Associated Press: South Korea reacts to Yu Na Kim's win | Page 5 | Golden Skate

Associated Press: South Korea reacts to Yu Na Kim's win

lavender

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
The U.S. has so many big celebrities and history so things seem different. I can understand the level of excitement and fascination for Yu na in Korea.:cool:
 
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sunrock

Rinkside
Joined
Feb 24, 2009
Of course it'd be wrong to see Yu Na's popularity in South Korea solely through a lens of a Japanese rivalry. Of course she'd still be damn popular even if her longtime rival is from some other country instead. But that's purely academic and speculative. The fact is, her rivalry with Mao, who happens to be Japanese, absolutely fuels Yu Na's media coverage, fandom activity and is an intrinsic part of her narrative.
Nawww, you speak like it's the whole cake. It's only the icing.
 

DesertRoad

Final Flight
Joined
Oct 31, 2005
The U.S. has so many big celebrities and history so things are just differen. We're use to having such celebrity here all the time. I guess when it's so rare I can understand the level of excitement and fascination for Yu na in Korea.

Ya know, South Korea had a lot of megacelebrities and superstar athletes prior to Yu Na, too.
 

aftertherain

Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 15, 2010
The U.S. has so many big celebrities and history so things are just differen. We're use to having such celebrity here all the time. I guess when it's so rare I can understand the level of excitement and fascination for Yu na in Korea.

You might wanna rephrase your statement... South Korea's not a "new country" with no history or celebrities y'know ...
 

Figure88

On the Ice
Joined
Dec 3, 2009
Interesting stuff.

I do think that the media has downplayed the rivalry between the two. I had to explain to several casual viewers how far back the Mao's and Yuna's rivalry goes back. They have bee competing against each other since they were like 13. I don't think we've seen anything like it. (Maybe Mirai and Caroline, but....even that's not close.)

Uh there is no rivalry. Yuna already is the Olympic champion. It will take four years for Mao to catch up with that, if that's even possible. The only people who really like to stoke up all the rivalry talk is the disillusioned Mao bots.
 
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Mrs. P

Uno, Dos, twizzle!
Record Breaker
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Dec 27, 2009
Uh there is no rivalry. Yuna already is the Olympic champion. It will take four years for Mao to catch up with that, if that's even possible. The only people who really like to stoke up all the rivalry talk is the disillusioned Mao bots.

I'm not a Mao bot whatever that entails. Yes, Mao has been less of threat since she won Worlds in 2008, but that doesn't mean there isn't a rivalry. Mao may have made some bad decisions, but she's still a competitor and she still put a good effort forward.

And besides, I'm talking about the rivalry from a historic sense. Here are two girls who have competed since they were junior skaters in 2005. And this win is obvoiusly a great victory for Yuna to the nerves and pressure but it's also the "cake topper" (since we're using baking terms) to their competitive history.

An American comparison, I just realized, would be Lindsay Vonn and Julia Mancuso. They've been skiing against each other since they were little kids.
 

Figure88

On the Ice
Joined
Dec 3, 2009
Yes, Mao has been less of threat since she won Worlds in 2008, but that doesn't mean there isn't a rivalry.

No, I think all the rivalry talk is silenced, unless she matches Yuna's current record as an Olympic gold medalist. And her chance will not come for another 4 years.Maybe that's why Mao seemed so upset at the Olympic medal podium and she seems to be drawing so much attention to Sochi in 2014 during her interviews. Even before Yuna won Olympic gold, people were discounting Mao as a serious rival because of the problems she's been having for 2 seasons. And I think the nail in the coffin has come with Yuna winning the title of Olympic champion.
 
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Mrs. P

Uno, Dos, twizzle!
Record Breaker
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Dec 27, 2009
No, I think all the rivalry talk is silenced, unless she matches Yuna's current record as an Olympic gold medalist. And her chance will not come for another 4 years.Maybe that's why Mao seemed so upset at the Olympic medal podium and she seems to be drawing so much attention to Sochi in 2014 during her interviews. Even before Yuna won Olympic gold, people were discounting Mao as a serious rival because of the problems she's been having for 2 seasons. And I think the nail in the coffin has come with Yuna winning the title of Olympic champion.

I think Mao wants to focus on Sochi for herself. She was upset because she didn't do the performance she wanted.
And I wouldn't count Mao out yet. Michelle Kwan did not have the OGM but still was a force to be reckoned with during the off-Olympic years. Same with Kurt Browning. Yes, Mao is in a bit of catch up mode, but unless Yuna retires this OGM is just a moment (a great moment, don't get me wrong!) in future competitive years.

And quite frankly, I think Yuna likes to have a rivalry of any kind. I think she's happy she's won of course, but she's said in interviews that she likes to win when everyone skates lights out.
 

Daniel5555

On the Ice
Joined
Jan 27, 2009
I would like to provide my little comment while I have time. Sadly I've never been in Korea, but being fan of Yuna, I think I know some things about how the situation is going...

First of all, I'm absolutely sure that in case of not winning the gold nothing would change for Yuna in terms of endorsements. Koreans love her too much and her endorsements started to grow when she was winning only bronze medals, so I don't think there would be any problems with this. I don't know about the BoA case, but before the Olympics Nike released the series of promotional videos that criticized the pressure on her, so it seems that the companies were more on the side of Yuna in case of not winning. I don't get some of those articles which claim that in case of losing she would lose a lot of her endorsements. The other thing is that most of her contracts end this season because she may retire, but that always was like that.

The next thing is about whether Yuna has anti-fans... I'm not sure how much anti-fans she has now, but before she certainly had quite a lot. Right now probably they still exist, but they don't dare to show themselves. But before she received even some direct attacks from those anti-fans. She has a blog which is very popular in Korea that she started a lot of years ago and... Well, I don't want to dig into ****, but she received some incredible amount of hatred through that blog when she was much younger and not that famous. That YouTube videos are literally nothing comparing with what those people did to her and she had to deal with it personally. It's noteworthy that she never said a bad thing about her haters. She never called them idiots or something like this, she just stated that she doesn't understand the reason of that much hatred although it's absolutely normal that not everyone likes her.

I was really touched by that strong attitude. I can understand that some people can be annoyed by her commercials or how much her image is exploited by companies, but I don't understand how can someone hate that little girl who didn't do anything bad to anyone. Not just now, but when she had like 17 years and was much more vulnerable...

But she resisted it all and remained to be what she is. It's a bit sad that the real story of Yuna was never told to the Western audiences... It's very interesting story and not a typical one. It's not something about how she overcame like 1000 obstacles, it's rather about how a person that seems rather simple and usual can become something really special with work and a lot of optimism. Yuna was called a happy skater when she apparently had no reason to be happy.
 
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key65man

Rinkside
Joined
Mar 4, 2010
A lot of things revolve around money and politics. Yu-Na would have been propped up, had she not won the gold. That is because the Korean companies and the skating authorities still need her for their advantage.

Right now, a similar thing is happening in Japan. There is a big faction in Japan which is arguing that Yu-Na somehow cheated to win the gold or Mao got cheated by the scoring system. They know that is not true. But, they need to prop Mao up to the populace, and they are doing a big media campaign about it. They have invested so much money on her. In addition to financial losses by the "spsonsors" and the authorities, the status of figure stating in Japan might be in jeopardy if the Mao project proved to be a "failure" by winning the silver.

Same story for Yu-Na. As long as she wants to stay in competitive skating, there will be people who keep her up despite any "perceived" failure.
 

Yogudin

Rinkside
Joined
Nov 9, 2008
A Korean college professor, mr Song-DooHeon, who doesn’t know the Russian language, commented badly some overall situations of the figure skating in Russia after Vancouver Olympic and made a fool of himself based on the Google translator only - http://blog.daum.net/sadprince57/425. Is there any other country in the world, where it can be the theme for the college professor to comment badly upon in that way, i.e. by Google translator only ?
 

szidon

On the Ice
Joined
Mar 22, 2008
Insane, obsessive and stupid. It's almost like they felt inferior until producing a Yu Na Kim.

What a politically incorrect reply!

A Korean college professor, mr Song-DooHeon, who doesn’t know the Russian language, commented badly some overall situations of the figure skating in Russia after Vancouver Olympic and made a fool of himself based on the Google translator only - http://blog.daum.net/sadprince57/425. Is there any other country in the world, where it can be the theme for the college professor to comment badly upon in that way, i.e. by Google translator only ?

Please read the post above. ;)

Plus, the site you linked is just a personal blog. Who cares?
He is not the representative of Korea or anything. :)

A lot of it has to do with the celebrity culture there, which is also very similar in Japan. In Korea, celebrities are often lofted into very high positions politically as well... for example, Korean popstar BoA (best example I can give, because she was indisputably the most famous celebrity in Korea at a young age as well) served as cultural ambassador to the US at 15. Her fame in Korea became so astronomical, that she couldn't even live in the country and was unable to see her family for years at a time. Yu-Na is in a similar situation now... she has been put into the Korean spotlight, and they will expect a lot out of her. Unfortunately, it also doesn't take a whole lot for public opinion to change. When BoA announced she would release an album in the US instead of Korea one year, she lost all of her Korean endorsements except one, despite the fact that it seemed like people used to worship the ground she walked on. Hopefully, Yu-Na never finds herself in that position... if she had failed to medal, Korea's general opinion might have been along the lines of "she has been having too many photo shoot or press conferences to be taken seriously." The popularity Yu-Na has in Korea now is a very big burden; everything she does on or iff the ice will be disected and examined. Right now, she truly is their golden girl (and well deserved) and hopefully it stays that way.

Here is another article for you: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/11/sports/la-sp-olympics-kim11-2010feb11 "Kim Yu-na has South Korea's full attention" from the Los Angeles Times

BoA is not so popular in Korea as in Japan. You must have gotten all the information on Korean cultural phenomena from the Japanese media. :think:
 
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