I thought you all may be interested because of our previous gun control conversations.
This article from the Washington Post talks about international reactions to the Virginia Tech shootings and heavy questions about America's gun problems.
Jane, I read somewhere that South Korean officials offered public condolences to the Virgina Tech families. Can you offer any more insight into the international reactions? I think the writers of the Post article just looked at other news web sites to find out what they were covering.
Jane's UPDATE: One of the best blogs about Korea, The Marmot's Hole, has an excellent post on the subject, which continues to be updated as new information becomes available. Click here to read. (He summarizes a lot of Korean news sites, which is great for those of us - like me - whose Korean skills are embarrassingly limited.) One of the things he has mentioned is that the Korean President and Foreign Minister have offered their condolences to the American people. Definitely read the post; it's quite informative. There is an incredibly long post on this topic up at another great blog about Korea, Scribblings of the Metropolitician, entitled The Politics of Pride and Shame, which I recommend, assuming that you can force yourself to wade through the entire piece.
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Jane, I am really shocked at the Marmot's Hole posts (full disclosure: I haven't read the Metropolitican yet-- it's early and I have work!) Maybe I live in a giant bubble, but I haven't heard any American sources judging all Koreans or Korean students based on the actions of this one sick person. I think it's horrible that the Korean media/blogosphere, and probably the rest of the world, have such little faith in Americans actually standing by any values they (we) profess to have by accepting people for who they are, not for where they come from.
Marmot makes a quick reference to Arabs who experienced backlash after Sept. 11, and I think we can include the Japanese after Pearl Harbor as a more horrific example. The difference here is that, from what we know so far, this student didn't represent anyone but himself and wasn't defending any cause but what was floating around in his own twisted head.
I participate in several homeland security listservs for work (just Yahoo! groups, any one can join them) and there was a big argument yesterday on one of them about whether this tragedy constituted an act of terrorism. Basically, disagreement was between whether any act that causes terror can be called terrorism or if terrorism has a specific definition, namely "Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against
persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population or any segment thereof in futherance of political or social objectives." [I quoted that from a listserv post, not sure where that person got it.] In the case of the latter, the listserv-ers pointed out, this was not an act of terror, just a terrifying act (at least with what we know now). I bring that up here to point out that I don't think anyone believes that this person acted on behalf of Korea or any Koreans, and therefore I didn't expect anyone would turn to blame Koreans for this in any way.
Has anyone else heard American media pointing this finger? Does anyone really think that this incident would affect diplomatic relations?
Jen - I don't think you're living in a bubble; I think it's Korea and those of us who are here who are in a bit of a bubble.
Koreans (and I'm obviously generalizing here) are hugely nationalistic, and have such a huge pride in everything Korean. Koreans have a tendency to deny that Koreans have any fault whatsoever. The fact that someone who is "Korean" (despite the fact that he was a legal resident of the US since he was a child) has committed such an atrocity is hugely embarrassing to people who believe their race (and believe me, you hear a lot about the Pure Korean Race over here)is perfect. They also seem to think that the rest of the world will be equally as horrified that A Korean (and thus representative of the peninsula) could do this as they are.
Additionally, given how Korea reacted several years ago when some US troops killed two Korean children in a car accident (massive anti-american protests, demands that the USFK pull out of the peninsula), they probably expect that Americans will react in kind.
I did not know that. Thanks! I was worried there was some jerk with a mircophone yelling out things that make us all look crazy.
Also, for another interesting opinion on guns in the US, I found this on Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2164510/nav/tap2/
More excellent (but lengthy) posts from The Metropolitician regarding Korea's reaction to the shooting here and here.
Jen - That's quite an interesting article on gun control on Slate. I'm not entirely sure how to respond (quite possibly because I'm about to fall asleep) but it certainly brings up some excellent points.
A small quote from the article:
No wonder Iraqis find the outcry over Virginia Tech puzzling. Scores of them die every week, while many of us hardly notice. Our gun debate makes little sense to them.
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