[Keenan Fagan] How President Moon could have medaled at PyeongChang

All Olympic competitors are winners, but the glory goes to the medalists, those individual athletes who in the ancient tradition were honored with a crown of wild olive leaves. In this original spirit, Olympic athletes embody the common human ideals of physical grace, skill, strength, and beauty in the fire of competition.

Of course, the modern Olympics are also a vehicle for competitive corporate and national interests. Just so, the President Moon Jae-in administration’s object of these games was to use the Olympics to open dialogue with North Korea for peace. As the administration pointed out, this follows the Greek tradition of declaring a truce among states to celebrate the games. With this Olympic goal, let’s consider how they placed in the dialogue for peace event by comparing their performance to the competitors representing other nations in different events where dialogue also scores points.

By boxing Kim Jong-un into an isolated corner of the ring in which he desperately needed to escape the blows of international sanctions, the Moon and Trump administrations created the conditions for Kim to send his sister Kim Yo-jung for the charm offensive event. She had a good chance to medal in this for North Korea as South Korean and some international media judges compared her to the great US competitor, Ivanka Trump.

However, Frank Bruni of the New York Times pointed out that this was an odious comparison. Yo-jung may have been compelled to come, seeing how Jong-un assassinated his brother Kim Jong-nam and killed his uncle. Bruni sees no glory in supporting tyrannical aims that repress people instead of celebrating human ideals.

Nor did she initiate dialogue with US Vice President Mike Pence at the opening ceremonies. In final scoring therefore, the American judges were unswayed and gave her scores that caused her to fall far out of the medal race in the charm offensive event.

As a competitor in the don’t hijack the Olympics event, Pence charmed none of the South Korean judges. He wouldn’t sit down to dinner with Kim Yo-jung and emissary Kim Yong-nam, and made no effort to talk to the North Koreans, despite Moon’s valiant efforts. Since when, I wonder, do Americans shy away from telling people what they think? Pence didn’t make it past the qualifying round in the don’t hijack the Olympics event. Neither did Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

In contrast to Pence, I talked to North Koreans while standing right next to them during the participating fan event at the Sweden vs. Inter-Korean team hockey game. To the NK agent minders standing in line for the bathroom, I said in polite Korean, “Hello, I’m American. I hope there is peace between our countries. That would be great. Enjoy the Olympics in Dae Han Min Guk (South Korea)!” They were nice enough to smile.

When I wished the same enjoyment in South Korea to the cheerleaders also representing the North Korean team in the charm offensive event, there were some smiles, smirks, and a couple of disconcerted half-frowns. Only one verbally responded to my thanks for their great singing as they were lined up and marched out by their minders. No freedom of expression or medal there.

But I had acted humanely, in the Olympic spirit, and supported the free people of the republic. I had also given these North Koreans important things to think about, namely that the South is an internationally-minded land of free expression that is a different Korean possibility. Once again, I had done my educational job in a transformational moment that can stick in people’s minds and make a difference. In the participating fan event, I had medaled at the games!

When was President Moon’s transformational moment for medaling in his dialogue for peace event? I believe it came during dialogue with the North Koreans near the DMZ on the formation of the Inter-Korean team. This is when it needed to most draw on the Olympic spirit of the Greeks which Moon propounds.

In proposing the Unified Korean team, Minister of Unification Cho Myoung-gyon needed to explain this to the North Korean delegation, “We are a Republic of laws made by the people that put the rights of the individual before the power of the state. Though we, too, want a Unified Korean women’s hockey team, we must first ask our athletes their opinions. They must discuss this and take a democratic vote. If they vote for a Unified Korean team to play for peace, then we will make one. But we must tell you, if their vote is no, we must respect these individual players’ rights to play for the country they contractually agreed to play for, the Republic of Korea.”

Imagine how impactful the strength of this message would have been to the North Korean delegation. It would have clearly shown them that the way to peace lay in true dialogical values that the Moon administration practiced according to laws and the Greek democratic ideals on which South Korea was founded. It would have shown the humanistic superiority of South Korean democracy and would have sown Northern doubts about their own system.

This would have made the diplomatic rules of the game clear to Pyongyang and forced their hand. If they had said, “Yes, please ask the players to vote,” they would have accepted democratic values. If they had said, “No,” North Korea would not have even qualified for the charm offensive event. In reporting either outcome to the public, the administration would have had a publicity coup.

This strategic move would have empowered Moon, instead of now having the Kims proposing the terms of dialogue. The United States would have applauded this master stroke. And it would have further rallied the South Korean Republic around the Moon administration’s policy of implementing fair policies for all. Moon would have shown the true Olympic spirit of the PyeongChang Games: Com-Passion. Connected! He would have won the gold medal in the dialogue for peace event.

It is a pity that in his rush for Korean ethnic nationalism, he forgot the rules by which dialogue for peace are played and missed the transformational moment. The penalty laps from Moon’s slip again pushed the country to the back of the pack and out of the medal race. Let’s hope that he can bring Greek ideals of freedom and liberty to defeat Northern tyranny in upcoming world championships. 

Keemam Fagam
Keenan Fagan is a professor at Dongguk University who has lived in South Korea for nearly 20 years. — Ed.

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Young black filmgoers see themselves in screening of ‘Panther’

“Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler surprised the Bay Area on Thursday night, flying to his hometown to greet stunned crowds before screenings of his hit movie.

Media: Peter Hartlaub, The Chronicle

Throughout the Bay Area, people haven’t been buying tickets just for themselves to see “Black Panther,” the box-office smash that’s become a cultural phenomenon.

For the past month, groups from around the Bay Area have worked to bring the movie to young African Americans. They have watched with anticipation as the donation numbers ticked up, from small amounts of $10 or $15 to $500 in Oakland and an eye-popping $1,078 in San Francisco to top it all off.

The money flowed in from friends, neighbors and strangers on the Internet, along with messages cheering the fundraisers who looked to connect kids with a movie that features a black superhero and an almost entirely African American cast.

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“Black nerds unite!” Danielle Williams wrote with her $15 donation. A cry of “Wakanda Forever!” came from Erin Gould, along with $150. Wakanda is the movie’s fictional African nation.

In the course of smashing records at the box office, “Black Panther” is also shattering old Hollywood myths about what stories succeed on the big screen. The movie brought in $192 million in its opening weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday, making it the fifth-biggest opening weekend ever.

In the Bay Area, a number of organizers jumped onto the national #BlackPantherChallenge to bring kids to see the film. On Monday, the first group came out to the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland, clad in bold patterns and lush colors rooted in African tradition.

Seventeen-year-old Kyziah Shavers waited for popcorn while wearing a yellow-printed dashiki from Nigeria, a shirt frequently worn for special occasions. The screening qualified as a moment worth celebrating, Kyziah said.

“It’s a time to see that women and men like us have power,” she said. “We can use it to effect change.”

Cheers erupted in the crowd as the film opened with a shot of Oakland. For many, the film is the first time they will see a superhero or a technology genius or warrior who looks like them.

“Half the battle is getting that kind of imagery made,” said Oakland’s Rafe Chisolm, a 37-year-old product designer for Facebook who organized the Grand Lake screening. “Lots of kids never see anyone who looks like them in that kind of light.”

When he was 12 years old, Chisolm’s mother took him to see “The Meteor Man,” a 1993 film that featured a black superhero who fights off a gang terrorizing his neighborhood.

“We lived in Birmingham, Ala., and it was a key image for me to see, someone like me who had a technical mind,” Chisolm said. “It wasn’t a spiritual experience or anything like that, but I needed to see something like that.”

During a Thursday screening at the Grand Lake, Ryan Coogler, the film’s black, Oakland-born director, made an appearance and recounted how his father would bring him to the same theater as a kid. At Monday’s screening, his father, Ira Coogler, surprised the audience as a guest on the post-film panel that focused on diversity in media.

Monday’s screening connected the film’s high-tech world to questions of diversity in the Bay Area’s booming tech industry. Chisolm and other organizers brought in groups like the Hidden Genius Project and Black Girls Code, which mentor black youth interested in coding, to speak and recruit after the film.

Sasha Williams, a 15-year-old Black Girls Code member, said she found the film most powerful in its depiction of Shuri, the 16-year-old inventor and princess of Wakanda. The character defied stereotypes of scientists and engineers, Sasha said, especially with her age.

“I used to think I have to be an adult to do things,” Sasha said. “But why do I have to wait? I hope that inspires a lot of young black girls that they can do the same.”

Chisolm said he hoped to use the screening to connect young people interested in technology with organizations that could give them early exposure to coding and engineering opportunities. As a high school student, he had no access to technical courses, despite his strong interest in the sciences.

In his job at Facebook, Chisolm said he now works with people 10 or 15 years younger than he is who have thrived thanks to early exposure to science and technology education.

“In the Bay Area especially, so many kids are sitting in a sea of resources, but they’ll never see it without that connection,” Chisolm said.

In the next few weeks, the African American Art Culture Complex in San Francisco’s Fillmore neighborhood will take about 100 more children to see the film in a separate screening. Ciara Swan, who runs programming at the complex, said the staff kept checking the GoFundMe page in the days leading up to the release to see if they would meet their goals.

Swan said, “We just want our youth to see more depictions of themselves — too see themselves as well-rounded and capable of doing anything, capable of being represented in positive ways.”

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