South Korean diplomats were traveling to the shooting site, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Hee-yong.

Cho Seung-Hui was in the US as a resident alien with a home in Centreville, Virginia, and lived on campus, the university said. School spokesman Larry Hincker said Cho was a "loner."

South Korea has more students studying in the US than any other country, according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The number of South Korean students reached 93,728 as of the end of last year, 14.9 percent of the total, ahead of India at 76,708 and China at 60,850, according to a February report from the agency.

Despite being technically a state of war for decades against North Korea, South Korea is a country where citizens are banned from privately owning guns, and where no school shootings are known to have occurred.

However, it has not been immune from shooting rampages.

In 2005, a military conscript believed to be angered by taunts from senior officers killed eight fellow soldiers, throwing a grenade into a barracks where his comrades were sleeping and firing a hail of bullets.

South Korea was also the scene of one of the world's deadliest shooting sprees, when police officer Woo Beom-gon went on a rampage in 1982 in the southeastern village of Euiryeong, killing 55 people and wounding 35 others.

After a quarrel with his live-in girlfriend and drinking, Woo stole two rifles, 180 rounds of ammunition and six hand grenades from a police station and a weapons storehouse for army reservists. The overnight spree where he fired indiscriminately went on for eight hours in four villages.

Woo died the following morning when a hand grenade exploded in a room where he was with three other villagers.

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