“If good, you are a Korean and if not, you are a foreigner.”

Sung-hun Chu (www.newsen.com) 

     Korean society is talking about Sung-hun Chu (Yoshihiro Akiyama, 秋山成勳) in terms of sports nationalism. He was a judoka (a judo athlete) before 2004 and moved to K-1 in 2005 and a fourth generation Korean-Japanese. He was born leaned judo in Japan. When he grown up, he went to Koreato be a Korean national judo athlete, but failed because there were big barriers at that time such as his ambiguous nationality and biases and discrimination about him from the Korean society. After he failed, he went back to Japan to become naturalized as a Japanese citizen in 2001 and become a Japanese national judo champion in the same year.

     The event which threw him in blames from Korean people was Pusan Asia Tournament. He won a gold medal in Pusan Asia Tournament Judo 81kg Champion 2002 against Korean athlete. After this game, he was blamed by most of Korean people because Korean people thought that he relinquished his nationality and broke faith with the Korean. After he moved to K-1, he continuously showed his love for his nation, Korea and then is getting back the interests from the Korean. Although his nationality/citizenship is Japanese and fights for Japan, his ethnicity is 100 % Korean. When he fights, we can see a small Korean flag on his left shoulder of his judogi (the clothes for judo).

     After he visited to South Korea, he was thrown into the media spotlights and then Korean talks about the nationalism not only in sport, bit also in all areas around the world. Although there are so many world sports stars around the world who are ethnic Koreans such as Hines E. Ward, Jr. and Michelle Wie, Chu is little different with others. Actually, he was born in Japan, his nationality was Korean and then he changed his nationality to Japan. Before he told about his expediences and why he had to change his nationality on TV, people didn’t know about the truth and they just blamed him. The bias which Korean people talk here is the phrase, “if good, you are a Korean and if not, you are a foreigner.” Though he leaves his nation for his goal, people need to understand his contexts. People used to view something or someone based on their standard or with biases. Now, we are live in the globalized society and the barriers between nations are getting to disappear. We need to break out the unnecessary discrimination or biases about these kinds of things. The important thing we need to keep in mind when we evaluate someone is not where he or she comes from but what he or she achieves.

     As he said on a TV program, he always loves his original country, South Korea but unfortunately he needed to become naturalized in Japan for his goal. For him, there were no alternative choices at that time. He feels proud of himself as a Korean. So, we need to gaze him not as a betrayer, but as one of the world sports athletes. This should be the role of sports fans and more broadly the role of the world citizen.