Revisiting mental health issues in young immigrants: a lesson learned from the Virginia Tech massacre.

Pai was a keynote speaker at the first Korean symposium held at North Park College in Chicago in October 1991. As a child of an immigrant, her experiences are similar to those of many other young Korean Americans who live in a bicultural world of Korean and American cultures. Seung-Hui Cho, the massacre killer at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, was one of the young Korean Americans. He was born in South Korea and immigrated to the United States at age eight. In the Korean American community, children of immigrants are divided into two generational categories: 1.5 and second generations (Kim, 2004). The second generation refers to people who were born in the United States, whereas the 1.5 generation indicates those who were born in Korea and immigrated in their childhood (Kim). This classification was made due to the belief that the 1.5 generation Korean Americans are more likely to be bilingual and bicultural than those who are of the second generation. Seung-Hui Cho met the criteria and was considered a member of the 1.5 generation Korean American. Yet, it appeared that Cho was not familiar or comfortable with either the Korean or the American cultures. He was known as