As Virginia Tech students grieve the worst shooting in American history, which left 33 dead on this state university campus in southwestern Virginia, some Korean students and their parents are fearing a backlash.

Police announced this morning that Cho Seung-hui was the suspect in the shooting deaths of 32 students and staff members in two Virginia Tech buildings. Cho apparently killed himself with a gunshot to the head. Cho, 23, was a permanent U.S. resident who was born in South Korea and moved to the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington in 1992.

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.”

After the mass shooting on the Virginia Tech campus Monday, rumors circulated on television and the Internet about the identity of the killer. Some reports said he was a student at nearby Radford University, while the Chicago Sun-Times was reporting that authorities were investigating a 24-year-old who had entered the U.S. on a student visa on a flight from China last August. But officials now say the shooter was a little-noticed member of Virginia Tech’s student body, a loner so reclusive even neighbors in his own residence hall didn’t know him.

“On April 16, 2007 an incident involving various firearms, resulting in multiple injuries and deaths occurred on the campus of Virginia Tech at Norris Hall. Found at the scene of the incident was a bomb threat directed at engineering school department buildings. Norris Hall is an engineering related building.

“Over the preceding three weeks, Virginia Tech received two other bomb threat notes. A bomb threat note was found in the close vicinity of the shooting which occurred near the victims and presumed suspect who is deceased. The presumed suspect was believed to have multiple firearms including but not limited to a Walther p22 and a Glock 9 mm handgun … During the investigation it was revealed the presumed suspect recently purchased a handgun at a firearms store in Roanoke, Virginia. It is further reasonable to believe suspect is the author of the bomb threat note. Additionally, it is reasonable to believe the evidence sought under this search warrant would be maintained, secreted, and stored at the presumed suspect’s residence and or vehicle.”

The name of the suspect is given as Seung-Hui Cho, and his address is given as 2121 Harper Hall, Blacksburg, Va.

Students at Virginia Tech, where at least 33 people are confirmed dead and at least 29 wounded in the worst school shooting in U.S. history, say they were left in the dark for up to two hours after the initial murder in a campus dorm.

The as-yet-unnamed gunman apparently shot and killed a victim on the fourth floor of the West Ambler Johnston dorm at approximately 7:15 a.m., according to the timing of a 911 call to Virginia Tech police. Two hours later, at approximately 9:30 a.m., the same gunman allegedly shot scores of people in Norris Hall, an engineering classroom building across the 2,600-acre Virginia Tech campus. But residents of West Ambler Johnston say they were not informed of what had happened in their building until 9:26, when an e-mail was apparently sent to all students telling them that there had been an incident in the dorm. By that time, the gunman may already have made it to Norris Hall.