(Edits paragraph 1, inserts ... one of their own sons ...)

By Kim Yeon-hee

SEOUL, April 18 (Reuters) - South Korea's president and his countrymen expressed shock and anguish on Wednesday that one of their own sons carried out the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history. Many feared reprisals.

More than a day after Monday's carnage at Virginia Tech university, authorities named South Korean-born Cho Seung-Hui, 23, as the gunman who killed 32 students and staff before shooting himself.

Cho's family, who once lived in a cheap basement apartment in the outskirts of Seoul, left the country about 15 years ago to seek a better life in the United States, a women who said she was their former landlady told local media.

"They weren't well off," Lim Bong-ae told broadcaster MBC.

"When they emigrated, the father said, 'I'm moving to the U.S. because life is so difficult here. It will be better living somewhere other than Korea'," she told the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

Top South Korean officials, fearing a backlash against the large Korean community in the United States, held a series of emergency meetings after Cho was named as the killer.

"I and my fellow citizens can only feel shock and a wrenching of our hearts," President Roh Moo-hyun told a news conference on Wednesday, expressing his condolences to the victims, their families and the U.S. people.

"I hope U.S. society can get over such immense sadness and find a sense of composure as soon as possible," said Roh, who had earlier held an emergency cabinet meeting.

SOUL-SEARCHING

His office gave no details of the discussions on the massacre, which has dominated local television and newspaper reports and sparked soul-searching in South Korea.

The country has a low crime rate by most standards, but it sits on the last Cold War frontier, a border bristling with weapons which separates it from communist North Korea.

"Koreans can often view the world through a nationalistic lens and they will feel a sense of responsibility," said Michael Breen, a Seoul-based consultant and author of the book "The Koreans".

The country saw one of the worst massacres by a lone gunman in modern times when an off-duty policeman went on a drunken rampage in 1982 through villages with rifles and hand grenades, killing 57 people and wounding 38 before blowing himself up.

One local media report said South Korean groups in the United States planned to set up a "Virginia Tech fund" to provide support for bereaved families.

Seoul's U.S. ambassador called on parishioners at a Korean church in the Washington area to fast for repentance, another said.

About 100,000 South Koreans study in the United States, making them the largest foreign student group in the country. The United States also has a big ethnic-Korean community.

"After 9/11, Americans had ill feeling against Middle Eastern people. I'm just afraid that this ... incident would come to affect South Korean students in the United States," said 35-year-old Chang Jung-in, a passer-by on the streets of Seoul. (Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Jessica Kim)

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