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.”

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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“They are in jeopardy of having their accreditation altered in some way or withdrawn” if the school doesn’t bring up its pass rates, Heimerich told msnbc.com.

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.

"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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Updated at 9:45 p.m. ET: Officials on Monday evening identified the suspect arrested in the shootings at a small Christian college in California that killed seven and wounded three others earlier in the day as a 43-year-old Oakland resident.

At a press briefing with Mayor Jean Quan and others, Police Chief Howard Jordan said suspect One L. Goh was in the custody of Oakland police in connection with Monday's shooting spree, an event that he described as "shocking" and "senseless."

He said the police had not identified a motive, nor did the suspect have any known criminal history. He said Goh is a Korean national.
“It's going to take us a few days to put the pieces together," Jordan said.

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Witnesses who were in the classroom at Oikos University where the shootings took place said the shooter first ordered students to line up against a wall and then pulled a handgun, the Oakland Tribune reported.

 

"The people started running and he started shooting," said Gurpreet Sahota, who relayed an account to the Tribune from his sister-in-law, Dawinder Kaur, 19.

Chief Jordan said the suspect apparently commandeered a victim's car and drove it to Alameda, where he turned himself in to police at a Safeway store, about five miles from the shootings.

Soon after the shooting, heavily armed officers swarmed the school in a large industrial park near the Oakland airport and, for at least an hour, believed the gunman could still be inside.

Art Richards said he was driving by the university on his way to pick up a friend when he spotted a woman hiding in the bushes and pulled over. When he approached her, she said, "I'm shot" and showed him her arm.

"She had a piece of her arm hanging out," Richards said, noting that she was wounded near the elbow.

As police arrived, Richards said he heard 10 gunshots coming from inside the building. The female victim told him that she saw the gunman shoot one person point-blank in the chest and one in the head.

Tashi Wangchuk, whose wife attended the school and witnessed the shooting, said he was told by police that the gunman first shot a woman at the front desk, then continued shooting randomly in classrooms.

Wangchuk said his wife, Dechen Wangzom, was in her vocational nursing class when she heard gunshots. She locked the door and turned off the lights, Wangchuk said he was told by his wife, who was still being questioned by police Monday afternoon.

Jordan said that five of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene, and two others died after arriving at the hospital.

Jordan said that he understood that the three injured people were being treated for injuries that were not life-threatening.

The suspect, identified by the school as an ex-nursing student at Oikos, had been absent for months before the shootings, according to students quoted by the Oakland Tribune. The school's director told the Tribune he was unsure if the man had been expelled or dropped out.

A memorial service was planned for Tuesday afternoon at the Korean Methodist Church, according to Mayor Quan.

Quan said grief counselors would be made available to the people affected by the shooting spree, but said that there was still a need for Korean-speaking counselors.

On its web site, Oikos says it aims to provide "a Christian education based on solid Christian doctrine and ideology."

The institution, established in 2008, does not appear on the U.S. Department of Education list of accredited post-secondary institutions and programs. It has California state accreditation to award degrees in theology, music, Asian medicine and nursing.

Oikos' annual revenue hovers around $1 million a year, according to publicly-available 990 tax forms for non-profit organizations.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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