Kwak Yeon-soo is a digital editor at The Korea Times creating, editing and curating digital content for the newspaper’s website, mobile app and social media. She previously covered a diverse array of cultural, political and business topics.
Spanish taekwondo medalist's belt grabs Koreans' attention
Spain's Adriana Cerezo Iglesias reacts after the women's -49kg taekwondo final match, during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Makuhari Messe Hall in Tokyo, Saturday. AFP-Yonhap
By Kwak Yeon-soo
By Kwak Yeon-soo
A Spanish taekwondo medalist has caught the attention of Koreans as a special inscription on her black belt has gone viral online.
The 17-year-old, Adriana Cerezo Iglesias, won the first medal for Spain after losing 10-11 to Thailand's Panipak Wongpattanakit, the bronze medalist at the 2016 Rio Olympics, in the women's -49kg taekwondo final on Saturday.
The teenage athlete had beaten China's two-time Olympic champion, Wu Jingyu, with a 33-2 win in the quarter-finals.
Koreans immediately noticed something strange about her belt, which was decorated with her motto in “broken” Korean. What was meant to be read as, “Train Hard, Dream Big,” was spelled out as “(railway) train,” “ha-du (Korean phoneticization of 'hard')” and “Dream, Big (but written in a grammatically incorrect fashion).”
The Internet shared images of her belt, saying, “Did she use automatic translation? It's grammatically incorrect, but it's still a great sentence because her message was conveyed.”
Another person tweeted, “Who cares if her Korean is bad? I respect her decision to engrave hangeul, or Korean language, on her belt. Congratulations on winning the silver medal!”
Cerezo Iglesias won the gold medal at the European Taekwondo Championships in 2021 and the silver medal in the 2021 European Taekwondo Olympic Qualification Tournament, which won her a ticket to the Tokyo Olympics.