Bravo, Team Korea!

By Oh Young-jin

Managing editor

Twenty four years ago during the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Byun Jong-il, our bantam weight boxer, staged a sit-in protest in the ring for more than an hour after he was declared to be a loser by points to Alexandar Hristov of Bulgaria.

Byun outboxed the Bulgarian and should have been the winner but the judges deducted two penalty points from him for a controversial call on head butts.

After being slapped with a five-year suspension, Byun turned pro and became the champion of the World Boxing Council (WBC) in the same division in 1993.

In the London Olympics, there have so far been at least three controversial calls affecting Korean athletes.

Park Tae-hwan, the Beijing Olympics’ 400m freestyle champion, was disqualified in the preliminary and reinstated hours later. The judges couldn’t fully explain why a false start was called on Park. A video from a camera installed above the starting blocks showed the Korean swimmer responded better than others to the starting pistol.

The 23-year-old Korean swam in the finals and won silver, an achievement that should be taken as nothing less than a golden performance, considering the hours of a mind-boggling emotional roller-coaster ride he had to overcome. Park repeated his silver-medal winning performance in the men’s 200-meter freestyle Tuesday morning.

Even more embarrassing to the London Games organizers was the reversal of a decision in the under-66 kilogram judo quarterfinals pitting Cho Jun-ho of Korea against Japan’s Massahi Ebinuma.

The whole episode was as if it were a scene taken from “The Three Stooges.”

Referee Moe and judges Larry and Curly got into a huddle after the eight-minute match ― five minutes in regulation and three minutes in the golden score round ― ended without a clear winner.

They went back to their positions and raised their blue flags, indicating Cho was the winner.

Then, referee director Juan Carlos Barcos called them back. A minute later, they repeated their flag-raising ceremony but this time they lifted the white flags.

Cho stood there for minutes, apparently trying to understand what was going on, but decided to leave the scene without protest. He later advanced into the medal round through the repechage and won bronze. His Japanese rival also ended up on the same place on the podium as Cho. One photo captures Cho looking at Ebinuma, who looked the other way.

On Tuesday morning, Shin A-lam was robbed of her spot in the women’s epee finals in her duel with Britta Heidemann of Germany.

The last remaining second in extra time was literally stretched with four stops called in the process.

A frame-by-frame analysis also confirms that it was not an emotional clock of time that made us feel a second last longer than it’s worth.

Our sword master collapsed and burst into tears but decided to take an appeals procedure.

The contrast between Byun of 24 years ago and our three athletes of today signifies a lot.

It is more than the degree of civility or sportsmanship.

In 1988, Korea was starting its steep industrial ascent so was not wealthy in general. Winning an Olympic gold was a ticket for a way out of poverty. Byun wanted to turn pro on an Olympic gold-medal winning finish to his amateur career. To Byun, it was not “just a sport.”

In contrast, Park, Cho and Shin are among children of a wealthy Korea, having grown up to watch Korea spurting ahead of other developing countries and join the leading club of nations. They can afford to lose gracefully, however badly they want to win.

This doesn’t mean Byun was wrong and the three young athletes are right.

Byun had his reason to protest what he saw as a wrong decision. We can imagine from numerous scandals in sports arenas how corrupt the sports world can be and how complicated sports politics are.

For all its faults and flaws, we still participate in sports because we believe we can make them better first, and then, in the process improve ourselves.

The cool way the three athletes acted only illustrates this spirit of sports. In other words, Byun tried to do the first part, while the three did the second part.

We Koreans are possessed of both Byun and the trio in us to our advantage ― in forms of courage and grace, aggressiveness and understanding, and can-do spirit and a sense of satisfaction from having gotten the job done.

What I am trying to say is that we are already winning double the number of gold medals we will win in London because we have realized the great potential we have as a nation and as individuals. Look no further than Park, Cho and Shin as well as Byun, the boxer, and you may as well share this strong pulse of promise we have in us.