Salvaging national pride: The 2010 taekwondo controversy and Taiwan’s quest for global recognition

Abstract

In this article, we analyze Taiwan’s grassroots reactions to the disqualification of taekwondo icon Yang Shu-chun in the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, in order to examine how a technical dispute induced political and popular campaigns that variously blamed the governing party, the People’s Republic of China, and South Korea for inflicting shame on both the athlete and on Taiwan. Our research combines a historiography of Taiwan’s post-WWII experience, analysis of the nature of the Internet, and an assay of Taiwan’s three major newspapers. We find that the Yang incident became a symbolic vehicle for expressing the feeling of the nation’s citizens that Taiwan is trapped in international politics, and for restoring their national pride by transforming Yang into a virtuous heroine. We propose an attention to local, contingent narratives on sports, through which even regional games or failures serve to reinforce national identity.

Keywords

media national pride shame Taiwan taekwondo

At the 2010 Asian Games held in Guangzhou in the People’s Republic of China (hereafter PRC), Yang Shu-chun – a celebrated female taekwondo competitor from Taiwan – was considered a strong contender for the gold medal. On 17 November, during the opening round of the under-49kg division, the judge stopped Yang while she led the match 9–0. What actually happened is unclear: the initial report was that officials found extra electronic sensor patches in her socks, which would give her extra scores for each kick (The Telegraph, 2010), but Taiwanese media instead reported that the two sensors on her heels were removed before the match (Ma, 2010). After the judge announced her disqualification, television viewers in Taiwan watched Yang collapse to the ground, crying ‘I don’t want to be humiliated!’ (Long, 2010; The Wall Street Journal, 2012). The gold medal subsequently went to Wu Jingyu, a competitor from the PRC.

What could have passed simply as a technical dispute instead resulted in nationwide outrage and protest in Taiwan against the disqualification. Taiwan’s cyberspace was soon inundated with rumors of PRC and South Korean officials scheming against Yang in order to give the gold to a PRC player, and images and messages demonizing South Korea circulated on the Internet (Shih, 2010). Later, on 17 November, Chen Hsien-tsung, vice-minister of Taiwan’s Sports Affairs Council, suggested that the Taiwanese calm down and ‘swallow the result’. The day after his statement, protesters burned the Korean flag in the streets, and Chen was forced to resign after the ensuing public outcry (Li et al., 2010). During this period, ethnic-Korean elementary schools in Taipei were pelted with eggs, and Korean products were boycotted. Further, Yang’s disqualification became a key issue in the concurrent nationwide municipal campaigns for the election, to be held on 27 November 2010; politicians vied to show support for Yang as a way to assert leadership and the ability to uphold Taiwan’s national dignity. Politicians from both the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) and oppositional Democratic People’s Party (DPP) vowed to ‘fight for justice for Yang’, while criticizing the presumed failures of the other party (Kastner, 2010). Yang’s disqualification became a convenient vehicle for advancing the two parties’ competing political visions. This seemingly divisive political posturing nevertheless served as a means of reinforcing the unity of the whole political community of Taiwan by evoking the common desire to restore honor to the fallen heroine who became a symbol for the disgraced Taiwan.

Given the controversy and subsequent political decisions based on the alleged cheating, the truth of the matter was never determined. The Asian Taekwondo Union retracted its initial statement, entitled ‘Shocking Act of Deception by Chinese Taipei’ (Want China Times, 2010), and subsequently banned Yang from international competition for three months – not for the cheating, but for staging a sit-down protest and refusing to leave the mat after the disqualification (The Wall Street Journal, 2012).¹ Our interest is not finding the truth about the technical dispute, nor highlighting the undercurrent of Taiwan’s animosity toward PRC or South Korea, but elucidating the power of sports as a potent progenitor of national emotions and a rich source of national identity.

In the following sections, we first consider literature on national pride in global sports, and situate what has transpired in Taiwan within the larger context of Taiwan’s post-WWII national imagination, and then analyze the flow of events surrounding the disqualification.

Pursuit of national pride through sports

Major global sports events, such as the Olympic Games and the World Cup, have received ample attention both from scholars and the public. It is well known that, contrary to the stated goals of inclusiveness and individual merit, the Olympic Games function to project the identity and superiority of the winners’ nations (Bairner, 2001, 2005; Bass, 2006; Bourdieu, 1999; Eitzen, 1993; Elias and Dunning, 1986; Hargreaves, 2002; Maguire, 1999; Tomlinson and Young, 2006; Traganou, 2010; Wong and Trumper, 2002). Much less attention is given to countries in the periphery of modern sports, in which a lone gold medal becomes a great occasion for national celebration, and to the instances of failure that arguably humiliate the nation.

Both world press and scholars are also less likely to pay attention to regional competitions because of their weak visibility in the global stage. However, studies on the Asian Games and the Commonwealth Games have found that on smaller countries that compete for the top honors, these competitions are intensely watched and commentated domestically as symbols of the country’s modernization, regional recognition, and projected future (Amirtash, 2005; Karnjanakit and Samahito, 2005; Lutan, 2005; Wensing et al., 2004).

Similarly, shame in sports tends to be eclipsed by achievements. However, existing studies have shown that shame is not regarded merely an absence of achievement; rather, it creates the demand for an explanation that will help salve the damaged national honor (Probyn, 2000). For example, when Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson’s steroid scandal broke during the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, the country’s media framed him as a Jamaican-Canadian, racializing and de-nationalizing him (Jackson and Ponic, 2001). A similar doping scandal in Finland was channeled into anger toward globalization and commercialization of sports that allegedly corrupted the national athletes (Laine, 2006). Mere absence of achievement also sometimes seems to require explanation. Knight et al. (2005) find that New Zealand and Canada, for example, responded after failures in the 2000 Olympics: New Zealand blamed the decline in moral value, and Canada blamed the lack of government funding. These studies suggest that failure in sports demands response to maintain national dignity. In 2010, although Taiwan won 13 gold medals in the Asian Games, Yang’s case stirred Taiwanese national sentiment more than any gold medal, staying in the news headlines for seven consecutive days.

Postcolonial scholar Homi Bhabha’s analogy of nation-building to the literary narrative is particularly useful in understanding the cultural dynamics of national identity. In Nation and Narration, Bhabha offers that nation-building is an act of ‘composing’ whereby social actors produce a reasonable narrative of their nation (1990: 2). Similarly, Timothy Brennan argues that (both historically and figuratively) novels construct the nation: ‘The rise of the modern nation-state . . . is inseparable from the forms and subjects of imaginative literature’ (1990: 48). These critiques draw attention to various modes for building the collective imagination of a nation, including visual, oral, and performative modes. Indeed, scholars found that sport offers a particularly robust resource for postcolonial or smaller countries that lack historical or other contemporary sources of national recognition (Evans and Kelley, 2002; van Hilvoorde et al., 2010). When a country lacks sources for global recognition, such as economy, science, and technology, sport often assumes the burden of inventing the nation-state on the global stage.²

Our article examines how the failure of a prominent national sport figure serves as a focus for symbolic struggles for salvaging national pride. Mass media are a rich resource not only for understanding the role of sports in national identity but for constructing nationhood (Falcous, 2007; Laine, 2006). We also consider now social media affect the mode and circulation of mass-mediated narratives. The involvement of cyberspace changes the mode and temporality of public discourse. Sensational news and rumor tend to circulate faster and more widely, and to draw more viewership, than traditional news that abides by values of objectivity and fair representation. Images and video clips are widely circulated, conveying more immediate and intense emotions than written messages in general and traditional news articles in particular. In addition, personal blogs and social media such as Facebook (or local equivalents) offer every Internet user the opportunity to produce commentary and reach out to a wide audience. With these dynamics in place – scope and tempo, visual images, sensational news, and grassroots participation – Taiwan’s public was ready to ‘compose’ its national identity, which is ‘febrile’ and grounded in shared emotion and imagination, but not necessarily rational or factual.

Taiwan’s quest for national identity

In the case of the 2010 taekwondo controversy, several seemingly unrelated factors converged to generate a powerful narrative bearing on Taiwan’s national identity and politics: the precarious national identity of Taiwan under the shadow of the powerful PRC, its relationship to South Korea (which started as a blood ally, but is now considered a betrayer and a threatening economic rival), domestically competing national visions (with increasing democratization, these conflicting visions became a central element of partisan politics), social media as a conveyor of grassroots imaginations, and ambiguities in the handling of Yang’s case by the Asian Taekwondo Union (to provide space for such grassroots imaginations). Yang’s case became a symbolic space in which the Taiwanese people strived to save national face by salvaging Yang’s tainted pride. The explosive impact of these events cannot be understood apart from Taiwan’s precarious national status and its struggle to define a national identity. Here, we offer a highly selective sketch of this historical and political context and a chronology of relevant events (See Table 1).

Table 1.

Chronology of selected events, related to politics of national identity in Taiwan.

Time	Event
1662–1895	Mostly under the control of Ming and Qing Dynasties of China
1895	Treaty of Shimonoseki cedes Taiwan to Japan
1945	Taiwan reverts to China, under the rule of Chiang Kai-shek and KMT
1949	KMT forced out of China by the Chinese Communist Party, settles in Taipei
1950	Korean War (1950–1953) and PRC’s military threats in 1954–1955 and in 1958
	solidifies the alliance among Taiwan, South Korea and U.S.
1971–1986	Desperate search for the statehood under threats from PRC under the rhetoric of Taiwan as the sole representative of China
1971	PRC replaces ROC (Taiwan) in UN Security Council
1975	President Chiang dies; real power passed to his son, Chiang Chin-kuo
1979	US recognizes PRC as the sole legitimate government of China
	International Olympic Committee (IOC) strips away ROC (Taiwan)’s membership
	Most nations ultimately sever their ties with Taiwan
1987–2000	Democratization and competing visions to achieve statehood
1987	Martial law lifted and democratization begins
1988	Chiang Chin-kuo dies, and Lee Teng-hui, a Taiwan born Vice-President, succeeds him
1989	DPP elects enough members in the Legislative Yuan, forming a critical opposition
1990	Legislative Yuan elects Lee President and democratization continues
1991	Lee declares formal end to war with PRC
1992	South Korea (ROK) severs its diplomatic ties with Taiwan
1996	In the first direct (popular) presidential election, Lee retains his presidency
1999	PRC suspends the talks with Taiwan, unhappy over Lee’s remark that the two countries have a ‘special state-to-state relation’
2000–2008	The pursuit of ‘independent Taiwan’ under DPP
2000	Chun (DPP) wins presidential election, pursues an independent statehood
2002	Taiwan joins WTO as a full member
2005	PRC passes ‘Anti-Secession Law’, suggesting military action against Taiwan’s ‘independence’
2008	Chun applies for an UN membership every year until 2008
2008–2012	KMT’s conciliatory posture toward PRC
2008	Ma of KMT wins in Presidential Election; ceases to apply for UN membership
2009	Taiwan gains an observer status for WHA, under which WTO operates
2010	Metropolitan Elections and the Guangzhou Asian Games occur simultaneously
2012	KMT’s Ma reelected, but by much diminished margin of victory.

Sources: Roy (2003) for events before 2000, and the rest draws on Bairner and Hwang (2011); Dittmer (2005); Rich (2009); Wong (2001); Wu (2002); Wu (2006); Yu and Mangan (2008); and recent news coverage.

In 1949, after losing a civil war to Mao’s Communist Party, Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) evacuated to Taiwan, establishing the ‘Republic of China in exile’ (ROC) in Taipei. Both the PRC and ROC claimed to be the only legitimate state representing the whole of China. However, Chiang’s ROC was acknowledged as the only representative of China by the United Nations, and held a seat on the UN Security Council until 1971.

However, with the rise of the PRC on the international scene in the 1970s, Taiwan’s status underwent a radical change. After Nixon’s visit to the PRC in 1971, the UN General Assembly voted to remove the ROC, and recognized the PRC as the only legitimate government of China. The United States opened formal diplomatic relations with the PRC in 1972, and fully accepted it as the sole legitimate government of China in 1979. Many of Taiwan’s critical allies subsequently followed the footsteps of the U.S. By 2008, only 23 small states continued to officially acknowledge Taiwan (Rich, 2009). In parallel, after the PRC was admitted to the UN, Taiwan was expelled from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), while the PRC was granted admission in 1979. That year, Taiwan was disallowed from using any emblem that might identify it as an independent nation (Bairner and Hwang, 2011).

Currently, the PRC considers Taiwan a renegade province of China, and has succeeded in isolating Taiwan politically through its increasing economic prowess and position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council (Lee, 1999). Despite its 23 million people and thriving economy, Taiwan is denied entry into both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the statistical tables of United Nations publications such as the annual Human Development Report, which nonetheless has an independent entry for Hong Kong (Chang, 2011; Human Development Report, 2011).³

Taiwan’s quest for national identity has been a critical factor in shaping both domestic and international politics. The KMT and its politicians from the mainland ruled Taiwan under martial law until 1987, asserting that the Republic of China (that is, Taiwan) is the legitimate claimant of a unified, single China – of which Taiwan is a part. Any other notion of statehood was forbidden during the KMT regime, punishable under the severe martial law. However, the country’s political climate changed in the 1980s through democratization and the rise of the opposing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 1986. Founded largely by benshengren, namely, descendants of Han Chinese who arrived at Taiwan long before the KMT, the DPP championed the cause of democratization, and assumed the role of advocate for rural, poor, and disadvantaged Taiwanese.⁴ Further, the DPP and its allies demanded a separate and independent Taiwan, which is distinct from China. The KMT, on the other hand, still referred to Taiwan and China as Chinese Taipei and the Mainland, invoking one national identity (Bairner and Hwang, 2011; Dittmer, 2005; Roy, 2003; Winkler, 2011). These competing visions have significantly influenced various domestic and foreign policy positions. Given the impracticality of either a united China under ROC control or acceptance of an independent Taiwan by the international community, the controversy over statehood in Taiwan tends to revolve around political rhetoric (Bairner and Hwang, 2011; Dittmer, 2005; Winkler, 2011). This becomes more prominent at special occasions such as electoral campaigns, or when there is a (real or presumed) threat from the PRC, or when Taiwan’s precarious national identity is exposed in international meetings – including international sporting events. Considering this historical backdrop and political climate, Yang’s controversial disqualification, the eventual victory of a PRC player, and the concurrent critical election were ready to coalesce into an explosive issue in Taiwan.

Taiwan, South Korea, and taekwondo

Taekwondo, which originated in Korea, is where Taiwan’s contemporary search for global recognition and its troubled diplomatic relationship with South Korea converge. Many scholars have discussed the distinctive symbolic value of certain sports, e.g., cricket in British Commonwealth, soccer among constituent countries in the UK, and baseball between Cuba and the U.S. (Bairner, 2001; Guttmann, 1994; Maguire, 1999; Markovits and Rensmann, 2010). Although many countries severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan following the U.S. decision in 1972, South Korea continued to align with Taiwan until 1992 – based largely on a shared opposition to associated communist states. Taiwan considered the closing of the South Korean embassy in Taipei and the opening of one in Beijing as a ‘betrayal’ by a blood ally (Rich, 2009).

Nevertheless, taekwondo continued to gain support in Taiwan as the most successful sport to bring global recognition to Taiwan in the international athletics scene (Hsiao et al., 2010). Taekwondo gave the first gold medal to Taiwan ever at the Olympics in the 2004 Athens Games, and has since brought a total of seven Olympic medals to the country. Yet, taekwondo is still considered originally and essentially Korean (MacAloon, 2006), and is taught by ethnic-Korean teachers in Taiwan and worldwide. Both the Asian and World Federations of Taekwondo are still governed by a majority of ethnically-Korean judges and administrators.

It should be noted that Taiwan’s current image of South Korea also includes an economic rivalry. Since the late 1990s, South Korea and Taiwan have vied in the ever-expanding global markets of appliances and information technology. During the same period, the Taiwanese entertainment industry began importing South Korean soap operas – known as the ‘Korean Wave’ (hallyu) phenomenon. In response, since the mid-2000s, mass media and politicians have voiced concern about Korean media products supplanting Taiwan’s domestic content. Taiwan attempted to bolster its own entertainment industry with laws, mandating that at least 20% of programming on cable radio and television (Cable Radio and Television Act, 1993) and 70% on total radio and television (Radio and Television Act, 2003) be produced locally. In the aftermath of the Yang controversy, the DPP proposed new legislation to increase the quota for locally produced programming on cable television to 40% (Taipei Times, 2011). The stated goal of this legislation was to bolster the domestic content market, but it was widely accepted that the main impulse was to cut back the fever for Korean soap operas (Kim, 2011; Shim, 2006).

In the emotionally charged context of Taiwan’s relationship with the PRC and South Korea, Yang’s disqualification could not remain merely a technical dispute – it was immediately taken as a symbol of larger political relationships, and popular discourses surrounding the case indicate a need in the Taiwanese collective imagination to salvage their nation from perceived powerlessness and victimization.

Sources of key materials for discourse analysis

We followed the sports news during the Asian Games, and after the Yang incident, we followed daily news reports from Taiwan, South Korea, and China both in English and native languages. Out of this collected news, we examined three major Taiwanese newspapers’ coverage of Yang’s disqualification as reported on the Web in Chinese. The United Daily News (Lianhe Bao) is aligned with the ruling KMT, the Liberty Times (Ziyou Shibao) is associated with the oppositional DPP, and the Apple Daily (Pingguo Ribao) is a popular newspaper roughly equivalent to USA Today or The Daily Mail in the UK. These three are the newspapers with the greatest circulation. We also read the fourth largest newspaper, China Times (Zhongguo Shibao), but excluded it from the analysis because its KMT association yields too many redundant reports and overrepresents the KMT coalition. The total articles on Yang’s disqualification amounted to 170 between 17 November 2010 and 25 January 2011. Of these, we selected 35, all presenting a ‘human face’ or narratives about the incident (see Table 2).

Table 2.

Breakdown of newspaper articles.

	United Daily News	Liberty Times	Apple Daily	Total
Total number of reports on Yang	33	96	36	165
Number of reports analyzed	16	14	5	35
Breakdown by topics
Human interest stories	9	6	3	18
Support the government	4	0	0	4
Criticize the government	1	3	0	4
Criticize China	0	5	0	5
Criticize South Korea	2	0	2	4

Our methodological approach is informed by critical discourse analysis. Developed by Fairclough (1995), Kress and Hodge (1979), and van Dijk (1993), critical discourse analysis (CDA) offers a method of studying discourse as a form of social practice that reflects and reproduces dominance and inequality in the society. Van Dijk (1993) argues that CDA illuminates the power of discourse in shaping ‘point of view, perspectives, principles and aims’ within society (p. 252). Since international sports games are occasions for people to see themselves as members of their nation and the world, CDA is a productive tool for examining the processes thrusting Yang’s case into Taiwan’s political imagination. We paid particular attention to two areas. We followed van Dijk (1993) in attending to who are present and absent in various media discourses. Yang’s controversy involved a number of actors who were arguably responsible for her disqualification (ranging from Yang herself, the judge, the KMT officials, PRC, and South Korea), and the presence or absence of a particular actor in the narrative is a crucial way of assigning responsibility. We also attended to social histories of involved actors (Kress, 1993). As Yang’s disqualification evoked various histories, such as the Cross-Strait relations, South Korea’s switch of diplomatic relationship in the 1990s, and the recent rivalry with South Korea, what social-historical narratives are made relevant is a crucial part of the discourse.

Composing a national narrative on social media

Taiwan is one of the most highly-connected societies in the world, with 70% of households having access to high-speed Internet by 2010 (Taiwan Network Information Center, 2010). In response to Yang’s disqualification, Taiwan’s social media – Facebook, YouTube, and online discussion boards, among others – served as important mediators of public discourse. Although a systematic analysis of social media goes beyond the purview of this article,⁵ we acknowledge that social media played a crucial role in spreading the news of Yang’s disqualification and framing it as a national issue to be responded by politicians and mass media.

The Internet offers an unrestrained space for grassroots’ expression and experimentation – which often is later cited by mass media as a reflection of public opinion. In the immediate aftermath of the disqualification, the YouTube video of Yang sobbing on the ground was circulated widely on Facebook and on other platforms, since people individually post and propagate the content, evoking anger and pity among the public. From these online communities emerged various rumors, including that a Korean judge stopped the match and disqualified Yang (in fact, he was a Filipino of Korean descent) (Chôn, 2010), and that South Korea and the PRC had jointly schemed against Yang so that a PRC player could win the gold medal (Kil, 2011). Images and messages deriding South Korean products and culture were widely disseminated online – for example, cartoons altered the South Korean flag to include pigs and feces, and YouTube videos captured protests in which South Korean products were smashed and burned. Internet users also started a boycott of Korean products, ranging from snacks to computers to Korean Wave music (Li et al., 2010). Further, the various discourses on social media made it difficult to distinguish truth from rumors. Yet, these volatile discourses were very powerful, resulting in tangible social and political changes such as the resignation of a prominent government official and a boycott. ‘Febrile poetry’, the rethinking of Bhabha’s national narrative, came to have a more literal meaning in the environment of social media and participatory Internet, stirring Taiwanese imagination and emotion.

Taiwan’s online communities also served as sources for mass media, further changing the popular discourse. During the Yang controversy, major newspapers cited conspiracy theories and impassioned arguments on the Internet to report on Yang’s case. For example, a Liberty Times article, ‘Citizens criticized that Ma didn’t lodge a protest against China’ (19 November), channeled grievances toward Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou, who appeared to be unwilling to protect a player representing Taiwan. Another Liberty Times article – ‘Netizens suspected that Chinese officials were involved’ (22 November) – reported the suspicions of citizens that Chinese officials were involved in the disqualification. On 23 November, the Liberty Times reported on the attempt of Internet users to directly petition the Chinese court to ‘fight against the collusion between the KMT and the Chinese Communist party’. The Apple Daily in particular was very active in channeling social media – four of nine headline news stories on 19 November reported anti-Korean sentiment spreading on the Internet, including 350,000 members joining anti-Korean Facebook groups, and over 110,000 clicks on an anti-Korean YouTube video. As social media became legitimate sources of grassroots opinion for mainstream media, grassroots grievances and narratives gained access to the official realm. Further, rumors and sensational stories were reproduced through mainstream media as ‘existing accounts’, without the burden of fact-checking.

Yang Shu-chun as a symbol for Taiwan

The United Daily News reported the fierce responses of Taiwanese citizens who proclaimed Yang’s innocence, contending that Yang was ‘mistakenly’ disqualified (18 November) and demanding ‘justice’ and her vindication (20 November). The confluence of Yang’s disqualification with the historical and renewed anti-South Korean and anti-PRC sentiment became an object of prolonged media attention, evoking Taiwan’s complex relationship with the two countries.

Anti-South Korean protests were treated as major news in the immediate aftermath of the disqualification. On 18 November, the day after the disqualification, the leading story in the United Daily News described protesters burning the Korean flag in front of the Prime Minister’s office. The report continued to detail protesters crushing South Korean products, and restaurants displaying ‘No Koreans’ signs on their doors. Chen Hsien-tsung resigned after his call to ‘swallow the result,’ pressured by the public anger (20 November). In the context of the upcoming municipal election, Yang’s case became political news. As United Daily News reported, politicians at mass campaign rallies demanded ‘justice’ for Yang’s case (18 November). Furthermore, as the Liberty Times report entitled ‘KMT paraded in Taipei and the theme was Yang Shu-chun’ (22 November) described, Yang’s return from the Asian Games was met by prominent government officials, who participated in a parade for her and pledged to bring her justice.

The abrupt rise of anti-South Korean protests might seem extreme, and Chen’s appeal to accept the verdict might sound reasonable to outsiders. However, in many ways the anger was a ‘reasonable’ expression of the Taiwanese national imagination. In a United Daily News article entitled ‘The old and new hatred’ (19 November), prominent writer Chu Hsueh-heng called the Taiwanese response ‘reasonable anger’, and situated the disqualification into the context of recent memories about South Korea – in particular, the mistrust of South Korea since its switch of formal recognition in 1992, the recent competition in the global market, and the sense of threat to popular culture by the Korean Wave products. The popular newspaper Apple Daily puts this sentiment more bluntly: ‘Taiwan has always been suppressed on the international stage. Why are we bullied even in the sports field?’ (19 November). Both the United Daily News and Apple Daily articles suggest that the disqualification evoked in the minds of Taiwanese the suffering of Taiwan as a nation without statehood, global recognition, or voice. Thus, the Taiwanese refusal to ‘swallow the result’ also signifies their refusal to endure powerlessness and shame.

Indeed, ‘I cannot swallow it’ spread virally in the following weeks as a slogan both on the Internet and in the municipal election campaign among the opposition supporters. A Liberty Times report, entitled, ‘Yang’s father: I cannot swallow this!’ (18 November) depicts a mass rally in which Yang’s father, politicians, and citizens recited the phrase, variously contending that Taiwan could not swallow the humiliation of Yang or the defamation of the country by the PRC and South Korea. The DPP, in particular, argued that Taiwan could not swallow the incompetent leadership of the KMT government. Laine (2006: 78) argues that the national shame can be ‘a blessing in disguise’ whereby a people remember their national past and reinforce their national identity against the encroachment of globalization and commercialization of sports. Similarly, Yang’s disqualification reinforced Taiwanese national identity. The media spectacle of the ‘pretty baby’ (Yang) collapsing and sobbing at the match had a high ‘narrative capacity’ (van Hilvoorde et al., 2010) that revived Taiwanese people’s memories and feelings associated with the PRC and South Korea, and supplanted immediate, technical justice regarding the match with a larger national memories, and recast Yang as a metonym for a Taiwan wronged by the two neighboring countries.

Yang in competing political visions of ‘MaChination’ and anti-Koreanism

As Yang became a symbol of Taiwan’s troubled statehood, restoration of her dignity surfaced as an agenda in political campaigns. However, upon the backdrop of Taiwan’s competing national visions, Yang’s case not only united Taiwan but further accentuated domestic division by being rendered as a symbol of anti-establishment and anti-PRC (in the DPP campaign) and simultaneously of anti-South Korea (in the KMT campaign).

The oppositional DPP actively took up Yang’s case in the context of Chen Hsien-tsung’s blunder, and associated the disqualification with the incompetence of the incumbent Ma government (the KMT). The United Daily News report, entitled, ‘Yang’s father came to the election rally, Tsai Ing-wen was surprised to see him’ (21 November) described a scene from a DPP rally on 20 November in which chairperson Tsai asserted before Yang’s father, ‘Yang is the daughter of the Yingge district. Ma did not care for her. We will take care of her’. Tsai also declared that the DPP would ‘support Yang to compete abroad and win honor for the country’. The DPP campaign elevated Yang’s disqualification as evidence of the Ma government’s acquiescence to the PRC, forsaking Yang’s honor. In contrast, Tsai’s determination to restore Yang’s honor was equated with principled resolve to restore the honor of the entire country.

The DPP and associated Liberty Times actively drew a line dividing the Taiwanese people from the PRC and the Ma government. A 19 November article introduced a neologism in English, ‘MaChination’ – combination of ‘Ma,’ ‘China,’ and ‘machination’. In using the term, the DPP contended that Ma avoided confrontation with China, even though China intentionally disgraced Yang. Since the 1980s, the DPP had criticized as a hollow catchphrase the KMT’s old claim that ROC is the sole representative of one China, arguing that the implicit one-China policy forced the KMT to refrain from provoking the PRC at any cost. In the 2010 DPP narrative, the Ma government not only adhered to hollow rhetoric, but also ‘machinated’ with the PRC against the Taiwanese people. Another Liberty Times article, ‘Netizens criticized China Central Television for distorting facts’ (21 November), argued that Yang’s case attested to the Ma government’s inability to ‘act tough enough’ against the mainland or to protect its citizens from the PRC’s imperiousness.

In consort with the DPP’s vision, the Liberty Times demonized the PRC, repeatedly referring to the disqualification as the PRC ‘destroying’ (zuodiao – literally ‘murdering’) Yang. For example, the report ‘Yang is a better player. Why would she need to deceive?’ (18 November) contended that the decision ‘destroyed Yang’s opportunity to win a gold’, and another article, ‘Yang was wronged in her disqualification’ (18 November), claimed that China intended to ‘destroy’ Yang. In the same vein, other Taiwanese taekwondo players were quoted accusing the PRC of the ‘despicable trick to destroy a Taiwanese player’ (Liberty Times, 18 November), and dedicating their gold medals ‘to save face for sister Yang’ (Apple Daily, 21 November). It is impossible to prove the truth of this attribution of responsibility to the PRC; however, the proliferation of such narratives indicates that they resonated with a deep-rooted suspicion of the PRC among DPP supporters.

In response to such narratives, the governing KMT attempted to affirm its leadership and redirect responsibility to the Asian Taekwondo Union for a technical error on the part of the sports organization. The United Daily News, which is aligned with the KMT, channeled statements from government officials that urged citizens to consider the disqualification ‘rationally’ (24 November) and to ‘separate sports from politics’ (23 November). Simultaneously, the United Daily News de-emphasized the government’s responsibility in Yang’s disqualification by underscoring anti-Korean sentiments by continually reporting on protests and attacks on ethnic-Korean schools in Taipei (21 November). Meanwhile, prominent government officials organized parades for Yang, identifying themselves with Taiwanese citizens. In a massive political rally for the KMT mayoral candidate of Taipei with 70,000 participants, support for Yang became a central theme: several national legislators and city council members appeared in taekwondo uniforms, and Premier Wu (the main speaker at the rally) criticized the DPP for making false accusations for political gain, and asserted that there was no truth in the claim that the KMT was weak in its support for Yang (KMT Official Website, 2010). While various national narratives in response to athletic achievements have been well documented (Dauncey and Hare, 2000; Knight et al., 2005), the Taiwan case offers an interesting case in which partisan politics, despite the divisive rhetoric, helped to articulate the unity and importance of the nation.

Symbolic remedy: restoring Yang’s honor as restoring national dignity

Despite competing appropriations of Yang, the KMT and DPP acted in concert to restore her honor. When she returned to Taiwan on 22 November 2010, hundreds of citizens and a number of high-ranking government officials greeted her at the airport and adorned her with a ‘justice gold medal,’ a medal endowed to her in the name of the Taiwanese people (United Daily News, 23 November). Major newspapers reported on a three-million-yuan ($100,000) fundraising effort by private enterprises, noting that the amount was equivalent to the Taiwanese government’s reward for a gold medalist (United Daily News, 26 November; Liberty Times, 26 November). She was also offered a teaching position at the Taipei Municipal University of Education (United Daily News, 26 November). The Apple Daily report ‘Koreans deceived her, nationals gave her justice’ (21 November) explicitly portrayed these events as a way to remedy her shame, and to acknowledge her fellow citizens’ efforts to ‘bring her justice’. By treating Yang as a gold medalist, the Taiwanese people asserted the power to undo the shame afflicted by Taiwan’s two major competitors. This symbolic remedy also asserts the honor of Taiwan as capable of reclaiming its identity against outside powers.

Accompanying this symbolic remedy was an accentuation of Yang’s virtuous character. Media reports after her return underscored Yang’s overall good character. Her interviews – in which she asked the public to ‘not act on impulse’ (Liberty Times, 22 November) and to ‘treat Koreans in a rational manner’ (Apple Daily, 24 November) – were taken as evidence of her thoughtfulness and generosity. Her decision to use the 3 million yuan-reward for charity and for young taekwondo players further established Yang’s noble character (Liberty Times, 25 November, 26 November; United Daily News, 25 November, 26 November). Such stories affirm narratives countering that of Yang as a cheater; at the same time, as a metonym of the nation, these stories symbolically created a virtuous Taiwan. Shame in sports is not necessarily negative; if people see the shaming as false or unfair, it may be a ground for coming together and reinforcing national pride (Probyn, 2000). For Taiwan, the shame that came upon by Yang also offered a stage whereby the national identity and virtue were confirmed.

Conclusion and a postscript

Our study highlights the complex and subtle ways in which people create febrile poetry that helps sustain national dignity and presents a unique exemplar in which a smaller regional sports event can provide a rich source of national narrative. In Taiwan, competing national visions have been a critical issue in domestic and international politics, ranging from the name of the country to its entry to the UN; however, often these efforts are suppressed – or expressed only euphemistically – because politicians cannot afford to offend the PRC under the current regional power relationship. Yang’s case enabled the Taiwanese to express their longstanding yearning for national dignity.

Furthermore, our study underscores local historical contexts – intense and divisive partisan politics, the volatility of new media, and a nation with precarious international identity – which contributed to shape the particular narratives against PRC and South Korea. In 2010 Taiwan, a frustrated athlete unexpectedly brought the Taiwanese people together across their political affiliations and enabled them to voice their national vision in a tangible manner.

Finally, although the volatility in media and politics surrounding Yang’s disqualification died down with the end of the election, the narrative composed upon the incident reveals continuing effects. In June 2012, Terry Gou, the chairman of Hon Hai Precision Industries, the mother company of Foxconn, a Taipei-based manufacturer of iPhone, PlayStation, and Xbox, vowed to beat Samsung, a South Korean competitor as he signed an initial agreement with Japan’s Sharp electronics. He later reiterated that Hon Hai would surpass Samsung within three to five years and made the remark: ‘I respect the Japanese . . . They will not hit you from behind, but Koreans (using a derogatory term for ethnic Koreans, Gaoli bang zi) are different’ (Chosun Ilbo, 2012). As we have shown, the national narrative surrounding the Yang incident revived the bitter memory of the 1992 diplomatic rupture between Taiwan and South Korea in the minds of Taiwanese in general and replanted the knowledge of that rupture into the minds of a new generation who were too young to have experienced it themselves. The fact that a CEO of a world-class company would characterize the people of a neighboring country as ‘betrayers’ and affirming their superiority to them reveals both Taiwan’s need for bolstering its national identity and the fact that the powerful national narratives created in relation to Yang’s case in 2010 still resonate with the Taiwanese public in 2012.

Footnotes

Funding

This work was supported by the Interdisciplinary Research Grant funded by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Iowa.

Notes

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