Two Papers Erased It, One Survived — August 1936

On 9 August 1936, in Berlin, Sohn Kee-chung won the Olympic marathon in 2:29:19 — a new Olympic record. Nam Sung-yong took third.

On the podium, both men wore the Japanese flag on their chests. The nationality column read JAPAN.

The first paper to erase it was not the Dong-A Ilbo

On 13 August the Joseon Jungang Ilbo ran Sohn's photograph on page four of its morning edition with the flag erased from his uniform. Its president was Yeo Un-hyeong; the reporter was Yu Hae-bung.

The same day, the Dong-A Ilbo did likewise in a regional morning edition. The reporter Yi Gil-yong asked the illustrator Yi Sang-beom to blur the photograph.

This order was long misremembered. Professor Chae Baek of Pusan National University established in The Truth of the Vanished Rising Sun that the Joseon Jungang Ilbo went first. Which paper counts as the originator is still debated.

25 August: the second time

The 13 August editions passed. But on 25 August the Dong-A Ilbo again ran an erased photograph, in the second run of its evening edition.

This time it did not pass. The Government-General halted distribution that same day and took those responsible into custody.

The price

Note the date of the suspension: 29 August — twenty-six years to the day since the annexation was proclaimed. Coincidence, presumably. It would not be strange if it were not.

Memory belongs to whoever survived

Two papers did the same thing in the same month. One was suspended and survived; the other closed and vanished.

And the name we generally give the episode today is the Dong-A Ilbo flag erasure.

This is no fault of the Dong-A Ilbo. A surviving paper can go on writing its own history in its own pages; a vanished paper has no pages. Whoever can keep a record gets to keep the memory. That is a matter of circumstance, not of merit.

Still, reading with that circumstance in mind differs from reading without it. The vanished paper's share had to be written by others after it was gone — and in fact scholars wrote it more than half a century later.

What became of the man who erased it

Yi Gil-yong was abducted north during the Korean War in 1950. Nothing after that is confirmed.

In 1989 a sports journalism prize was established in his name. In 1990 he was posthumously awarded the Order of Merit for National Foundation. In 2017, eighty-one years after the fact, a bust of him was raised in the Sohn Kee-chung Memorial Park.

Yeo Un-hyeong was assassinated at Hyehwa-dong in 1947. That belongs to another day's entry.

On the name

It has long been argued that calling this an "incident" is wrong. Incidents happen; this was decided and done. It should be called an act.

This record uses "incident" because that is the current name, not because it is the more accurate one. But let it be noted here: this did not happen. It was done.

Erasing one flag from one photograph required not technique but judgment. And for that judgment one newspaper closed its doors.

Sources

• Chae Baek, The Truth of the Vanished Rising Sun, Communication Books
• Encyclopedia of Korean Culture — the flag erasure incident
• Yeo Un-hyeong Archives — the erasure and the closure