By Kim Yeon-hee

SEOUL, April 18 (Reuters) - South Korea's president and his countrymen were shocked and anguished that one of their own was the gunman responsible for the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history, with many fearing reprisals.

South Korean-born Cho Seung-Hui, 23, was identified on Tuesday as the gunman who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech university.

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

"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.

His office had no details of the discussions on the massacre which has dominated local television and newspaper reports.

The killings have sparked soul searching in South Korea, a country with a low crime rate by most standards that also sits on the last frontier of the Cold War and one of the world's most densely armed borders that divides 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 is also home to one of the worst killings by a lone gunman in modern times when an off-duty police officer in 1982 went on a drunken rampage 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. The South's U.S. ambassador called on parishioners at a Korean church 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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