'This Is a Betrayal That Goes Straight to the Heart of My Self-Identity'

April 18, 2007 — -- The murder of 32 innocent people at Virginia Tech Monday defies comprehension. Grief alternates with anger and strikes with a palpable force, leaving me physically stunned and emotionally paralyzed.

A fellow student of a higher learning institution, I am suddenly reminded that an ivory tower is not necessarily a sanctuary from intrusions of a terrible reality. Senseless violence lurks everywhere, and evil can manifest with frightening randomness. Such an incident sadly reminds us that we have to be ever conscious of our shared vulnerability and vigilant for each other's safety.

As an ethnic Korean, I feel a primeval sense of horror that someone connected to me by ethnicity could commit such a foul act against everything we hold sacred and decent in our common humanity.

Of course this was an act of a lone, disturbed individual who could have been from any race and ethnicity, but I cannot deny that his being ethnically Korean somehow brands me with a mental Scarlet Letter that is visible only to me but nevertheless seethes painfully against the screen of my self-identity as an ethnic Korean.

While being an ethnic Korean neither automatically qualifies nor obligates me to speak to this horrible heartbreak any more than any one else, there is a terrible connection here that is inexplicable yet all too easy to understand. Judging by the outpouring of grief and condolences from the nation of Korea, I am apparently not alone in feeling a terrible connection to this tragedy.

As a Korean American who emigrated to the United States in the third-grade and who benefited from the rich opportunities and freedom of American society -- exactly like the perpetrator -- I feel a deep sense of betrayal. How could someone like me so deliberately and with such wanton abandon seek to damage the very fabric of society that I hold dear?

This is a betrayal that goes straight into the heart of my self-identity as an American. Although the news reports specify that the killer was a resident alien who was a Korean national, he was, for all intents and purposes, an American who was educated in Northern Virginia since he was 8 years old. This is a betrayal that is painful, for it cuts against the very grain of my sense of who I am as an American. This is a betrayal that threatens to overwhelm me with fury.

Jason Lim is a Harvard Kennedy School graduate student.