At services and in private, the community in Hampton Roads mourns while worried about a backlash against them after the Tech deaths.

Misun Chong didn't have time to fear for her daughter's safety on Monday.

By the time the Newport News businesswoman heard about the shooting spree that ended with 33 dead at Virginia Tech, the massacre was over. Her daughter, a Tech student who heard the gunshots as she left a nearby classroom, was safe.

The second blow came with the news that the shooter was Korean. That's when Chong got scared. A Korean immigrant herself, Chong worried that Korean-American students like her daughter would become scapegoats for campus outrage.

Don't go outside, she told the girl. Stay out of sight. Don't be loud. Don't make trouble.

Her daughter thought she was crazy. "She said, 'Mom, you worry too much,' " Chong said. "But she doesn't have any experience."

On Tuesday, in the middle of the night, Misun Chong picked up her daughter in Blacksburg and brought her home.

FEAR OF THE CONNECTION

The massacre was a double tragedy for Korean-Americans in Hampton Roads. A number of them have children who were among the 1,200 students of Korean origin enrolled at Tech.

Their grief was magnified by fear that they would be associated with the killer.

Lessons of discrimination resonate in the Korean community. The persecution of Asian Americans after World War II haunts those who are old enough to remember. Younger generations recall the treatment of Arab Americans after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as a warning that tragedies can make entire ethnic groups the target of hate and suspicion. "It is natural," said Pastor Seong Soo Kim of the Peninsula Korean Baptist Church in Newport News. "We anticipate that, even though we don't hope that."

In a youth group at Kim's church on Friday, high school students wearing maroon and orange talked about their unease in school this week.

Grace Lee, an 18-year-old senior at Woodside High School, said Tuesday brought teasing, and the joke got old fast.

Word of the killer's race got out during a government class while Lee and other students watched CNN.

"When I heard he was South Korean, my heart started beating really fast," Lee said. "I was the only minority in there, and everyone kept looking at me."

By the next period, Lee was the butt of cruel jokes.

"People were like, 'Hey Grace, maybe you shouldn't go to college - we don't want to see anyone else dead,' " she said. "I was so speechless. It got worse as the class went on.

"They said, 'Grace, get your people under control,' and 'Isn't that your cousin?' I expected to get joked on, but I didn't expect it to be that bad. I had to hold back my tears."

Lee's mother let her stay home from school Friday.

A boy in the youth group has a brother at Virginia Tech. He came home immediately after the shootings, at his parents' insistence. "My mom knew Koreans were going to be attacked," the boy said. [Link]