Forgotten ‘Bicycle king of the East’: sports hero Um Bok-dong and the formation of sports heritage in South Korea

ABSTRACT

Cyclist Um Bok-dong (1892–1951[1952?]), nicknamed ‘Bicycle king of the East’, was the biggest Korean sports hero from the 1910s and into the 1920s, a time when Korea was subjected to Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945). He beat Japanese rivals and inspired his fellow compatriots, becoming their source of pride at a difficult era. In post-colonial South Korea, however, Um was nearly completely forgotten. There are barely any commemorative initiatives for him and hardly any Korean-language academic works on him. Scholarly works in English on Um are non-existent. By exploring this phenomenon the paper opens up a discussion on sports heroes and their place in heritagisation, and it contributes to the relatively scant scholarship on sports heritage. The discussion revolves around tracing when, why, and how South Korea began paying much more attention to sports heritage, and, in light of the findings, it analyzes Um’s forgetfulness in the process. I argue that while South Korea began investing more meaningfully in sports heritage since the early 2000s, Um was forgotten primarily because another athlete, Sohn Kee-chung, occupied the representative spot of the ‘sports hero of the colonial period’. In this context, I stress the importance of influential agents for successful heritagisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Um Bok-dong
• South Korea
• sports heritage
• sports heroes
• collective memory
• Sohn Kee-chung

Acknowledgments

This paper was written during my sabbatical stay at the Department of Physical Education of Seoul National University, to which I thank for hosting me. I am also grateful to Olga Fedorenko and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For a representative narrative in this regard see the text published on 29 June 2010 by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism at https://www.Korea.kr/news/policyNewsView.do?newsId=148696032 (accessed 15 June 2021). In a survey conducted in 2020 on the 70^th anniversary of the Korean War, overcoming the ‘IMF crisis’ was mentioned as the most memorable economic-related achievement since the war, followed by hosting the 1988 Seoul Olympics. See Kwon (2020).

2. See UNESCO’s website at https://en.unesco.org/themes/sport-and-anti-doping/traditional-sports-and-games (accessed 10 June 2021).

3. See report published on 24 February 2011 at https://www.Korea.kr/news/pressReleaseView.do?newsId=155791159 (accessed 13 June 2021).

4. Joseon was Korea’s last dynasty (1392–1910) and later also the Korean name for the colony that the Japanese called Chōsen.

5. See the list of Um’s wins in Lee, Shin, and Ryu (2016, 5).

6. Perhaps the most noted case is Lee Young-min (Yi Yeong-min) (1905–1954), an all-around athlete who achieved success as a baseball player, as a soccer player, and in track and field competitions. In post-colonial South Korea Lee was appointed manager of the national soccer team for the 1948 London Olympics. At the same time he lived a promiscuous life which led to his divorce, and he was killed during a robbery which one of his sons planned in an attempt to steal his father’s money. Lee is commemorated through the annual ‘Lee Young-min Batting Award’ (established in 1958) which is given to the high school baseball player with the highest hitting average.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Guy Podoler

Guy Podoler is Senior Lecturer of Korean Studies in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Haifa. His research interests include memory and commemoration, sports heritage, sports nationalism, and cultural diplomacy. He published in journals, such as Acta Koreana, Asian Studies Review, International Journal of Cultural Policy, International Journal of the History of Sport, and Sport in Society, and contributed papers to edited volume. His book is titled Monuments, Memory, and Identity: Constructing the Colonial Past in South Korea (Peter Lang AG, 2011). He is also the senior book review editor of Asian Journal of Sport History and Culture.