Long before American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos made history with their Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics, another poignant image of silent protest was etched into the conscience of Koreans — and largely forgotten everywhere else.
At the Berlin Olympics in 1936, Korean Sohn Kee-chung stood with his head hung, hiding the rising-sun flag on his chest with a laurel plant as Japan’s national anthem filled the stadium to honor his marathon victory. The moment filled him with “unbearable humiliation,” he recounted in his autobiography, and marked the beginning of an anguished chapter in his life.
Worried that his triumph would spark an insurgence among ethnic Koreans, Japan — which ruled Korea from 1910 to 1945 — forbade Sohn from competitive running, kept him under tight surveillance, and even used his celebrated status to recruit young Koreans for its war effort. Sohn called the recruiting the “greatest regret” of his life.
Photo: Kyodo via Reuters
Still, Sohn harbored no resentment toward his former oppressors in later years and dedicated his life to promoting “Olympism” — or peace through sports — particularly between Japan and Korea, his son, Chung-in, said in a recent interview.
“All he wished for was for both sides to recognize what happened in the past so we don’t repeat it, and instead look forward,” he said.
‘UNCOMFORTABLE TOPIC’
Photo: Kyodo via Reuters
With bilateral relations at a nadir today, mostly over wartime atrocities, Sohn’s message remains relevant, said Zenichi Terashima, professor emeritus at Tokyo’s Meiji University, who published the runner’s biography two years ago.
For all of Sohn’s efforts at reconciliation, Japan has had an awkward relationship with him and his legacy, Terashima said, speaking alongside his son.
Sohn is a national hero in South Korea, but few in Japan have heard of him, even though his medal remains the only Olympic gold for the men’s marathon in Japan.
Photo: Reuters
Only an eagle-eyed visitor to the new Olympic museum in Tokyo will notice both mentions of Sohn: one among a display of Japanese gold medallists and another in a tiny sign accompanying the Olympic torch used in the Seoul Games in 1988 describing him as the final torch relay runner.
“He’s an uncomfortable topic in Japan,” said Terashima, who said he felt compelled to publish Sohn’s life story amid what he perceived as a resurgence of historical revisionism among Japan’s conservative elite.
OLIVE BRANCH
Sohn scrupulously avoided politics and extended an olive branch wherever he saw a chance.
When Japanese runner Shigeki Tanaka won the Boston marathon in 1951, Sohn sent him a congratulatory message, calling his win “a win for Asia,” his son said. He signed off using the Japanese transliteration of his name — Son Kitei — a profound gesture from a man who insisted on signing autographs in Korean even in 1936.
It should have been a bitter moment. The previous year, Sohn had coached the Korean team that swept first, second and third places at the marquee race, only to be denied entry in 1951 as the Korean War raged.
At Seoul 1988, Sohn had secretly planned to gift a replica of the ancient Corinthian helmet given to him as Berlin’s marathon winner to a Japanese runner if they won a medal, his son recalled.
Sohn was ecstatic about Japan and South Korea’s co-hosting of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, instructing his son to help make it a success so “the past could be left in the past for a fresh start,” Chung-in said. Sohn died a few months after the event.
The thaw in bilateral ties proved short-lived, but “my father died a happy man,” Chung-in said.
The current diplomatic chill has spilled over into the Olympics in the form of a territorial dispute over the labelling of a set of islands — both at the Pyeongchang Olympics in 2018 and this year.
But Terashima says the “Olympism” that Sohn advanced thrives in the activism of Naomi Osaka today and the borderless bonds shared by speedskaters Nao Kodaira and Lee Sang-hwa, whose emotional embrace after their race at Pyeongchang, draped in the Japanese and Korean flags, moved many on both sides of the sea.
“My father liked to say that in war, whether you win or lose, if a bullet hits you, you die,” Chung-in said. “But that in sports, even if you lose, you can still be friends.”
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and