By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
Song In-duk, an MBC sportscaster and one of the most-liked television personlaities in the country, died early Wednesday of complications from internal bleeding.
The 48-year-old Song was hospitlaized last week after collapsing in pain from liver cirrhosis. He is survived by his wife Seo Gyeong-ok, 45, and daughter Hyo-sook, 16.
``Song was a truly gifted sportscaster and he loved sports more than anything throughout his 25 year career. I guess God needed someone to call games for him,'' said Huh Yeon-hoe, a program director at MBC's sports depratment.
``Without Song, things will never be the same and his presence will be truly missed in broadcasts for the Beijing Olympics next year,'' said Huh.
Song, hired by MBC in 1982, was one of the country's first television journalists to specialize in sports broadcasting.
He called many of the significant moments in sports for the past two decades, including the now-infamous duel between Carl Lewis and Ben Johnson in the 100-meter dash at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, of which the winner Johnson was later disqulaified for using steriods.
Song also covered Park Chan-ho's Major League Baseball (MLB) starts and internatinonal tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics.
The ususally soft-spoken Song is well remebered for his on-air rants while calling the shorttrack speed skating finals at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics. The race caused an outrage here after Korean Kim Dong-sung, first across the finish line, lost his gold medal to American Apollo Anton Ohno over a disputed blocking call.
Although covering a wide vareity of sporting events, baseball was truly Song's biggest passion. He was respected for his intellectual appraoch to the game and was famous for carrying around dozens of notebooks scribbled with statistics and analysis of each baseball team and player.
Song is also the author of several books about baseball and Olympic sports.