Nationalism and the Winter Olympics
The Mao Asada of Japan and Yuna Kim of South Korea are about to hit the ice in Vancouver, where one of them will probably win the gold medal for figure skating. According to the international media, some people in South Korea have turned this into a uber-nationalistic contest.
From the New York Times:
“Koreans’ blood roils when their country competes with Japan in sports or elsewhere,” said Song Doo-heon, a professor of computer science at Yong-in Songdam University in South Korea, who blogs about figure skating and is a popular commentator on Kim.
Figure skating is as much art as sport. Kim is a cultural icon as well as an athlete. Thus, Song said, the competition between Kim and her Japanese rivals will also be viewed as a referendum “on which country’s culture is better regarded by the rest of the world.”
Given that Kim is a national hero in South Korea, “her loss or her winning will be perceived as a national loss or a national winning,” said Kyung-ae Park, a political scientist who holds the Korea Foundation Chair at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
“If she wins the gold medal,” Park said, “I think it will be a great boost for national pride for Koreans. In a way, it will work as compensation for past humiliations.”
The New York Times article also contains a passage stating that anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea will decrease as long as South Korea keeps beating Japan in sporting competitions.
From the LA Times:
“With South Korea versus Japan, it is all about one-sided nationalism,” said Shin Kwang-yeong, sociology professor at Chung-Ang University in Seoul. “Of course, Japan’s colonization of Korea and emotions between the two countries are instilled in sports.
“It’s a phenomenon based on South Korea’s group perception about its traumatic history. If you do not win a gold medal, other medals are not satisfying.”
And medals are sweeter if snatched from a Japanese competitor.
From the Wall Street Journal:
Ms. Kim’s success has forced her into the crucible of national heroes in South Korea—a country where celebrity mixes with a combination of ardent patriotism and insecurity about the country’s reputation.
From the Financial Times:
When Kim Yu-na, South Korea’s figure skating sensation, takes to the Vancouver ice for her final programme this week, a nation’s pride will be riding on her 19-year-old shoulders. The near-hysteria back home surrounding her efforts to win an Olympic gold is all the more intense because her closest rival, Mao Asada, is from Japan, the old colonial enemy.
It is very likely that Yuna Kim will win a gold medal, so don’t expect anything crazy. However, even after past victories by Kim, the South Korean media has stoked anti-Japanese sentiment by focusing on the internet videos made by a few anonymous Japanese internet trolls. Those who make anti-Yuna Kim videos on YouTube are probably delighted with the attention that their pointless activities have been given.
If by some change, Mao Asada manages to pull off a come-from-behind victory, well, we know what kind of reaction to expect.
Let me close this post with a relevant quote from a recent Newsweek article by Christopher Hitchens, which mocks the idea that the Olympics are all about peace and friendship between nations:
Whether it’s the exacerbation of national rivalries that you want—as in Africa this year—or the exhibition of the most depressing traits of the human personality (guns in locker rooms, golf clubs wielded in the home, dogs maimed and tortured at stars’ homes to make them fight, dope and steroids everywhere), you need only look to the wide world of sports for the most rank and vivid examples. As George Orwell wrote in his 1945 essay “The Sporting Spirit,” after yet another outbreak of combined mayhem and chauvinism on the international soccer field, “sport is an unfailing cause of ill-will.” As he went on to say:
“I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didn’t know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.”
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