Figure skater Kim carries weight of a nation

Officially, Kim Yu-na of South Korea will be judged only for her jumps and spins when the Olympic women’s figure skating competition begins Tuesday. But there will be important political and cultural elements to her programs as well.

No South Korean figure skater has won an Olympic medal, much less gold, as is expected from the willowy Kim, 19. So not only does she have to shoulder enormous athletic expectations, but also Kim’s main rivals, Mao Asada and Miki Ando, are from Japan, which occupied the Korean peninsula for 35 years through the end of World War II.

More than a half-century later, South Korea’s nationalistic fervor and sense of victimhood still inform sporting rivalries between the two nations. The Olympic buildup has been fueled by great anticipation of Kim’s beautiful, speedy, flowing style, and also by Internet vitriol and fears that she will be unfairly marked down for the quality of her triple Lutz-triple toe combination jump.

"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 first Korean to win an Olympic gold medal, Sohn Kee-chung, took the marathon at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but he had to compete for colonialist Japan and take a Japanese name. He remained a fierce Korean nationalist, though, and his story is still taught to South Korean schoolchildren.

"I know of him," Kim said at Skate America in November. "I will try to be like him."

Some South Korea experts suggest that anti-Japanese sentiment ebbed once Kim became the 2009 world champion, vanquishing Asada and Ando, the previous two champions. Also, when the countries co-hosted the 2002 soccer World Cup, South Korea advanced further than Japan, to the semifinals.

"Anti-Japanese sentiment in sport has decreased a lot," said Chung He-joon, a professor of sports science at Dong-A University in South Korea. "It’s not what it used to be, partly because South Korea has defeated Japan very often, especially in soccer. Nationalistic fervor has found other vents as well — for example against the United States. There are even many South Korean fans of Mao Asada, because she is pretty."

Kim is also popular in Japan, said Lee Yun-hyang, an Olympics interpreter who was born in Seoul, South Korea, and now works for the United States State Department. The enmity felt toward Asada and Ando, Lee said, does not match the antagonism directed toward the American short-track skater Apolo Anton Ohno over the disqualification of a South Korean competitor during a race at the 2002 Winter Games.

"We want to see Kim do well, but we don’t want to see Mao Asada fall," Lee said. Yet, she conceded, "We have to win against Japan in every way."

Chung, the sports science professor, said that South Korea seemed unique in the sense that "the whole nation laughs or weeps depending on one athlete’s success or failure," a prospect that he found "a bit absurd," considering that "these athletes do what they do for personal success and fortune."

This pressure, of course, would bring huge financial reward if Kim — who already makes $5 million US a year in endorsements, according to her agent — transformed expectation into gold.

"If she wins, she’ll be a Godzillionaire," said Frank Carroll, who coaches the Japanese-American skater Mirai Nagasu, mixing his monster metaphors.

Yet pressure can also be straining. Kim has trained in Toronto with coach Brian Orser, thousands of miles from her yearning fans. At Skate America, held in Lake Placid, N.Y., in November, she won the overall competition but seemed nervous during a faltering long program attended by several busloads of Korean supporters, who came from New York City.

Here, Kim has sometimes seemed tense, struggling to land her triple flip in training, while Asada possesses the more difficult triple Axel. In practice Monday, though, Kim smiled and seemed commanding. Afterward, Orser, said, "I think today was a turning point."

Four gold medals won by South Korean speedskaters here have relieved some pressure on Kim. But only some. If she is defeated, there will be "some kind of panic" in South Korea, lamented Chung, the sports science professor.

"The society and media have publicized her too much," he said. "The whole nation hanging on to one athlete — as if some crisis might befall the nation if she didn’t win a gold — this is not good sportsmanship."