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Korean group meets with uncle of Va. gunman

The Associated Press

12:47 PM EDT, April 19, 2007

Cho Sun-ryol is seen through the window of his laundromat business, South River Cleaners, in Edgewater, Md., on Wednesday April 18, 2007. Cho Sun-ryol is the uncle of Cho Seung-Hui, 23, who has been identified by Virginia State Police as the gunman suspected of carrying out the Virginia Tech massacre that killed 33 people including himself. Baik In-suk, who is chairman of the Korean-American Association of Northern Virginia, said he went to the family's home after receiving a tip about Cho Sun-ryol, who is the brother of the gunman's father. (AP Photo)

WEST RIVER, Md. -- While the parents of the Virginia Tech gunman have kept silent and out of public view, his uncle met with an official from a Korean-American association and said he assumes the parents are doing fine.

The chairman of the Korean-American Association of Northern Virginia visited the paternal uncle of 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui at the uncle's home Wednesday night.

Baik In-suk, the association's chairman, said he wanted to check on the family's well-being and to offer comfort when he visited Cho Sun-ryol in suburban Washington. He said he asked how the gunman's parents were and was told that the uncle "assumes" they are fine.

He described Cho Sun-ryol as unwilling to talk in detail. "I just ask and then he say nothing," Baik said.

He was eventually asked to leave, he said, and said he would not be returning.

Cho Sun-ryol declined to comment to The Associated Press on Wednesday at his dry cleaning business in Edgewater.

His nephew Cho Seung-Hui was a South Korean immigrant who had been in the United States since 1992. He was the only suspect named in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history. The attacks on the Virginia Tech campus killed 32 people and the gunman.

Cho Seung-Hui's parents work in another dry cleaners in suburban Washington and live in Centreville, Va., another Washington suburb.

He also has a sister who works in the State Department's Bureau of Information Resource Management in Washington, according to the department's internal staff directory. The sister, Sun Cho, is employed by an outside contractor and not directly by the State Department, the agency said. Messages left on her office voice mail were not returned.