Marathoner Son Kee-chung's legacy continues as his son seeks to restore his father's nationality

작성일 08-15

<div class="ab_photo photo_center ab_zoom">  <div class="image">   <span class="end_photo_org"><img src="https://imgnews.pstatic.net/image/640/2025/08/15/0000075100_001_20250815070217156.jpg" alt="" /><em class="img_desc">Son Jeong-in, the eldest son of marathoner Son Kee-chung, who won gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics during Japan’s colonial rule over Korea, holds up his father’s bronze helmet. Son donated the helmet to the Korean government, and it is now designated a treasure and kept at the National Museum of Korea. Marathoner Son had 1,000 replicas of the helmet made; No. 58, one of them, is kept at his son’s home. [KIM HYUN-YE]</em></span>   <span class="mask"></span>  </div>  </div>    <br> YOKOHAMA, Japan &#8212; Eighty-nine years after Son Kee-chung’s triumphant gold medal run at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, his son is still fighting for one final victory &#8212; to see the Korean marathoner’s nationality restored before it’s too late.  <br>    <br> “Even now, my father’s nationality is listed as Japanese. Will it be possible to change it while I’m still alive?” said Son Jeong-in, the 82-year-old son of marathon hero Son Kee-chung (1912-2002).  <br>    <br>  <div class="ab_photo photo_center ab_zoom">  <div class="image">   <span class="end_photo_org"><img src="https://imgnews.pstatic.net/image/640/2025/08/15/0000075100_002_20250815070217352.jpg" alt="" /><em class="img_desc">A replica of marathoner Son Kee-chung’s bronze helmet is kept by his eldest son, Son Jeong-in, at his home. Although it is the 58th copy, Son preserves it with care alongside a Taegeukgi, or Korean national flag, at his entrance. The original is housed at the National Museum of Korea. [KIM HYUN-YE]</em></span>   <span class="mask"></span>  </div>  </div>    <br> Son met with the JoongAng Ilbo on Aug. 7 at his home in Yokohama, Japan. He began his story calmly.    <br>    <br> “I hold no resentment or grudges. I have only one earnest wish &#8212; for the Japanese Olympic Committee to restore my father’s nationality to Korean. That is my final dream.”  <br>    <br> Son Kee-chung ran 42.195 kilometers (26.2 miles) in 2 hours, 29 minutes and 19 seconds, winning gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.    <br>    <br> Yet the International Olympic Committee (IOC) still lists his nationality as Japanese. Under Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945, Son stood on the podium with the Rising Sun flag sewn to his chest &#8212; a flag he tried to hide by pulling up the laurel sapling he held. His bittersweet story, symbolic of Korea’s colonial past, remains unresolved.  <br>    <br> Efforts to correct Son’s nationality began in the 1980s. In 2011, the IOC added to its website that he was Korean and that his name was Son Kee-chung, alongside his Japanese name Kitei Son, but his official nationality remains Japanese.    <br>    <br> <div class="ab_photo photo_center ab_zoom">  <div class="image">   <span class="end_photo_org"><img src="https://imgnews.pstatic.net/image/640/2025/08/15/0000075100_003_20250815070217568.jpg" alt="" /><em class="img_desc">Son Kee-chung stands on the podium wearing the Japanese flag after winning gold in the marathon at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. [JOONGANG ILBO]</em></span>   <span class="mask"></span>  </div>  </div>    <br> “My father never made a formal statement about the nationality listing,” said Son Jeong-in. “He only told acquaintances that he hoped Japan would return it of its own accord. He was never awarded any honors by the Japanese government &#8212; because he was technically Korean.”  <br>    <br> He carefully removed his father’s heavy bronze helmet from its glass case &#8212; an ancient-style helmet that a Greek newspaper intended to present to the marathon winner in 1936, but which was only delivered to Son in 1986, 50 years later. In 1994, Son Kee-chung donated it to the Korean government, which was designated a treasure, and it is now housed at the National Museum of Korea.    <br>    <br> “My father had 1,000 replicas made to give to those he was grateful to,” his son said. The one in his possession is No. 58. It rests in his entryway beside a Korean flag in his home, the glass case polished often by his hand.  <br>    <br> Born in 1943, Son Jeong-in lived with his uncle in Sinuiju, North Korea, while his father was competing. He reunited with his father during the Korean War (1950-53) in 1951, when Son Kee-chung brought his son and daughter from Sinuiju to safety. At their home in Anam-dong in Seongbuk District, central Seoul, where athletes training under Son often stayed, “our house was like a dormitory,” he recalled.    <br>    <br> “The athletes ate and slept there every day, and my father was always out trying to raise funds.”  <br>    <br> <div class="ab_photo photo_center ab_zoom">  <div class="image">   <span class="end_photo_org"><img src="https://imgnews.pstatic.net/image/640/2025/08/15/0000075100_004_20250815070217746.jpg" alt="" /><em class="img_desc">Son Jeong-in, the eldest son of marathoner Son Kee-chung, looks through materials from a symposium held at Meiji University in honor of the 100th anniversary of his father's birth. [KIM HYUN-YE]</em></span>   <span class="mask"></span>  </div>  </div>    <br> Perhaps influenced by his father, Son said he wanted to run, too. In middle school, he secretly trained for track, and when he entered high school, he was invited to join the track team. Upon hearing of this, Son Kee-chung rushed to the school and threatened to take back the laurel tree he had donated if his son joined.    <br>    <br> “My father didn’t want me to endure the hardships he had faced,” he said. “He told me, ‘Even if you run 100 meters in 10 seconds or a marathon in two hours, the medal is the same &#8212; so why go through the suffering?’”  <br>    <br> Son first set foot in Japan in 1968, again at his father’s influence.    <br>    <br> “I couldn’t avoid going to Japan, but you, as a Korean, should go there to help build a new era of Korea&#8212;Japan relations,” his father told him. In the wake of diplomatic normalization, he arrived as the first official Korean exchange student and, like his father, studied at Meiji University.  <br>    <br> “However, my father went to Meiji at the behest of the Government-General of Korea, with the condition that he does not run,” Son said. The Government-General of Korea refers to the administrative organ established by the Japanese government during its imperial rule over Korea.  <br>    <br> His father often lamented never having run in the Hakone Ekiden, Japan’s biggest annual long-distance university relay race, saying he could have won. While studying in Tokyo, the younger Son would run in secret at night, wearing black, in case the chance to compete arose &#8212; but it never did.  <br>    <br> Life as “Son Kee-chung’s son” was not easy. He has lived in Japan for 57 years, running a bulgogi restaurant near a university to make ends meet, as well as moving more than 10 times.   <br>    <br> “Because I was Son Kee-chung’s son, I couldn’t speak freely &#8212; whatever I said would be labeled either pro-Japanese or anti-Japanese,” he said.  <br>    <br> <div class="ab_photo photo_center ab_zoom">  <div class="image">   <span class="end_photo_org"><img src="https://imgnews.pstatic.net/image/640/2025/08/15/0000075100_005_20250815070217880.jpg" alt="" /><em class="img_desc">Zenichi Terashima, an emeritus professor at Meiji University, right, speaks about marathoner Son Kee-chung at the home of Son's eldest son, Son Jeong-in, left, on July 4. Terashima has been working to raise awareness of marathoner Son in Japan. [KIM HYUN-YE] </em></span>   <span class="mask"></span>  </div>  </div>    <br> For decades, his voice has been amplified by 80-year-old Japanese scholar Zenichi Terashima, an emeritus professor at Meiji University and author of the 2019 biography on Son Kee-chung. Terashima has lectured extensively about Son in Japan. He recalled visiting the Son Kee-chung Memorial Hall in Jung District, central Seoul, in 1988 and being shocked to find not a single artifact from Son’s time in Japan, despite being a gold medalist from Berlin.  <br>    <br> Terashima, who met with the JoongAng Ilbo on July 4, first met Son Kee-chung in 1983, during the Chun Doo Hwan regime, when the runner attended a meeting in Japan on “sports and peace” and said, “Sportsmen must take an interest in peace issues and work to build a peaceful society.”    <br>    <br> When Terashima expressed concern that the remark might cause him trouble back home, Son replied, “Have I said anything wrong? If it becomes a problem when I return, I will fight it.”  <br>    <br> “He had every reason to resent Japan after the discrimination he endured,” Terashima said, “but he believed Korea and Japan should unite for peace. He was a strong man.”  <br>    <br> According to Terashima, Son always said, “In sports, you fight on behalf of your country, but afterward you exchange uniforms and encourage each other to keep going. That’s peace. Peace matters most.”    <br>    <br> Terashima showed a telegram Son sent to Japanese runner Shigeki Tanaka (1931-2022) during the Korean War, congratulating him on his Boston Marathon victory: “Tanaka’s win is a victory for Asia.” Yet when Son died in 2002, Japan neither sent condolences nor flowers, despite claiming him as an Olympic champion.  <br>    <br> Terashima criticized it as “tantamount to disregarding Son Kee-chung while still claiming him as Japan’s marathon gold medalist.”  <br>    <br> “Despite the discrimination and hardship he endured, Son Kee-chung consistently spoke of peace and democracy, always staying a step or two ahead of his time,” Terashima added. “On the 60th anniversary of Korea-Japan diplomatic ties and the 80th anniversary of liberation [on Aug. 15], I hope young people in both countries will reflect on Son’s spirit of peace.”  <br>    <br> <div class="ab_photo photo_center ab_zoom">  <div class="image">   <span class="end_photo_org"><img src="https://imgnews.pstatic.net/image/640/2025/08/15/0000075100_006_20250815070218054.jpg" alt="" /><em class="img_desc">Son Kee-chung's gold medal from the 1936 Berlin Olympics marathon, a nationally registered cultural heritage item [SON KEE-CHUNG MEMORIAL HALL]</em></span>   <span class="mask"></span>  </div>  </div>    <br> Son Kee-chung grew up in poverty and left elementary school early to work in a print shop. Spotted running along the Yalu River, he was admitted to Yangjeong High School with community support, but often went hungry. One day, too weak to run, he begged a teacher for five jeon, a subunit of the Korean won that is rarely used nowadays, but the teacher gave him two yen &#8212; enough for a hearty meal when <i>seolleongtang </i>(ox bone broth and meat soup) cost 10 jeon.  <br>    <br> Encouraged by Korean marathoner Kwon Tae-ha’s (1906-1971) words that “one way to resist Japan’s oppression is to perform on the world stage and let the name Korea be known abroad,” Son switched from long-distance running to the marathon.    <br>    <br> After dominating Japanese races for four years, he won gold in Berlin. The first time he saw the Korean flag was at the home of An Bong-geun, the cousin of independence fighter An Jung-geun (1879-1910), in Berlin.  <br>    <br> Upon returning to Seoul, he was seized by Japanese police over the DongA Ilbo’s defacement of the Japanese flag in a published photo of Son Kee-chung's Berlin win. He later said the hardest moment of his life was being forced to deliver a recruitment speech for Japanese student soldiers during the war.  <br>    <br> After liberation in 1945, he devoted himself to training Korean marathoners and, in 1988, was the first torchbearer in the Seoul Olympics opening ceremony. He died of illness on Nov. 15, 2002, at the age of 90.  <br><br><i>This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.</i>

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Marathoner Son Kee-chung's legacy continues as his son seeks to restore his father's nationality

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