Non-Angry Koreans I Have Known

By Tom Plate

Professor at University of California, Los Angeles

Director of Asia Pacific Media Network

LOS ANGELES _ The tragedy of Virginia Tech is starting to trigger anger-management issues in me. By ``anger-management issues’’ I mean that I am getting kind of angry (just in case you’re not savvy with hot-air, overblown professional jargon).

Here is how a telephone conversation started the other day:

``I just knew it had to be a Korean who did it.’’

I paused. I was about to reply angrily, but then he continued:

``But if the killer hadn’t been Korean, then I would have guessed he would be Chinese.’’

What I said next was key, because this disappointing comment came from a fellow professor, though from another university, thankfully. What I almost said to him (but did not) was: ``Why Korean or Chinese? Why not Japanese?’’

I mean, if you want to smear a whole East Asian nationality, why not smear them instead of the Koreans? It was the Japanese, after all, who started those wars in Asia, occupied countries, killed countless GIs and continue to visit war shrines that honor war criminals as well as the common soldier.

But I did not say that because well, that’s not how I feel. The Japanese are a very admirable people and a great many of them are serious pacifists.

You see, attempting to establish behavior solely on the basis of race or ethnicity is the very definition of racism. The gunman who ultimately took his own life had severe and obvious issues. But the fact that he was born in South Korea and raised in America should be very low down on the list of what is relevant in this matter.

It’s not that our quality media has been banging the anti-Korean drum as if wishing to set in motion a pogrom. It’s that many people are blithely assuming some kind of telling correlation between Korean-ness and murderous madness.

Perhaps I am biased because I know personally and professionally so many Koreans and Korean Americans. A half-dozen years ago, one of them won a Nobel Peace Prize: the South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. Of course, that was awarded by those notorious and savage Scandinavians. You know them, don’t you ? the very tribe of people who genetically hail from the notorious Norsemen and the gory Goths. (I suppose it’s predictable that fierce tribes like the Goths and the Koreans would stick together for image-reasons.)

In America, a lot of the Koreans share the last name Kim. In the Korean culture a last name like Kim is sort of like the ``American’’ last name Jones, which reminds me of a notorious non-Korean nut named Jim Jones who is thankfully long dead.

This evil preacher coaxed over 900 followers in Jonestown, Guyana to commit mass suicide. What made him do that? Well, he was born in rural Indiana, which should tell you a whole lot (but of course it doesn’t tell you anything); and his father was a Klansman _ and here we do strike pay-dirt: this is a white tribe infamous for its ``anger-management issues,’’ especially towards blacks.

And doesn’t it help to know that his wife was part Cherokee? I mean, weren’t all Indians violent? Or was it the invading white Europeans who acted out their anger against the natives because they were here first. Eh, it gets so complicated.

I know many Kims in Los Angeles. One has the first name Spencer. He is very rich but gives away a lot of money to good causes. I think once in awhile Spencer may get angry about something or other, but his wife Mia (also Korean) orders him to calm down, as my own wife often does (she is of fiery Russian descent, but not Korean).

There’s another notable Kim I know; her first name is Janet. Occasionally, she does get angry, usually at me, sometimes with good reason; but she doesn’t carry a gun, and, as far as I know, she hasn’t been preparing any weird tapes for mailing to NBC.

In fact, when she’s not helping to run the UCLA Media Center that I founded, she spends a good amount of time on her nifty blog (https://www.xanga.com/kgirlpoetics). If you go there today you’ll see some comments posted by Korean Americans who are upset at the suggestion that killer Cho Seung-hui’s main problem was of a Korean nature as opposed to a mental illness nature.

I suppose if I were a Korean American, that kind of racism might in fact make me a little angry. By way of full disclosure: I freely admit that I am mainly ethnically German, which of course means I am supposed to be a closet Nazi _ aren’t, after all, almost all Germans?

I am very glad we have now cleared all this Korean stuff up.