No Soccer or Baseball, but Swimming and Volleyball Included in President Moon's 'Olympic Message'

From Olympic Opening to Closing, President Moon's SNS Highlights: Emotion, No Medals, and Dignified Defeat

[Asia Economy Reporter Ryu Jeong-min] “Swimming’s Hwang Sun-woo, diving’s Woo Ha-ram, high jump’s Woo Sang-hyeok, weightlifting’s Lee Seon-mi, badminton’s An Se-young, and sport climbing’s Seo Chae-hyun?these athletes showed passion and enthusiasm that earned the wholehearted applause of the people.”

President Moon Jae-in’s message posted on social media (SNS) on the 8th, marking the closing of the Tokyo Olympics, symbolically reflects the political, social, and cultural changes of this Olympics. The commonality among those mentioned by President Moon is that they are ‘no-medal’ athletes from less popular sports who participated in the Tokyo Olympics.

In his SNS message that day, President Moon mentioned several athletes’ names, but none of them won a gold medal. He focused on the ‘no-medalists’ who performed well despite harsh conditions and the ‘graceful losers’ who acknowledged their defeat and congratulated the winners.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Korea is a representative sports powerhouse. Until now, the Olympics have been seen as an opportunity to demonstrate national power. Past presidents have used the achievements of Olympic medalists, especially gold medalists, as a driving force for national policy.

The public also paid attention to Korea’s ranking in the world. Based on the familiar ‘ranking table’ where a country winning one gold medal ranks higher than a country winning 100 bronze medals, people focused on whether Korea would enter the top 10 globally. The interest was centered on winning gold medals.

There were even awkward situations where athletes who won silver or bronze medals had to apologize to the public. However, the situation at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics was different. The focus on less popular sports and no-medalists as much as medalists was also evident in President Moon’s SNS posts.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Starting from the day before the Tokyo Olympics opening on the 22nd of last month until the night of the closing day on the 8th, President Moon delivered messages through SNS. There were even days when he posted twice. He congratulated medal-winning athletes and sent congratulatory messages.

The key keywords running through President Moon’s messages were emotion, no-medal, and graceful losers. An interesting point is that there were no messages related to Korea’s popular sports such as soccer or baseball.

Soccer reached the quarterfinals, and baseball finished in 4th place, but President Moon did not mention these sports on SNS. On the other hand, he gave special meaning through separate SNS messages to swimmer Hwang Sun-woo, who advanced to the 100m final, and the women’s volleyball team, which achieved an ‘emotional semifinal.’

Regarding the women’s volleyball team’s performance, President Moon said on SNS on the 8th, “Our women’s volleyball players gave us special emotions at the Tokyo Olympics. With the power of one team, they competed evenly against the world’s strong teams, and the way they gave their all in every match made all the people proud.”

[Image source=Yonhap News]

It was also interesting that he paid more attention to the losers than the winners. On the 8th, President Moon said on SNS, “The tears of regret shed by table tennis player Shin Yu-bin, weightlifter Kim Su-hyun, and wrestler Ryu Han-su will soon turn into smiles of achievement,” and “Judoka Cho Gu-ham and taekwondo athlete Lee Da-bin showed the dignity of a graceful loser by respecting their victorious opponents.”

The Korean national team recorded an overall result outside the world’s top 10 at this Tokyo Olympics, but it is evaluated as having performed well rather than with regret. The public also focused on the athletes’ sweat and passion rather than rankings. This is a social landscape different from past Olympics.

In this regard, President Moon delivered this message on the 8th, summarizing the Tokyo Olympics.

“In this still difficult time, our athletes conveyed messages of comfort and hope to the people through honest sweat... The color of the medal does not matter. Even if you didn’t win a medal, doing your best is beautiful. Especially in this Olympics, many young athletes enjoyed the competition itself, and behind their positive smiles came new records.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.