DEATH OF A KOREAN BOXER
Boxing in Korea is dead. It died in 1982, four years before I was born.
That was the year the Asian Lightweight Boxing Champion, a twenty-three
year old Korean named Kim Duk Koo, challenged the World Champion,
an American called Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, to a match. Korea had
dominated Asian boxing for decades, but they had never had a world
lightweight champion before. It was as though the whole country was
holding its breath.
It is hard to overstate how important boxing was in Korea at that time.
Korea had been the doormat of East Asia for five thousand years, and
it wasn’t until the end of the Korean Conflict, in 1953, that Koreans had
begun to think of themselves as independent. Boxing represented the
new Korean national pride. In the boxing ring, the underdog can, with
raw determination and fanatical effort, overcome the odds. And Kim Duk
Koo was definitely the underdog.
Critics said Kim had no chance. A prestigious boxing magazine of Korea
wrote that he had a very small chance, but then added, “The outcome of
the match will not only affect Kim Duk Koo personally, but will influence
the direction of Korean boxing.”
The statement was prophetic.
Despite the odds, Kim remained optimistic. He told reporters, “Eighty
percent of the time I believe I can win.” The day he left Korea for the U.S.,
he told a reporter, “I have bought myself a small casket. If I lose, I will
not walk out of the ring.” It was a close match. By the ninth round two
of the judges had the boxers tied, and one judge had Mancini ahead by
one point. However, in the tenth round when Mancini approached Kim
in a lowered stance, Kim fouled him by punching him in the back of his
head. Knowing he was behind in points, Kim began a furious effort to
catch up. In the fourteenth round he leaped out of his corner to finish the
match. He first tried to get Mancini with a right hook, but he missed and
got punched twice in the jaw. He fell. Using the ropes he pulled himself
back up, but he lost his balance again
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The Death of a Korean Boxer
At the exact moment the referee stopped the match, Kim Duk Koo
lost consciousness. He was carried out of the ring. Four days later he died
from severe damage to the frontal lobe of the brain.
Kim Duk Koo’s death signaled not only a change in the direction of
Korean boxing, it signaled its death. No one in Korea cares about boxing
like they used to. When you talk about boxing in Korea, you talk about
the old days—a different era and a different country.
There is a phrase Koreans use to describe the younger generation,
my generation. They say we lack hongery jon chin, the hungry spirit.
My parents use this phrase all the time, and it’s true. By comparison, my
generation has none of the motivation and desperation of our fathers.
Our parents have fought an impossible fight and won, and it has left my
generation with nothing to be hungry for.
Following the Korean Conflict, a national spirit gripped Korea. For the
first time, Koreans felt they had a nation they could call their own, and
they were in control of their own lives. They fell to work with a staggering ferocity. From the second poorest nation in the world, they became
wealthy, building an economy almost in one generation, my father’s
generation.
My father grew up in a tiny mountain town in east Korea. He remembers school days when half the class would go outside during lunch because
they were ashamed to show that they had no food. They would stand by
the well and drink water. One winter his little town ate all they food they’d
saved except some rice wine. Before the end of winter, not one person in
town could walk in a straight line. My father walked to school each day,
and it was dark before he got home. He didn’t miss a day. There was no
such thing as missing school back then; if a student was missing he was
either gravely sick or dead. Once my father walked right past a tiger in
the dark. What he remembers clearly were those two bright eyes, big as
lightbulbs, watching him.
The town had one black and white TV. It belonged to the mayor, and
each night when it was too dark to work, the weary men would meet to
watch a professional boxing match. On that tiny black and white TV, they
watched the first Korean boxer become a world champion. The Korean
was skinny, and he fought a bulky foreigner. The Korean fighter got
knocked down several times. I remember watching a rerun of the fight
when I was little. The Korean looked sickly by comparison. Round after
round he looked like a toy being flung around, but he would not quit.
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ENGL 53: Eleventh Grade English Part 2
Then suddenly his glove flew up and caught his opponent in the head,
and the fight was over.
Korea had a string of eight consecutive years when they had a world
champion in at least one boxing weight class. The string ended in 1982
when Kim Duk Koo died.
My father doesn’t watch boxing anymore. He says boxers nowadays
lack hongery jon chin. He says “When people were hungry, winning just
wasn’t a goal. Winning was food.”
If I ask my father to talk about himself, he always emphasizes the sacrifices his father made. Once my grandfather visited relatives in Inchon
and was fascinated to see a group of students walking in uniforms. On that
day, grandfather decided to move to Inchon. He quickly sold everything
he owned: one cow, some chickens, and his land. People thought he was
foolish because he had been considered pretty well-off in that town. The
money he raised was just enough to get his family to Inchon and rent an
apartment. He went to work on a construction site and enrolled all five
of his surviving children is school.
He enrolled my father in the best school in Inchon, but he didn’t have
enough money to pay the tuition. My mother told me that my father
remembers being called to the front of the class many times because he
hadn’t paid his tuition. Still, they never kicked him out because he was
the best student. He studied so hard he made himself sick. Whenever
he talks about those days, he talks about the time his mother sent him
to take lunch to his father. When he walked onto that construction site
and saw how hard his father was working, he went straight home and
started studying again.
His mother, my grandmother, worried that he studied too hard and
that he would kill himself. He had tuberculosis. He finished at the top of
his class and then graduated from Seoul University Law School. Instead
of practicing law, he built a school for poor people who could only take
evening classes. He still runs that school in Inchon though it has grown
to about 4,000 students. He was instrumental in changing Korean law
to let non-traditional students take the college level entrance exams.
I have never starved like my parents and grandparents, and sometimes I fear I can never live up to the legacy they’ve left for me. Winning
is not food for me. To be honest, I don’t even know what my role should
be. I study hard, but it doesn’t feel like it’s enough . . . not by a long shot.
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The Death of a Korean Boxer
As I study and work, I find myself hoping that I will not disappoint my
parents. They knew that every effort they made—every hour they spent
studying and working—made a difference and improved their lives and
their family’s lives. When I study, I don’t feel that I’m breaking new ground
or advancing some great cause. I study because I’d feel guilty not to.
I ask myself, “What do I have to offer this family?” I am in a fight
I cannot hope to win; I can only hope not to lose. I know I am not the
only Korean teenager who feels like I’ve been cheated by my parents’
success—and feeling guilty for feeling that way. For several years, Korea
has had the highest number of committed suicides among teenagers. For
as long as I can remember, each time I turned on the news, it seemed to
mention another teenager killing herself or himself. In Korea, high school
typically starts at 7:00 a.m. and ends around 7:00 p.m. The best schools
end somewhere between 10:00 pm and midnight. After school, students
who are serious about college go to an after-school tutoring program that
ends around 2:00 am. The saying among high school students is, “You
win if you have four hours of sleep. You lose if you have five.” In Korea,
senioritis means mental instability from too much stress. I don’t know
how many students really live on four hours of sleep—maybe only five
percent—but I know that virtually all Korean students feel like they don’t
work hard enough, and they’re letting themselves and their families down.
It’s not just the teenagers. Korean adults work more hours per year
than any other nation . . . by far! In 2002, the average annual hours
worked per person in the United States was 1,802. In Korea it was 2,410.
The second busiest nation was the Czech Republic with 1,980. In other
words, Korean adults on the average worked 430 hours more in a year
than any other nation’s workers. Furthermore, the Korean average that
year was down from previous years. It had been as high a 2,734 in 1983.
When the Korean Times reported, in a 2004 article, that the Korean
suicide rate had been rising for the last twenty years, it was common
knowledge to Koreans. What was surprising were the reasons the Times
suggested for the increasing suicides: “the economic downturn and high
unemployment.” Or maybe that’s not surprising.
Interestingly, the Times reported that “the country’s rising suicide rate
is in stark contrast to some twenty years ago in 1982, when the suicide
rate was relatively low.” 1982. The year Kim Duk Koo died.
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ENGL 53: Eleventh Grade English Part 2
When the older generations of Koreans say that my generation lack
honery jon chin, they can point to the decline in hours worked or the
general unhappiness among Korean students, but I don’t think that my
generation lacks a desire to fight. We want to fight. We need a fight. But
we need a fight that is worth winning, a fight that is ours.
I agree with my father; winning is food. But “food” does not mean
the same thing to me as my father or grandfather. “Food” is whatever a
person needs, what is essential to a happy life. Winning is “food” because
people will never be happy until they find a battle worth fighting and put
everything they’ve got into winning. My grandfather fought to feed his
family. My father fought to educate Korea. I don’t know what will my
fight will be. My generation is unhappy because we have not yet figured
out what we are fighting for.
I think my battle—the battle of my generation—might not be about
building a better Korean economy. It might have more to do with figuring
out what is really important to us.
When we choose our battle, we can expect to face the disapproval of
our parents, just as they faced the disapproval of theirs. When my father
chose to build a school for the lower class rather than practice law, his
father felt betrayed. When my grandfather moved away from his little
village to take his family to Inchon, his parents felt betrayed. Whenever
a generation turns away from their parents’ battles and chooses a new
direction, feelings will be hurt. We can’t help that.
Boxing died in Korea in a dramatic way. When news came of Kim Duk
Koo’s death, people realized (perhaps not consciously) that they had seen
the end of a dream. For all the value of our Korean stubbornness—our
tenacity and our refusal to quit—there was a limit to the usefulness of
that idea. We value hongery jon chin, but we value something else more.
We value life.
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