South Korea's president and his countrymen expressed shock and anguish Wednesday that one of their own sons carried out the deadliest shooting rampage in US history. Many feared reprisals.

The family of Cho Seung-hui, who once lived in a cheap basement apartment in the outskirts of Seoul, left the country about 15 years ago to seek a better life in the United States, a women who said she was their former landlady, told local media.

"They weren't well off," Lim Bong-ae told broadcaster MBC.

"When they emigrated, the father said, 'I'm moving to the US because life is so difficult here. It will be better living somewhere other than Korea'," she told the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

Police identified the 23-year-old shooter's father as Cho Seong-tae, 61.

Top South Korean officials, fearing a backlash against the large Korean community in the United States, held a series of emergency meetings after Cho was named as the killer.

"I and my fellow citizens can only feel shock and a wrenching of our hearts," President Roh Moo-hyun told a news conference Wednesday, expressing his condolences to the victims, their families and the US people.

"I hope US society can get over such immense sadness and find a sense of composure as soon as possible," said Roh, who had earlier held an emergency cabinet meeting.

It was the third time that Roh has offered condolences since Tuesday.

His office gave no details of the discussions on the massacre, which has dominated local television and newspaper reports and sparked soul-searching in South Korea.

The country has a low crime rate by most standard.

Soul-searching

One local media report said South Korean groups in the United States planned to set up a "Virginia Tech fund" to provide support for bereaved families.

Seoul's US ambassador called on parishioners at a Korean church in the Washington area to fast for repentance, another said.

About 100,000 South Koreans study in the United States, making them the largest foreign student group in the country. The United States also has a big ethnic-Korean community.

"After 9/11, Americans had ill feeling against Middle Eastern people. I'm just afraid that this ... incident would come to affect South Korean students in the United States," said 35-year-old Chang Jung-in, a passer-by on the streets of Seoul.

"We hope that this incident won't create discrimination and prejudice against people of South Korean or Asian origin," said the Hankyoreh newspaper in an editorial.

A sense of despair prevailed among South Korean public.

"I'm too shameful that I'm a South Korean," wrote an Internet user identified only by the ID iknijmik on the country's top Web portal site, Naver, among hundreds of messages on the issue. "As a South Korean, I feel apologetic to the Virginia Tech victims."

Kim Min-kyung, a South Korean student at Virginia Tech reached by telephone from Seoul, said there were about 500 Koreans at the school, including Korean-Americans. She said she had never met Cho. She said South Korean students feared retaliation and were gathering in groups.

(China Daily via agencies April 19, 2007)