The killing of a young man in a Bloomington, Indiana church has had a particular resonance in the Korean American community. This involves both the particular circumstances of the victim, writes PNS commentator Terry Lee, and the general situation of all Korean Americans in the United States. Lee is a former reporter for Korea Central Daily of San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The fact that an angry racist singled out Korean Americans in his shooting spree against minorities has shocked and frightened the Korean community, reports the Korea Times of San Francisco. Korean Americans are realizing that a "hate crime" is not some political abstraction--it could target them anywhere, even while attending church.

"How can such a tragedy happen in the church?" asked a stunned Byung Ho Kim, who was with 26 year old Won-Joon Yoon when he was fatally shot on July 4 by a young white supremacist. "If church is not safe, where is?"

"I am on the brink of losing my mind at the fact that Koreans are becoming victims, whenever one race, blacks or whites get angry," writes Chul Lee in the Korea Times of Los Angeles. "The Koreans became victims of the L.A. riot because the blacks were angry, and now they are victims of White Supremacy."

Korean Americans learned about the July 4 shooting death of 26-year-old Won-Joon Yoon in Bloomington, Ind., from the mainstream English language media. They learned from the Korean language media that the victim was the only son born to the Yoon family in four generations.

Interviewed at his home in Seoul, Yoon's father, 67-year-old Soon-Ho Yoon, "looked at his son's picture on the wall as if he was lost," a reporter for the Digital Chosun Daily based in Seoul wrote. "Won-Joon was born when I was 41 years old... he was a precious son to the family," Mr. Yoon senior said. "If he lost his life during the war for his country, I would feel better, but the fact that my son lost his life to a stranger in a foreign country hurts more."

Yoon's mother, Kang-Soon Lee, 62, said that she had spoken to her son on the morning of July 4. "The whole family took turns greeting him," she said.

On the day it reported on the family's reactions, the Korea Times of San Francisco called on its readers do away with "whang tha," a term that refers to a person or group who is isolated by society. Korean Americans as a community have suffered discrimination because they have been marked as "whang thas," the editorial observed. Yet they, too, practice discrimination -- against those they perceive as physically unfit, ugly, too short, mentally ill, arrogant.

This practice shows the twisted side of our society today, Jung-Hoon Lee wrote. Hitler's genocide against Jews was "Whang Tha" to the extreme. But Lee cited an event closer to home. Last April, after he wrote a column about gay issues, Lee received a phone call from an irate reader denouncing the Korea Times for running the article which the caller denounced as unsuitable for some readers and for children. The caller demanded an apology. Lee did not oblige. Instead, he described the inability to accept social and cultural differences as like "looking at the trees but not being able to see the whole forest."

Hatred of "whang thas" because they are a little different should vanish from the face of the earth, Lee advised. The Korean community itself will have to exert enormous efforts to rescue itself from the status of "whang thas" in the United States.

Chul Lee offers an optimistic note. Whatever anyone says, "The culture of multi-nationality does exist in the United States and it is blooming. Toyota, Honda and Hyundai are driven on the streets of each city in the U.S., tae kwon do and sushi are becoming a part of U.S. culture.

"In the words of Mr. Young Sam-Kim, former president of South Korea, 'the dawn will still come, even after the neck of the rooster is twisted.' The United States cannot avoid the age of the multicultural nation."