He shot five holes in one and a 38 under par in golf and bowled a perfect 300 in bowling. Jere Longman looks at the sporting side of Kim Jong-il.
In the political world, Kim Jong-il of North Korea was a despot and nuclear antagonist. In the sporting world, he might have been the only guy ever to wear platform shoes, a bouffant hairdo and “Dear Leader” embroidered on his bowling shirt.
In his first match at Pyongyang Lanes, Kim bowled a perfect 300, said the state-run news media. But that is nothing compared to the five holes in one and 38 under par that Kim reportedly shot in his maiden round of golf. Of course, in a closed, isolated nation like North Korea, it is difficult to separate the milk of fact from the crème of fiction.
“Kim was a humble man, so I could see how he pulled it back and wouldn’t brag too much,” says William K Wolfrum, a humourist who has blogged frequently about golf. “That’s the equivalent of Kate Moss winning the Coney Island hot dog eating contest. What’s irritating is Western propaganda says it’s untrue. I consider it true till proven false.”
And it seems that “in the hole” carries a different meaning in North Korea than at Pebble Beach. Moon Ki-nam, a former soccer coach who defected in 2004, told The Associated Press before the 2010 World Cup that players were rewarded with apartments if they succeeded but were sometimes sent to coal mines if they lost.
It is impossible to confirm such accusations. But it is clear that Kim’s cult of personality influenced sport as well as politics in North Korea. When Jong Song-ok, a North Korean runner, won the women’s marathon at the 1999 world track and field championships in Spain, she told reporters, “I imagined in my mind the image of our leader, and this inspired me.”
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It was through soccer, though, that North Korea’s struggles and peculiarities became most visible to the sporting world. At the 1999 women’s World Cup in the US, North Korean players arrived with little fanfare or evident dental care. After one player received free treatment, paid by FIFA, a tournament spokesman says that five or six other North Koreans complained of apparently phantom ailments so they could have their teeth checked and cleaned, perhaps for the first time.
At the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, FIFA, only slightly more transparent than North Korea, refused to let journalists ask anything substantial of North’s coach, Kim Jong-hun. Among the most urgent inquiries: did he really claim that he was getting tactical instruction through a cellphone invisible to the naked eye from the Dear Leader, who had invented the technology?
After enduring three defeats, including a 7-0 loss to Portugal , North Korea returned home in disgrace. A report by Radio Free Asia, which could not be confirmed, stated the team was placed on a stage at the Palace of Culture in Pyongyang and was publicly humiliated for six hours in front of 400 government officials, students and journalists.
Now that Kim’s dead, the sporting world is left to consider his exploits, which were grand and entertaining, if not strictly true.
—TheNew York Times