Giving Voice to Students’ Plight

I read “Students Face a Tough Fight Here at Home” (Voices, Feb. 19) with the grim recognition that Sandra Tarling Powazek is right. Late on a Saturday night at the end of January, a Santa Monica College student was killed by gang members in a parking lot in Koreatown. My ESL student, Chung Ho, here barely six months from Korea, was working nights at a karaoke club to save money for spring semester. He stepped outside the club that night with his broom and dustpan to sweep up the parking lot when two young men jumped out of the car and shoved a knife into his stomach. When Chung Ho turned back toward the club, he slumped to the ground, dead.

We know exactly what happened that night because footage of the incident was broadcast on television and posted on the Internet. It was also front-page news. But I never saw it or read of it. Why? Because I don’t watch the Korean news or read the Korean papers in L.A.

I am deeply grieved. He didn’t have enough time to finish learning English, and I think because of that, no mention has been made of him in the English-language press. This, then, is so that the English-speaking among us can now also remember Chung Ho, who lost his tough fight.

Kathryn D. Sucher

Culver City