let me be clear at the outset: i am not korean, but my wife is. her brother, my brother-in-law, is schizophrenic. both of them are permanent residents who were born in korea but moved here during the 1980s.
when i heard about the virginia tech tragedy, my first thought was not about gun control, but about the negligent state of our nation's mental health care system. and when i learned the killer was korean, it felt like my head flooded with memories of the past 10 years.
looking back, i actually don't remember the details that resulted in tae's (not his proper name) diagnosis. he'd been kicked out of the army, moved back in with his parents, and hooked up with one or more meth dealers. i just remember going to the hospital one day with my girlfriend (now wife), and talking with her family and the psychiatrist.
that, of course, was just the beginning. my wife, very quickly, learned the lessons of the mental health care "system," where you must fight at every step: social workers, differing standards at different hospitals, inconsistent evaluations, and having only 72 hours to act after each hospitalization. we finally achieved success of a sort, and tae is under conservatorship.
but this is not about the mental health system, which was not the only challenge we faced.
as bad as american culture is toward the mentally ill, korean culture is worse. to keep him away from the drug dealers, his parents sent him back to korea for a year. he had to stay with relatives, and he had no treatment - the only option in korea is institutionalization.
although tae's parents remain buddhist, many korean immigrants are christian. in fact, tae tried to get away from drugs by joining a christian drug-diversion program. he liked it, but they refused to let him take his medication. in the words of the priest, tae has "a spiritual problem" and not a medical problem. tae never completed the program because he tried to cut his genitals off with a safety razor.
the general korean attitude towards mental illness is that it isn't a real problem. "he'll get better" (no, schizophrenia is incurable; the best you can do is control it); "it's a spiritual problem" (the voices in his head are not satan, and he needs his medication); "he just needs to grow up" (true enough, but that's not the only problem). i'm sure that more than plenty americans feel the same way.
korean society, from my perspective, forbids you from acknowledging mental illness. so someone like tae, or cho seung hui, who has a problem typically won't find help from his family. he might not find help from his church, especially if it's a korean church, and they might actually exacerbate the problem.
my brother in law is doing okay these days. we found a dual diagnosis (drugs and mental illness) residential program for him. we have a helpful social worker. best of all, we have NAMI (the national alliance for the mentally ill), the best private resource there is for the families of those afflicted.
how often have we called a murderer "psychotic" or "insane"? how often have we been right?
EDIT:
sOck raised some interesting comments that got a lot of people talking, some good, some bad. discussing cultural differences and experiences always involves walking a fine line. i don't know anything about cho seung hui other than that he was born in korea and engaged in a senseless massacre. i can only speak to my belief that a person who can commit such an act is not rational, and to my own experiences with people - particularly koreans - afflicted with and affected by mental illness.