EFFORTPOST [Effortpost] Short track speed skating causes a supernova of seethe

(If aren't your style, I've helpfully marked the chimpout section below.)

Short track speed skating is no stranger to controversy. Everyone is moving so fast in such a small area that skaters routinely collide with or impede each other. Interpreting the rules can be more of an art than a science, and someone inevitably ends up butthurt and accuses other players of cheating and the judges of colluding with them.

It helps that short track skaters come from a culture as dramatic and neurodivergent as our own. The sport used to be dominated by South Korea. The coaches there, no doubt influenced by the hazing they underwent in the army, had a style of leadership that involved constant verbal and physical abuse, and sometimes sexual too. Eventually this led to infighting and many coaches and players defected to other countries and taught their skaters how to be better athletes, better cheaters, and more insane.

The Events in Question

The 2022 Winter Olympics are barely underway and we've gotten our first major scandal/international incident, the disastrous men's 1000 meter race. I'm going to focus on this from the Korean and Hungarian perspectives because they were the ones who really got screwed.

Things are especially chaotic on this day because the figure skaters had used the rink earlier so the ice was optimized for them. That means lots of random crashes. But things are still looking pretty fair in the quarterfinals. The Chinese have gotten their three guys advanced, one because the guys in front of him wiped out and two because they were doing well but someone bumped them. One Korean has been injured and one Hungarian has been rightly disqualified for a penalty. Then we get into the semis and things go off the rails.

In the first semifinal the world record holder Hwang Daeheon blows past two Chinese skaters even after one of them reaches out and physically grabs him twice. But the judges rule that in fact he was the one who deserved a penalty because... I dunno, I guess his butt was too sexy to resist? Two Chinese advance, one Korean is eliminated.

In the second semifinal a Korean comes in second, but he gets penalized for allegedly impeding a Hungarian. This is not as clearcut as the case of Hwang Daeheon but it certainly could have been decided in his favor. As a happy coincidence this means the Chinese skater in third place gets to advance along with the two Hungarians.

So now we're going into the finals. The competition started with 24 skaters and all three Chinese remain. Such a happy coincidence. They're up against the half-Hungarian/half-Chinese hapa chad brothers of the Liu family. Will the commies be humiliated once again on their home turf by foreigners of Chinese descent? Of course not. All three Chinese fail to keep up with Shaolin Liu but at the very end one gets close enough to engage in a split-second slapfight with him. The judges penalize Liu for this, and give him another bullshit penalty for something else just to add insult to injury. China gets gold and silver but is gracious enough not to take bronze too.

As the American commentator said: "What a hectic and unexpected result."

The Chimpouts

The fun part is when this scandal reminds ordinary Koreans of how they feel about China:

In an online community of university students on Facebook, one user ranted about the disqualifications, adding, “I wish China would go extinct.” The post received hundreds of likes.

A 27-year-old office worker surnamed Hwang in Seoul said her ill feelings towards China go further back than this Olympic season. “They [China] carry this image of people who steal from others rather than creating through honest efforts,” said Hwang. “If you look at Chinese movies and dramas, many look like copy-and-pastes of Korean movies and dramas.”

“I’ve seen Chinese students free-ride in group projects and still get the same grades as the rest of the group,”

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2022/02/08/national/diplomacy/korea-china-olympics/20220208175832555.html

Videos of Chinese skaters coming into contact with other skaters have since gone viral online. Korean broadcaster SBS even aired a special segment titled Top 10 Worst Moments Of Cheating By China, which has fueled the anger online even further.

Chinese netizens have fought back against the accusations, calling Koreans “sore losers” who should “go home and cry to their mothers instead”.

https://www.todayonline.com/8days/koreans-cry-foul-over-short-track-speed-skaters-disqualification-winter-olympics-say-china-would-do-anything-win-1813161

Chinese lolcows respond in a completely rational way:

they flocked to BTS's official Instagram and left malicious comments that included emoticons such as the 'throw up' emoticon, or the middle finger emoticon

https://www.allkpop.com/article/2022/02/btss-official-instagram-terrorized-by-chinese-netizens-after-rms-support-for-the-korean-short-track-team

Reddit has sure become tame. I found a y'alled thread with but nothing very spicy in it. At least it's nice to see the jannies got some exercise.

https://old.reddit.com/r/olympics/comments/smpj2n/short_track_speed_skating_is_a_joke_everyone_is/?sort=controversial

Twitter is much better:

I was wondering why "South Korea" was trending and it was a mistake to find out. There is a lot of geopolitical tension between China and Korea with the #ShortTrack #OlympicGames . I don't even want to get into it. But it has definitely brought out ugly racist hate speech

https://x.com/peonyrose11/status/1491187476995915777#m

https://x.com/xiaobaimmmy - This Chinese guy's whole account is a gold mine. He's trying to get in a million slapfights in broken English and Korean.

https://x.com/in_Lulu_Land/status/1491000715824668673#m

https://x.com/Maru11261983/status/1490730921313529859#m - Still seething about THAAD.

https://x.com/luvlittleSHINee/status/1490692477522968580#m - Still seething about the 2002 Olympics.

https://x.com/Vivian_Zhang_/status/1490906653667250180#m

https://x.com/Fly_love_foreve/status/1491197787379478528#m

Let's see how good Google Translate is these days...

You have no history at all in South Korea. You have been thinking about stealing things from your suzerain country all day long, and you stole the murals of Goguryeo and still haven't returned it, shameless. Even if you don't have culture, your eyes are not good. You can't even see the explanation in front of you. If you really can't do it, donate your eyes. It's a shameful thing.

https://x.com/YangyuyeL/status/1491150350753361920#m