A marathoner breasted the tape in first place in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He just stepped off the track with his face drooping. He didn't express the pleasure of the winner even on the platform and stared down at the ground with sad eyes. Why did the winner seem to be sad? He had the Japanese flag on, but he was not Japanese. He was Korean, under the colonial control of Japan. This man was Sohn Kee-chung. He resisted Japan in his own way, and made Korean people feel big pleasure even if it was for a short time.

At that time, the “Dong-a Ilbo” had his picture in the newspaper showing him on the podium, and the Japanese flag on his chest was erased. This inspired many Koreans with patriotism and courage. However, the “Dong-a Ilbo” was censored by Japan and couldn’t publish the paper for nine months.

Sohn was a son of a poor family. He said that if he had been rich enough to buy skates, he might have been a skater, and that he became a marathoner as marathoners didn’t need any money. Before he became a marathoner, he used to run to work from Sinueojoo via the Yalu River to Dandong, over eight kilometers.

Sohn, a great winner, had a funny and stupid beginning. He made a big mistake when he participated in his first marathon. Marathon athletes are obliged to check the course of the marathon before the actual race. However, he just took a train and went home without checking the whole route, just because it got dark. In the real race, he let the runner behind pass him because he didn’t know where to go, and he lost the marathon.

After independence from Japan, Sohn trained marathon athletes as a supervising manager for the Boston Marathon Championship in 1947. One of the athletes, Suh Yun-bok, remembered those days and said that they started training for the marathon after singing the national anthem together and hoisting the national flag. On race day, Sohn shouted at Suh Yun-bok standing at the start, “Yun-bok, run for our country!” Yun-bok won the race.

One year before Sohn died, he got ill and his doctor made a diagnosis to cut off his toe. Sohn said that he couldn’t cut his toe, however strong the pain was. This story shows he had very strong heart all his life. Now we have Sohn Kee-chung Park in Joonglimdong in Seoul, which has a bay tree named Sohn Kee-chung Tree, which the president of Germany presented to him.

Sohn is said to have always kept the word “Korea” in his mind during his whole life. But many famous international websites still write his name as Kitei-son, following Japanese orthography, not Sohn Kee-chung. Moreover, his nationality is sometimes marked Japanese, not Korean. The VANK, the cyber civilian diplomats of Korea, have been getting fruitful results on the project entitled “Remember Sohn Kee-chung” since July of last year. He is absolutely a Korean.