Korea’s Olympic Dream

February 26, 2025·29 min·2 clips

Yuna Kim lands a historic triple-triple combination, defying physics and setting a new world record in figure skating.

1. Not Past It uses figure skater Yuna Kim's February 25, 2010 world-record Olympic gold medal at Vancouver to examine South Korean national identity and its relationship to international recognition. 2. Host Simone Polanin draws on her experience teaching English in Seoul in 2014-2015, where a student spent an entire class period describing Yuna Kim; former AP Korea bureau chief Jean Lee and Seoul teacher Ginny Cha serve as primary guests. 3. The episode's argument is that Yuna Kim's victory was not a sports story but a cultural rupture — the first moment that South Korea, coming out of war and dictatorship, projected a new image of itself to the world through individual artistic excellence. 4. Ginny Cha describes growing up skating on the frozen Han River and on frozen rice fields in Seoul, contextualizing skating as a longtime Korean pastime long before it was an Olympic pursuit. 5. Yuna was born into a working-class family that moved to Seoul and found an indoor ice rink in a mall; within eight months of first stepping on ice, she was training six days a week, sometimes skating 100 laps in a single session. 6. As a child, Yuna watched the 1998 Winter Olympics women's skating events — won by Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan — every day, memorizing the movements from start to finish. 7. Jean Lee explains that South Korea emerged from the Korean War, which killed roughly two million Koreans, into decades of military dictatorship focused on industrial development, and only began democratizing in the late 1980s when it hosted the Seoul Olympics. 8. South Korea historically channeled Olympic ambitions into short-track speed skating, a sport Lee says matched the national self-image of 'really hard workers' with the right physique and drive; figure skating was not part of the system. 9. Yuna's ambition to win Olympic gold in figure skating, not speed skating, was 'an eye-opening moment' for South Koreans because they 'hadn't seen that before — able to express individuality' and break from institutional training molds. 10. To get world-class figure skating coaching, Yuna had to move to Canada, since South Korea had no internationally recognized training program for the sport, unlike Russia, the U.S., and Japan. 11. By age 16, Yuna was eligible for the senior international circuit; she placed first in her first two senior competitions and dominated the Grand Prix circuit for three years, including winning a competition with a herniated disc while allowed only sports tape for pain under anti-doping rules. 12. Her main international rival was Japanese skater Mao Asada, who came from a country with a far more established figure skating program; the two traded medals at the biggest international competitions for years before Vancouver. 13. Japan annexed South Korea in 1910 and conducted a 35-year occupation that Jean Lee describes as brutal, leaving the comfort women and forced labor of that era as 'still deep scars'; any South Korean defeat of Japan in sports carries special historical weight. 14. At the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Yuna skated in a sparkly blue dress to a classical concerto, landed a triple-triple combination, and closed with a spin holding her skate above her head; the free skating score of 150 points gave her a total of 228.56, destroying the previous world record. 15. Ginny Cha and her coworkers in a Seoul teachers' lounge watched on a laptop and shouted when the score was announced; Lee describes Yuna's win as taking over all South Korean news — 'wherever you went, you saw people watching it.' 16. Mao Asada, skating after Yuna, became the first woman in Olympic history to land three triple axles in a competition ever, but finished 23 points behind Yuna, giving South Korea the gold. 17. Yuna Kim subsequently became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, spoke at the UN General Assembly, and lit the Olympic cauldron at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games. 18. By the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, South Korea sent four figure skaters, including a recent Four Continents gold medalist — a direct legacy of Yuna's groundbreaking participation. 19. Listeners interested in the intersection of sports, politics, and post-colonial national identity, or fans of the Winter Olympics and figure skating, will find the episode substantive and specific. 20. Listeners primarily interested in sports statistics or performance analysis, rather than the political and cultural framing, may find the historical digressions slow.

As heard by us

A Seoul classroom story opens into Yuna Kim's skating, rivalry, and the pressure of Vancouver.

This episode opens in a Seoul classroom, then moves into a clear account of why Yuna Kim drew so much attention in South Korea. The skating comes first, and it lands.

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Why you'd press play

If you want an Olympic story that starts in a Seoul classroom and lands in Vancouver under serious pressure, press play.

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