From Fusan to Pusan to Busan…

Featuring the Story of the First Korean Olympic Gold Medalist

Any idea who the first Korean Olympic gold medalist was? Well, Son Gijeong was the first! He won the gold medal in the marathon category at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

However, he had to be a member of the Japanese delegation, because Korea was still under Japanese rule. Because of this, he was not allowed to run with the Korean flag or “Taeguki” on his chest.

He was not even allowed to use his Korean name and instead had to compete under the Japanese name, Son Kitei. Son Kitei was how the Japanese pronounced his name in Chinese characters since most Korean names could be written in “Hanja” or Chinese characters.

There is a 손기정 기념관 or Son Gijeong Memorial Center in Seoul that has 손기정 travel ticket from Berlin from Tokyo on display.

If you look closely at the ticket, you may notice that Son didn’t fly directly to Berlin. Instead, he used many different kinds of ground transportation. First, he took a ferry from Tokyo to Busan, then a train and a truck to Harbin, Warsaw, and finally one to Germany.

It took him a total of 15 days to travel to Berlin! Even though he was jetlagged, he still managed to bring home a gold metal.

Also, you may have noticed that his travel ticket spelled Busan with an F. This is because the Japanese used to spell Busan as Fusan when they occupied Korea.

After Korea gained its independence, Busan was spelled many different ways, but mainly with either an F or a P as the first letter.

Many people demanded that the city choose an official spelling before the Korea/ Japan World Cup in 2002. So, in 2000 Busan was officially named Busan.