Seung-Hui Cho
South Korean mass murderer; perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre (1984-2007)
Seung-Hui Cho (; Korean: 조승희; [tɕo sɯŋhi] ; January 18, 1984 – April 16, 2007) was a South Korean mass murderer who perpetrated the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16, 2007. Cho killed 32 people and wounded 17 others at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, using two semi-automatic pistols. A senior-level student of creative writing at the university, Cho died by suicide after police breached the doors of Virginia Tech's Norris Hall which Cho had locked with heavy chains, where most of the shooting had taken place. The killing is the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, and was at the time the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
Born in South Korea, Cho was eight years old when he immigrated to the United States with his family. He became a U.S. permanent resident as a South Korean national. At the time of the shooting, Cho had the legal status of resident alien. In middle school, he was diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder with selective mutism, as well as major depressive disorder. After his diagnosis, he began receiving treatment and continued to receive therapy and special education support until his junior year of high school. Cho was bullied throughout high school.
“Seung-Hui Cho” enters the record as south Korean mass murderer; perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre (1984-2007). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Seung-Hui, South and Korean can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Seung-Hui Cho” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.