Friday, April 20, 2007

Cho's inner life

The Lost Nomad links to an article claiming that mass murderer Cho Seung-hui was diagnosed with autism not long after his arrival in the States as an elementary schooler.

Does autism absolve Cho of his crime? Not at all, as I'll be arguing in another post. For the moment, though, it should be noted that the Daily Mirror article quoted by the Nomad offers only the claim that Cho was declared autistic by a doctor; no reliable evidence for that claim is cited. The Nomad is correct to end the title of his blog post with a question mark. At this point, we simply don't know.

Linguistic aside: the Sino-Korean term for autism is very evocative: ja-pyae-jeung. Literally, "self closed symptom."


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Too much bullying; too many guns--my 2 cents.