, 그의 아버지는 세탁소를 열었다. 조 씨는 동네 고등학교인 웨스트필드 하이에 다녔고, 희생자 중 두 명이 이곳 출신이다.
“그는 놀림을 당했을 수도 있다”고 2학년에 재학중인 케빈 알토마레가 말했다. 어떤 학생들에게는 “정말로 거드름 피우는” 학생들이 고립되는 이유라고 덧붙였다.
1학년 재학생인 두루 헬톤은 인종차별적인 언사를 들어왔다고 말했다. “사람들이 아시아인들을 지칭하는 나쁜 단어가 있다. 바로 ‘칭크’(chink:경멸적으로 중국인을 지칭하는 말)다. 이 단어를 많이 듣는다.”
Name: Cho Seung-hui. Leaving date: 19 August 1992. Reason for departure: Relocation overseas.
The elementary school record was penned neatly in red ink, stamped with three official seals and filed in a cabinet that might never have been reopened were it not for the massacre on the other side of the world.
But it marks one of the key turning points in the life of the South Korean schoolboy who became America's most notorious campus killer.
When the record was filed, Cho was eight. He had done one year and one semester at Shinchang primary school in the suburbs of Seoul when his family decided to make a fresh start across the Pacific. Why they moved is unclear, but economic reasons played a part.
South Korea in 1992 was one of Asia's tiger economies. But Cho's family were getting left behind. A year earlier they had moved out of their first-floor home to a gloomy basement flat a few hundred yards away.
Their landlady of the time, Im Pong-ae, told local reporters the family had had money problems. She said the father, Cho Sung-tae, was never at home, the mother, Hyang Ai, was working as a cleaner in the houses of wealthier neighbours, and the children wore old, unfashionable clothes. "Before our contract was up they announced they were moving to the US ... they want to make a new beginning," Ms Im told the Chosun Ilbo.
"I remember the little boy being a very quiet kid. It is shocking that he did such a thing," Ms Im said. How that child turned into a killer is an uncomfortable question for many Koreans, particularly those who live so close to his first home.
In the taxi to this northern suburb of Seoul, the radio buzzed with a talkshow in which callers complained angrily that the world media was describing Cho as Korean. "He left here when he was still a small child. It is America that has formed his character so they shouldn't associate him with our country," was a typical comment.
The relocation can not have been easy. There were 47 students in Cho's class when he left Shinchang. They studied Monday to Saturday but not one of the 25 hours in the weekly curriculum was devoted to English.
"It can be tough. There are language problems, name-calling and you suddenly find yourself in a minority," said Thomas Nam, who also moved from Korea to the US. An inferiority complex would not be unnatural in such circumstances, particularly when, as in Cho's case, you had already come from a community where you were poorer than most of your neighbours.
The success of his sister, a Princeton graduate, may have made matters worse because, according to the Confucian beliefs of many Koreans, sons are supposed to do better than daughters.
Jonathan Watts
Centreville
Seven thousand miles from Seoul, and 200 miles north-east of the site of the carnage, lies the town of Centreville, Virginia, where Cho's family settled in a modest two-storey terrace house and his father opened a drycleaning business. Cho attended the local high school, Westfield High, where two of his victims were also pupils.
Centreville, a quiet suburb half an hour's drive from Washington DC, is unused to media frenzy. But 24 hours after the shootings dozens of reporters and TV news crews gathered on the corner near Cho's home, the private road blocked by a long row of police motorcycles. Neighbours quietly took photographs.
Jesus Falcon, who recently moved to Centreville, was disturbed that the perpetrator of the mass shootings had lived a few hundred feet away. "It's shock, like immediate shock," he said. "It's now a fact to me that this can happen anywhere. It's chilling and scary."
"He might have got picked on," said Kevin Altomare, a second-year student who identified "really snobby" pupils as a source of isolation for some.
Drew Helton, a first-year student at the school, said he had heard racist talk. "There's a bad word that people call Asians- chink. You hear that one a lot."
This is not the first time tragedy has come to Centreville. Last May Michael Kennedy, a Centreville teenager and Westfield High student, shot and killed two county police officers. "It just seems like this type of crap always happens," said Kevin Altomare. "People go crazy all the time."
Conor Clarke