Major sporting event biased toward South Korea, what else is new.

Or so writes a Korean high school student in the Joongang Ilbo:

On the third day of the Olympics, I watched Park Tae-hwan win the first gold medal for South Korea in swimming. I was really proud of Korea and was very excited.

Then I read an article saying that Park had been tested for doping twice; it is unusual for an athlete to be tested more than once. It is understandable that the Chinese are suspicious seeing a Korean doing so well in swimming.

But why only Park? They should have done it to others also. In addition, when athletes have to take a doping test, testers should make sure that he gets minimum disadvantage in practicing due to the test.

However, Chinese testers didn’t do that. Park had to even take a blood test which took one hour in all, which disrupted Park’s practice schedule.

Also, I found out that archery has only 4 gold medals while swimming has 24 gold medals. Why such a difference? Then I heard that there used to be many more medals for archery but that was changed since South Korea gets all the medals in archery.

Why indeed does swimming have so many medals at stake? Many Americans tend to win them. The United States, which is the most powerful country in the world, must want to win as many medals as possible. So I guess they made some effort to achieve that.

These are some unfair aspects of the Olympics. The Olympics are supposed to promote world peace. However, if there’s a lot of unfairness in it, how can it achieve peace? I think the officials concerned with the Olympics should try not to make things favor their country.

More on Korea Beat, including accusations that the Chinese archers were acting unfairly. Perhaps this here student should read about Roy Jones, Jr., the American boxer who was robbed of a gold medal during the 1988 Seoul Games. From Wikipedia:

Jones represented the United States at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games where he won the silver medal. Jones dominated his opponents, never losing a single round on route to the final. His participation in the final proved to be hugely controversial when he lost a highly disputed 3-2 decision in the final. Jones lost to South Korean fighter Park Si-Hun, despite pummeling Park for three rounds, landing 86 punches to Park's 32. Allegedly, Park himself apologized to Jones afterwards. One judge shortly thereafter admitted the decision was a mistake, and all three judges voting against Jones were eventually suspended. An official IOC investigation concluding in 1997 found that 3 of the judges were wined and dined by Korean officials, but the IOC still officially stands by the decision. Jones was awarded the Val Barker trophy as the best stylistic boxer of the 1988 games. The incident, along with another highly disputed decision against American Michael Carbajal in the same games, led Olympic organizers to establish a new scoring system for Olympic boxing.

Also on the topic of students who don't know history but yet feel compelled to write about it for the Joongang Ilbo, an excerpt from a column yesterday:

Korean history dates back 5,000 years, whereas the United States is not even 250 years old. However, Korea takes its history for granted. In contrast, the study of U.S. history is compulsory for all students in that country. Now think of the Dokdo islets. They most certainly belong to Korea, and there is enough evidence to prove it, evidence that far predates the evidence presented by Japan.

That's a line of thinking and a measure of arrogance I love to hate. Actually, the Republic of Korea will turn sixty years old later this week, making it some 172 years younger than the United States. *cough* Yeah, not sure why we're comparing the age of a country to that of a culture. Or pretending that the United States can't trace any roots to Europe before 1776. Or that what we know as Korea today existed as an entity independent of China for some five millenia. I wouldn't have devoted a paragraph to it were that line of reasoning uncommon. I mean, it certainly speaks tjafowj98fw3jfd hey, wait, shouldn't that middle school kid be studying, anyway? Get his ass off the computer.