Asia Pacific

South Korea Puts Anger Aside

After Olympic Skating Disappointment

 

SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Yu-na was a perfect heroine for her country. Like postwar South Korea, she rose from a humble start, skating on a tatty rink as a 6-year-old, to win gold for a nation that had felt sidelined in a sport dominated by Western athletes.

So when she was dethroned in Sochi by a Russian teenager in a much-debated decision, it was not surprising that Ms. Kim’s country, which has long tied international sports achievements to self-worth, reacted with anger.

A popular novelist said he would remember these Games as the “Suchi Olympics,” using the word for “humiliation.” A petition on Change.org calling for an investigation by the International Skating Union drew more than 1.9 million signatures, most of them from South Koreans. And many online commentators said Ms. Kim had been cheated of a gold medal because her country was “small and weak.”

But at least so far, the fuss appeared mostly to end there.

South Koreans have in the past responded with occasional outrage at what they perceived as biased rulings at the Olympics. A fencer who felt wronged at the 2012 Olympic Games in London refused to leave the piste, and the police once felt compelled to protect the United States Embassy in Seoul after a Korean speed skater lost to an American. But this time, there seemed to be a conscious effort to pull back.

Many front-page articles thanked Ms. Kim for her service to her nation. “We are grateful that you were born in Korea and we lived the same time as you did,” gushed one major daily, JoongAng Ilbo.

Ms. Kim was also the picture of composure, declining to criticize the result on air. “Even if I did not accept the decision, nothing would change,” she said. It was a small indication of how she felt about Adelina Sotnikova’s win, which has caused hand-wringing in the figure-skating world, with renewed calls for transparency and accusations of bias against a Russian judge.

Chung Hee-joon, a professor of sports science at Dong-A University, attributed the change in part to recent self-reflection on an excessive nationalism in South Korean sports and other areas that critics liken to methamphetamine.

“Nothing elevated the superiority of being Korean and Korean blood abroad more than sports,” he said. “The way sports attracts huge crowds here sometimes has a totalitarian feel to it.”

This time, criticism of the country’s focus on sports shared space with anger. Some Internet users uploaded video clips apparently meant to indicate South Korea also had its questionable moments. It showed an embarrassing episode during the 1988 Games in Seoul, the country’s coming-out party after its impoverished postwar years. An American boxer placed second despite pummeling his South Korean opponent, and an investigation by the International Olympic Committee later showed that South Korean officials had wined and dined judges.

Some people lashed out at Russia over Ms. Kim’s loss. Bae Sung-jae, a sports anchor for the broadcaster SBS, fumed at President Vladimir V. Putin on Twitter: “Putin, why did you invite all of us if you were running this Olympics as your own little village sport meet?” And South Korea’s Olympic committee and skating union said they had sent letters to the International Olympic Committee and the International Skating Union asking them to look into the scoring.

But others noted that Ms. Kim’s victories had, in fact, raised the profile of her prestige-hungry country.

“What she did in a country where there was no decent ice rink was nothing but a miracle. She gave a gift to all of us by showing that there was nothing impossible,” the daily Chosun newspaper said in an editorial. “Yu-na elevated the national prestige.”

The country also appeared to handle another early source of bitterness with some aplomb. A South Korean short-track speed skater named Viktor Ahn won three gold medals in Sochi — but for Russia. Although there was initial anger when he took Russian citizenship, many people changed their minds as he began winning, basking in the achievements of a fellow South Korean. Mr. Ahn abandoned South Korea after skating officials, who have been dogged by claims of fixing matches to promote their favorites, refused him a spot on the national team, even though he had won three golds in the 2006 Olympics. Even President Park Geun-hye weighed in, saying, “We must ask ourselves if his problem was not due to the unreasonableness in our sports community.”

South Korea’s focus on sports achievements seems to be rooted in a sense of having been bullied by other nations. After the Korean War, the country used nationalism to consolidate internal unity amid economic hardship. South Koreans often treated sports as an avenue to affirm the national pride they desperately wanted.

Even in the years since the country’s explosive rise to become the world’s 13th-biggest economy, its citizens have developed something of an obsession with quantifiable results.

Nobel Prizes for South Korea are counted (one), and mourned. Even Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development rankings are scoured by the news media to see how Korea compares on measures like the number of suicides and freedom of speech.

That has made sports, with its winner-take-all mentality, a seemingly perfect way to place South Korea in the world. But the country’s athletic history includes many wounds.

When the American short-track speed-skater Apolo Anton Ohno beat a South Korean in the 2002 Games, anti-Americanism spiked.

A few months later, when South Korea met the United States in a World Cup soccer match, a crowd gathered near the American Embassy in Seoul, calling for revenge. To the relief of policy makers, the match ended in a tie.

Even what South Koreans consider their first moment of glory in international sports came with pain. The marathoner Sohn Kee-chung won the nation’s first Olympic gold at the 1936 Games in Berlin, but he had to run with the team from Japan, then Korea’s colonial ruler.

For her part, Ms. Kim seemed as pleased with her silver medal as she was to have the weight of her nation’s pride off her shoulders.

“I am happy that it’s over,” she said. “Happy that I did well.”