Family and friends of nursing student Lydia Sim gathered today for her burial. The 21-year-old was sone of seven people killed in Monday’s shooting rampage at Oikos University. The suspect, One Goh, has been charged with seveb counts of murder, in addition to attempted murder, kidnapping, and carjacking. The victims came from many different counties, but the incident has hit the Korean-American community particularly hard. KQED’s Mina Kim has been speaking with civic and religious leaders and attended a prayer vigil for the victims on Tuesday, and Stephanie Martin interviewed her today. The audio follows the transcript:
Stephanie Martin: How has the Korean community been coping?
Mina Kim: This incident has really rocked the community. It occurred at a school that caters mostly to Korean Americans and recent Korean immigrants, among the dead are 2 Korean American women in their early 20s , and the shooter himself was Korean American. So there’s a lot of shock and grief and confusion.
At the same time, there’s some discomfort over how this might impact people’s perception of Korean Americans. This is a community that’s not often in the media. One service provider I spoke with actually used the word ‘invisibile’ to describe Korean Americans. So when the two biggest stories involving Korean Americans have been deadly campus shootings — the Virginia Tech massacre and now this Oikos University shooting — there’s definitely a concern that people will think these are problems inherent among Korean Americans. One of the faith leaders I spoke with said that was in part why they decided to have Tuesday’s prayer vigil at Allen Temple Baptist Church, which is predominantly an African-American church. They wanted to remind people that all communities are impacted when a massacre of this magnitude takes place.
Stephanie Martin: I understand that some in the Korean-American community are hoping this incident will help address the stigma against mental health issues…