Olympic Profit : South Korea Has Reaped Benefits from the ’88 Games but Is Still Learning That All That Glitters Is Not Gold

Ahn Jae Hyung, a South Korean who so excelled in Ping-Pong from his elementary school days that his family moved to Pusan to further his pursuit of the game, first glimpsed his true love on his initial trip overseas in 1984 to compete in a tournament in Pakistan.

“Her quiet ways and her intense mood attracted me,” Ahn said of Jiao Zhimin of China, who won medals in what was also her first overseas competition. Ahn, who finished fourth in men’s doubles, congratulated Jiao and tried to befriend her, eventually even studying Chinese to understand her better.

A year later, when they met in Sweden, they became buddies. With no mail or telephone service between South Korea and China, they exchanged letters through athlete pals who passed their notes at international sports events. Ahn and Jiao met for the third time in Seoul at the 1986 Asian Games. Both won gold medals. And here, they fell in love.

But there was a big problem: Their countries not only did not recognize each other diplomatically, there was animosity between them. China, the Soviet Union and all of the then-superpowers’ satellites still were clinging to support of Seoul’s much-loathed, Communist-backed rival, North Korea. None maintained diplomatic relations with Seoul.

When a Japanese newspaper in 1987 reported the Ahn-Jiao romance, “I had to deny it because I was afraid Chinese authorities would not send me overseas again,” Jiao said.

Chinese authorities did reprimand her and Jiao stopped writing. The relationship seemed doomed.

But that was then. And this is now:

Ahn, 27, and Jiao, 28, both Olympic bronze medalists, are married and live here. Their relationship is symbolic of the dramatic changes that have swept South Korea since it was chosen over Nagoya, Japan, to hold the 1988 Summer Games.

The Seoul Olympics, which gave a major boost to this nation’s self-image and propelled it into prominence in world sports, was a watershed for South Korea--in its diplomacy, national security and even its new-found democracy.

Almost as if diplomacy paralleled the Ahn-Jiao love affair, all forms of exchange between South Korea and China--except for formal diplomatic ties--are flourishing. Trade between Seoul and Beijing went from nothing in 1981 to $5.8 billion in 1991, with an expected $8 billion in exchange this year.

South Korea and the Soviet Union reached a rapprochement, even before the Soviet collapse. Diplomatic ties were established with all of the East European nations that once shunned Seoul. And North Korea has grown increasingly isolated, although it has reached out more than before to the south.

“The Olympics contributed much to national security, (forging) new relationships with China and the Soviet Union and making new friends of former enemies,” said Park Seh Jik, president of the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee.

Journalist Park Kwon Sang sees an irony in the success of the 1988 Summer Games, which many South Koreans once viewed as being part of a sinister plot to legitimize the authoritarian regime of Chun Doo Hwan, a former general who seized power in a 1980 coup.

In June, 1987, when demonstrators protested Chun’s anointment of another onetime general as his successor, South Korea faced a tough choice: Its leaders could send tanks into the streets to quell the demonstrators--and risk losing the Olympics; or they could capitulate to demands for a direct presidential election and democracy.

At the height of that tumult, Ahn worried that the Seoul Olympics would be canceled and he would never have another chance to see Jiao.

But Chun capitulated, paving the way to reforms in his country.

“That was the biggest contribution the Olympics made to South Korea,” said Lee Chong Min, a fellow at the Sejong Institute.

The move also ensured that Ahn, the son of a teacher in the poor southwestern Cholla region; and Jiao, one of seven children of a forest ranger in Lichun, China, would meet again--this time to arrange their marriage. A doctor for the South Korean Olympic team visited China to persuade Jiao’s parents to allow the wedding, and South Korea’s sports minister intervened with Chinese authorities to allow Jiao to leave China.

“At first, we planned to marry during the Games, but we thought it might upset the Chinese authorities. So we postponed it,” Ahn said, noting that, with Jiao’s parents attending, they were married in Seoul on Dec. 22, 1989.

The Games also hit a happy note. Despite the event’s $3.2 billion cost, “not even dissidents have criticized the government for staging the Olympics,” said Shin Myung Cheol, a reporter for the Daily Sports Seoul newspaper.

Olympic organizer Park observed: “There was much skepticism (initially) about our country’s ability to stage such an enormous event. However . . . we were able to pull it off with tremendous success.

“It boosted our national pride, and justifiably so,” he said, adding that the ’88 Games “thrust South Korea into the global arena as a nation contributing to the world. . . . Before we may have been viewed as a Third World country. But now we are recognized as an economic force in the global community.”

Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, called the Seoul Games, in which 160 nations participated, “the most successful in history.” They turned a profit of 95.7 billion won--$140.7 million at the 1988 exchange rate. And although North Korea and Cuba stayed away, all of the major communist nations participated.

For South Korea, a country that had been a sports backwash, the Olympics were a defining moment in the nation’s athletic history: South Koreans won 12 gold medals, topping all other Asian nations. South Korea finished fourth in the world and emerged as an Olympic power. In all eight of its previous Olympics, South Korea had won only seven gold medals--six of those at Los Angeles in 1984.

Now, as 247 South Korean athletes and 97 officials look toward the Barcelona Olympics, team leader Kim Song Jip predicts that South Korea will solidify its position among the top 10 Olympic nations by bringing home 10-12 gold meals.

Despite such optimism, the euphoria of 1988 has disappeared.

“Koreans are very forgetful,” said Han Sung Joo, a political science professor at Korea University. “They remembered the 1988 Olympics for about six months.”

Today, observers say, pessimism prevails over South Korea’s trade flip-flop, which has taken the nation from a $10-billion surplus to a $10-billion deficit. And despite economic growth that has not fallen below 6.7% in any year since the Olympics, an obsession with uncertainty over the future has set in in Seoul.

Take Olympic organizer Park, now a member of the National Assembly. He complained that the freedoms that came suddenly after Chun’s June, 1987, capitulation launched “a constant questioning of the political process . . . a constant harassment of established authority. Dissident groups harassing the government (have) caused major disruption in society.”

Further, he said, the exposure of the corruption in the governments of Chun and Roh Tae Woo “shocked” South Koreans and plunged “morale to an all-time low. . . . Misconduct in high places was so great that no one could believe it. Respect for authority was destroyed. The people began to look for gratification in the short term, rather than hope for something better in the future.”

To Professor Han, the Olympics “gave Koreans a sense of having arrived . . . of having ‘made it.’ They thought they could relax and enjoy life. . . . But it was a bubble.”

After years of pent-up frustrations, workers did extract 25% annual wage increases. But regional antipathies have worsened, further dividing the southeast Kyongsang district and the southwest Cholla region. A propensity for saving was replaced by a domestic consumption boom. Even the work ethic has suffered, many South Koreans complain.

For South Korea’s economy, “the lasting effect (of the Olympics) is more negative than positive,” Han asserted. By comparison, he added, “Taiwan didn’t have an Olympics--and doesn’t need one.”

Indeed, even one of Roh’s crowning achievements--the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviets in September, 1990, accompanied by a pledge of $3 billion in loans toMoscow--is now being debunked as an example of South Korea overextending itself.

“We could have waited a little longer and opened diplomatic relations free of charge,” book publisher Hahn Chang Gi said.

While some may have doubts about the ’88 Games’ positive effects, it is clear that the event touched many lives here in lasting ways, as Jiao and Ahn can testify.

They have retired as players, but while studying Chinese literature at Hanyang University in Seoul, Jiao is coaching South Korea’s national junior table tennis team. Ahn coaches the table tennis team of Dong-A Securities Co., where he is an assistant section chief.

And no longer do they have to worry about money. Jiao earns about $7,700 a year for her coaching and Ahn makes $25,640 a year at his job. He also receives a lifetime government pension of $450 a month for his athletic triumphs, including his 1988 Olympic bronze medal.

“I am happy,” Jiao said. “I can visit China to see my parents several times a year. Otherwise, I am busy learning a new life as a housewife and a mother.”

Ahn said he hopes to “coach for the national table tennis team someday.”

The couple also has found a new reason to remember the Olympics.

At 10 a.m. on Sept. 17, 1991--almost the moment that the Olympics’ opening ceremony had begun in Seoul three years earlier--their first child, Byung Hoon, a son, was born.

Times researcher Chi Jung Nam contributed to this story.