Joe Eaton

Both young men went to Virginia Tech after high school. Yet whenever Joe encountered Cho, who grew up to be a 6-footer with glasses, on Virginia Tech’s sprawling 2,600-acre campus, Cho rebuffed attempts to make conversation.

“He was a quiet guy, a really, really quiet guy, to the point where sometimes you would ask him questions and he wouldn’t respond to you,” says Joe, who remembers Cho as a “supersmart” student known for his math skills at Westfield, but who always kept to himself.

Andy Wong, 19, who lives on the second floor of Harper Hall, the dormitory where Cho lived, says that Cho was largely invisible to other residents of the dorm. According to Wong, none of his acquaintances on the floor knew much of anything about Cho. “I was surprised to learn that he lived on our hall. I might have seen him once, but I don’t remember.”

Joe, 21, graduated early and is now back in Northern Virginia working. Cho was due to graduate this semester. When Joe heard about the shooting, “Man, I felt sad for him. Maybe people should’ve tried harder to reach him.”

“I feel sorry for him and sad about the situation,” says Joe. “It feels so odd. It’s strange to see his face on CNN. This is the face of a killer. I think he was just a confused kid.”

The Chicago Tribune reported that the shooter left “an invective-filled note” in his dorm room, in which he decried “rich kids,” “debauchery” and “deceitful charlatans” on campus. He also had the words “Ismail Ax” written in red ink on his arm at the time of the shootings, the paper reported, and had been referred to Virginia Tech counseling services because of “disturbing” creative writing. One English professor described him as “troubled.”

At about 1 p.m. Monday in front of Harper Hall, the residence hall where Cho lived on the second floor, Young-je Ko, 21, and his girlfriend Hyun-jung Kim, 19, sat in a black Mustang preparing to leave campus. Ko, a senior accounting major, said he and other South Korean students are afraid to stay on campus. Ko said many of their friends in a Korean Christian group were also planning to leave Blacksburg for Northern Virginia.

“It’s like when 9/11 happened,” Ko said. “Arab people are victims even though they didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just the same to me.” Ko said Korean students have been e-mailing and calling each other since the release of Cho’s name this morning. He said he wanted to attend today’s convocation at 2 p.m., where President Bush was scheduled to speak, but friends warned him against it. “People said don’t attend because it could be a bad situation,” he said.

Ko, who emigrated from South Korea in 2001, and Kim, who emigrated in 2002, were heading home to Annandale, Va., near Washington, where their parents live. “My parents were so worried,” Kim said. “When I left my dorm, I felt like the white kids were staring at me.”

Jae Kun Lee, a Korean national, also decided to leave. His parents had called him from South Korea, where the shooting is being covered extensively by the media, and expressed concern for his safety.

“Sooner or later it’s going to impact us directly or indirectly,” said Lee. “If someone lost a loved one, of course, they are upset. Some bad things might happened just because I am Korean.”

Lee was heading to a friend’s house in Northern Virginia. “It’s good to stay away and wait.”

Racist screeds have cropped up quickly among right-wing commentators and on the Internet, including the idea that Korean males are excessively prone to violent jealous rages.

In Christiansburg, Va., less than 10 miles from Blacksburg, Mi-hwan Park said her daughter Veronica would be attending the convocation. Veronica is a member of a campus Korean student organization. Her mother said she raised her children to think of themselves as individuals more than part of a nationality. She hopes others see the crime as the act of an individual, but she is worried. “This is an individual thing, not a nation thing,” she said.

Michael Ko and Mindy Koo, both 20-year-old Americans of Chinese descent, said other Asian-Americans they knew were afraid to be seen in public. “For me,” said Ko, from Richmond, Va., “I just don’t feel like I’m scared.”

Mindy Koo said her parents called and asked her to leave Blacksburg and return to her home in Northern Virginia because they feared for her safety. She declined. “I feel that would be worse if all the Asian-Americans fled campus. We can’t leave Virginia Tech in this time of grieving.”

But Koo said she did wonder whether people were watching her this morning as she ate breakfast in a school dining hall. And Michael Ko said some of his friends had left Blacksburg.

Andy Wong is a 19-year-old freshman who lived on the same floor as Cho and never met the shooter, who has been characterized as a loner. Wong does not think there will be an anti-Asian backlash on campus. “It’s not going to be taken as a race thing,” he said. “People understand this is a special case.”

Amy Ballard, a 19-year-old white sophomore at Virginia Tech, said that among her friends, the issue of the shooter’s race and nationality hasn’t really come up. “It’s interesting that he was an international student, but I feel it isn’t really relevant at all to anything.”

Representatives of the South Korean government sent condolences after Cho’s national origin was revealed. South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun said he was “indescribably shocked once again by the fact that the tragic shooting incident at Virginia Tech on April 16 was caused by a South Korean permanent resident.

“We convey deep condolences to the victims and their bereaved families and the [American] people,” said Cho Byung-Jae, head of the North American affairs bureau of South Korea’s foreign ministry. But he also mentioned that the government was taking “safety measures” for Koreans in the United States. He was apparently referring to the possibility of reprisal attacks against ethnic Koreans in the U.S. He said he hoped the shootings would not “stir up racial prejudice or confrontation.”

Before Hyun-jung Kim and Young-je Ko drove out of the parking lot at Harris Hall, Ko questioned whether things might be worse in Annandale, a Northern Virginia city with a large Korean community. Still, he said he felt safer with family. “We are all Hokie [Virginia Tech students] here, but we don’t know what will happen.”

“A shooting incident occurred at West Ambler Johnston earlier this morning,” the e-mail read. “Police are on the scene and are investigating. The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia tech police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case … Stay attuned to the www.vt.edu. We will post as soon as we have more information.”

Megan Clough, a 19-year-old who lives on the fifth floor of West Ambler Johnston, says she was awakened at around 8:30 by her resident advisor, who knocked on her door and told her to stay in her room. The R.A. did not tell her why she needed to remain in her room.

Casey Ademski, 19, who lives across the hall from Clough, says she received a similar knock on the door. She was told not to go outside, but was not given a reason. She looked out her window and saw someone being carried out on a stretcher. “I think they should have notified the other dorms also,” Ademski said. Allie Jarett, who also lives on the fifth floor, says she left the building at 8 a.m. for an architecture class without having heard anything about the shooting in the dorm.

Dennis Griffin, a 19-year-old who lives on the sixth floor of West Ambler Johnston, says he knew nothing about the shooting until he received the e-mail after 9. He was already in his second class by that time. When he left the dorm at 8, he says he thought nothing of the police cars and ambulances outside the building because there had recently been several bomb threats on campus. Griffin says he believes classes should have been shut down after the first shooting. “Something more should have been done.”

Nineteen-year-old Michael Dalton, who lives in another dorm, says he too learned nothing of the shooting until the first e-mail.

“If they would have canceled classes,” says Jarett, “they could have prevented 30 deaths. If someone was shot in our building at 7:15, they should have told us. They should have canceled classes.”

Virginia Tech students made similar complaints to other members of the media. “I was in class … two buildings over,” Michelle Billman, a student radio general manager, told ABC News. “Someone got a text message saying something was going on. After that we were told to stay in the building, away from the windows. Right at the end of class, 9:50 or 9:55. I checked my e-mail about 8:30 … went to my class as I usually would. By 8:30 no one [had been] notified that something had happened at 7. We went onto a dangerous campus not knowing.”

By mid-afternoon, some students were sharing their stories with friends and family via online posts. On her LiveJournal blog, Brittany Wilson described waking for class at 6:30 a.m., studying until 8:30, and going to class, where a friend informed her that as she had been leaving her room at West Ambler Johnston, she had been stopped by police and asked for identification, and then sent on her way to class. “At that time, the first shooting had already occurred in WAJ!!!!! Why were we allowed to leave our damn dorms?!!?!” wrote Wilson.

The students were finally warned of the presence of an armed intruder by e-mail. “A gunman is loose on campus,” it said. “Stay in buildings until further notice.” It was mailed at 9:50 a.m.