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Oikos University, the private college in Oakland, Calif., where authorities say an expelled student methodically gunned down seven people, caters to a fast-growing target market: Korean-American Christians.
One L. Goh, 43, a South Korean national, had been a nursing student at Oikos. Oakland police do not have a precise motive yet, but they say the alleged gunman was upset with his former school, where he apparently had been teased over his poor English. He went hunting for a female administrator at the school on Monday and then opened fire on others when he couldn’t find her, according to police.
Oikos, a one-building evangelical Christian college in an industrial park near Oakland’s airport, was founded in 2004 by the Rev. Jongin Kim of San Leandro, who remains the school’s president.
According to its website, its mission is to “educate men and women to be the leaders to serve the church, local communities, and the world by using their learned skills and professions in the areas of biblical studies, music performance, Asian medicine and practical vocational nursing.”
Oikos awards degrees in nursing, biblical studies, music, ministry, divinity and Asian medicine. It attracts mostly Korean Americans from the Bay Area as well as Koreans from abroad. Tuition runs between $2,200 and $3,100 per semester for most bachelor’s programs and students are required to attend church services.
The school is one of about 1,400 institutions licensed by the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, established in January 2010 within the Department of Consumer Affairs to oversee private postsecondary schools operating in California.
Police: Oikos shooter targeted female administrator
Bureau spokesman Russ Heimerich says the state has not received any merited complaints about Oikos. But he says the school’s nursing program, separately accredited by the Board of Vocational Nursing and Psychiatric Technicians, could be in hot water because its pass rate for the nursing exam is well below the state average of 75 percent. (Oikos’ nursing pass rate was 58 percent and 41 percent, respectively, for 2010 and 2011, Heimerich said.)
“They are in jeopardy of having their accreditation altered in some way or withdrawn” if the school doesn’t bring up its pass rates, Heimerich told msnbc.com.
NBC's Kristen Dahlgren reports.
It was not immediately clear how many students attend Oikos. The school's website lists about 50 instructors.
Boyung Lee, associate professor of educational ministries at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, says Oikos is among a number of theology-related schools catering to Korean-Americans that have sprung up in Los Angeles, Atlanta, northern New Jersey-New York and other places around the U.S. with sizable Korean-American populations.
In South Korea, Christianity is the dominant religion; about 35 percent of the population are either Protestant or Catholic, Lee says.
“In Korea getting into college is extremely competitive so a lot of parents send their kids abroad. We have this term called 'goose family,' where the father stays in Korea and makes money while the children and mom are abroad for education,” Lee says.
“Every parent wants their children to be fluent in English. Some parents may feel safe if their children are attending a school like Oikos because of its exclusive fundamentalist Christian environment.”
Pyong Gap Min, a sociology professor at Queens College in New York, said about 60 percent of Korean immigrants in the U.S. are Protestant. "Korean immigrants have drawn largely from the Protestant segment of the population in Korea and many non-churchgoers in Korea attend Korean churches here," Min told msnbc.com by email. "But Korean protestantism is very interesting because they are heavily evangelically oriented. They have sent about 15,000 missionaries to all over the world. This number is the second largest group in the world next to the U.S."
Andrew Sung Park, a professor of theology and ethics at United Theological Seminary in Ohio, told CNN that most of 1.3 million Korean Americans are Christian and they generally subscribe to evangelical Protestantism.
Jeff Chiu / AP
An Oakland police officer walks outside of Oikos University in Oakland, Calif., Tuesday, a day after a deadly shooting.
"There is a saying that when Koreans get together in the United States, they establish churches first," Park, who is Korean-American, told CNN. "Some other Asians are more concerned with businesses or finances, but Koreans care about religion and about Christianity."
Kim, the school’s president, didn’t return media calls Tuesday, and Oakland police said the school is closed indefinitely. According to the Oakland Tribune, Kim is affiliated with the Praise God Korean Church in Oakland and is listed as the president of California Ezra Bible Academy in Sunnyvale.
The term "oikos" is ancient Greek for household or family. In a statement on Oikos University's website Kim says the school’s main goal is “to foster spiritual Christian leaders who abide by God’s intentions and to expand God’s nation through them.”
The statement adds:
“To accomplish our mission, we actively seek out, educate and train students, ministers, teachers and church leaders to become more qualified leaders. Oikos University has rapidly grown in its quality and size to become an institution that contributes to and positively changes their surrounding environment--and the world in general.”
The school’s “Doctrinal Statement” lists 11 fundamental beliefs, including the Bible, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Number 11 on the list is Satan:
"We believe the existence of a personal, malevolent being called Satan who acts as tempter and accuser, for whom the place of eternal punishment was prepared, where all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity. He can be resisted by the believer through faith and reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit."
“I was taken aback by how fundamentalist and conservative these systems are. I assume that those beliefs, doctrines were taught to students,” Lee said. “I wonder whether such a system creates liberation among students.”
Msnbc.com's James Eng contributed to this report.
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Was he wearing a hoodie?
Gotta LOVE those "Gun-Free-Zones".
Once again, all they have done is provided ONE criminal with a supply of defenseless victims.
A nursing student expelled from a small Christian university and upset about being teased over his poor English skills opened fire at the school, going from room to room in a rampage that left six students and a secretary dead, police said Tuesday.
I am thinking that the picture is of the nursing program and he took the nursing secretary and killed nursing students.
Horrible!! No Excuse!! YES, i do believe in GOD as he is our guidance, therefore, we are to do good, not bad and he as given us that choice. We pay for our sins.
Is NBC working on doctoring some phone calls to try to divide Korean Americans from society too?
NBC News regrets editing of Trayvon shooting call
"Last week Fox News did a report in which it presented "before" and "after" versions of the call. NBC had broadcast the edited exchange on its flagship "Today" morning show.
NBC News launched an investigation after the Fox report."
http://news.yahoo.com/nbc-news-regrets-editing-trayvon-shooting-call-220720073.html
I don't see the problem the killers dead why it happened is simple human nature humans are violent at nature when uneducated people interact with each other how do they solve there diferences with violence educated people need a reson because there society says it's wrong to harm others unless they try to harm you theres no solution theres no problem it happened it's over move on theres no way to stop killing the only way we could stop it is if all our freedoms were taken away and human emotions eliminated thats not how I want things to be yes it was tragic but theres no way to stop it it's like a natural disaster actually you could argue that one person killing another is a natural disaster seeing as humans are part of nature and have a natural instinct to kill.
Interesting how the article went from a report on the senseless deaths of 7 people to the possible, academic short-comings of the school. Really?
I'm sorry, but this is a really BS way of phrasing things. There was a Korean community there. A Christian pastor living in that community organized a congregation. That's not "catering to Koreans"... that's a neighborhood getting a church. What's with the heavy focus on this guy being Korean? Are we going to develop a bogus American myth that Koreans are violent or something?
It, like other school shootings, was a horrible tragedy that suggests that our gun laws need some work.
Koreans are violent. And Americans even more so than Koreans. Like America, Korea was once a warrior culture, and you can read about the Chosun Dynasty, etc.. Taekwondo and other deadly martial arts were invented there. But this has nothing to do with some disgruntled lunatic shooting up a school. Yes, these school shooter nut-cases are always angry at the Administration and Faculty, but they wind up shooting a lot of innocent students.
Koreans are violent, huh? Does it interest you at all that no one in my mom's family has EVER so much as uttered a threatening word to anyone? Do you even care that my entire family (yes, both sides!) are DEEPLY saddened by this event? Or would you rather continue in your bigoted, racist, narrow-minded view of people you consider to be 'other'??? Oh I forgot, white people NEVER commit violent crime, right?????? Grow up and try expanding your world view!
All the detail about the College was informative, I suppose, but probably utterly beside the point. A Possible Point ( pee-pee for short ): we all ( with saintly exceptions ) have murderous thoughts; some act on them, most don't. All we can hope is that the number of individuals who go over that edge remains statistically small.
1. Being somewhat of an individual in this big world, I find it a bit disturbing when all Koreans are looped together: -Christianity is somewhat new to Koreans... Christianity is one of the oldest institutions around, and it teaches the basics that somehow all humans, regardless of race/nationality, have figured out: to just be a good person. To link the far left of some Korean churches with all Koreans is a bit presumptuous don't you think? If the world were to link all Americans with the Columbine shooters, surely we would never be allowed into any other country.
Borderline racist comments truly worry me as the same type of mentality refused to hire the Irish, enslaved many Africans, and terrorized the Native Americans. I am a Korean American and certainly not "docile", I was born in America, I don't have an accent, I am not a loony religious fanatic, and I'm sick and tired of being classified and judged and stereotyped. If people could just keep an open and rational mind, the world would be infinitely more pleasant to live in.
2. As for this insane battle of words and typos over beliefs, why can't we just agree that as a society we've established certain expectations on how to behave and what constitutes a "good person"? It's clear that a normal and certainly a "good" person would never go on a shooting rampage and kill seven people. But it seems that we can't help but shove our beliefs and narrow-mindedness upon each other in the aftermath of a shooting.
3. This is ridiculous. Many, not all, of the comments on this/these discussions (seem to me) as "one fry short of a Happy Meal" and the story seems poorly and suggestively written. The fact that it emphasizes that this school "caters to Korean-Americans" and is founded on Christian beliefs so many times seems a bit fishy. Not to mention the caption that doesn't seem to make grammatical/structural sense, almost warning the reader that the story and the discussion(s) that follow will bring more disappointment.
p.s. I don't wish to argue with people but all the craziness has moved me to share my opinion. My opinion. I'm not demanding that you adopt my ideals.
Dear msnbc.com staff,
It is terribly insensitive of you to respond to the plight of the families of the victims by insulting their faith. A better response would be to offer your condolences.
It appears that the vast majority of Koreans have converted to extremist, fundamentalist, Christianity, and have rejected and/or abandoned, their wonderful Buddhist history and past.
Are you Buddhist, Benson Stein? Because I don't recall running into you at temple?
Christian schools......(sigh). Why would we teach idiodicy?
MODERN "JEWS" ARE NO MORE DESCENDED FROM MOSES AND KING DAVID THAN MY DOG IS. They're descended from Khazarian barbarians. About 750 A.D. the Khazarian's leader, King Bulan, decided to adopt a "one God" religion for his people, so he invited representatives of Christianity, Islam and Judaism to present their dogma. King Bulan chose Judaism. If he had chosen Christianity, it would have aroused the anger of the large number of followers of Islam in the surrounding area; and if he had chosen Islam, it would have aroused the anger of the large number of Christians around them. So, he played it safe - he chose Judaism. BY THE WAY, THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN BY A "JEW".
DEAN BERRY MINISTRIES: "I speak the truth. You don't like it? It's still the truth."