Kim Tae-kyun is a baseball player for the Hanwha Eagles in Daejeon City. He is a batter of exceptional talent, despite playing for the worst team in the country. His glittering career includes winning the gold medal at the 2010 Asian Games.
Shane Youman is a pitcher for the Lotte Giants in Busan. Born and raised in Louisiana, Youman made his MLB debut for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2006 and arrived in South Korea last year. He is undoubtedly one of the best pitchers in the country.
Kim has a reputation for being hot-headed, often breaking bats over his knee or confronting umpires. Youman is considered one of the game’s good guys.
In early June, Kim made incredibly insensitive remarks about Youman. Kim’s off-air comments were never broadcast, even though he was participating in a radio debate. He had been asked which pitcher is the most difficult to play against in the league. According to the baseball show host, Kim said: “Youman’s face is so black and that it makes his teeth seem whiter. When he smiles on the mound as he throws, I tend to lose the ball in his teeth. That has fooled me often.”
Kim later apologised through his club, but by then significant damage had been done. The apology itself also left a lot of people scratching their heads in disbelief.
“Regardless of the truth of the comments, I’d like to offer my apology to Youman,” he said. “I had meant to tell the reporter that Youman’s delivery makes him a difficult pitcher to hit against from a hitter’s perspective, and that he’s a great player.”
Youman later admitted that Kim never apologised to him in person. But by a quirk of faith, retribution would arrive soon for Youman, as Kim’s Eagles were the next team in Busan the following week. Lotte won, and Kim was struck out twice.
Moreover, the game highlighted South Korea’s apathy towards racism. Kim was heckled and booed, and one woman brought a banner that said of Youman ‘Your smile is so nice’, but the stadium was virtually empty – despite Lotte boasting the best crowd figures in Korean baseball.
Raising awareness
Only days before this incident, Youman had appeared on Philip Riccobono’s podcast Coming to America Baseball, informing listeners that he does a lot of charity work in Nigeria, his father’s country of birth. And in an interview with the Korea Times, Youman felt his own club Lotte had not discussed the incident until after he approached them.
“I was told they’d address [it], but even after that, nothing was said or done on my behalf,” he said. “They could have done a lot more to raise awareness around the whole league, as well as for college, high school and younger players.”
The whole affair was back in the headlines last week when the Korea Times posted another article under the headline ‘KBO urged to prevent racism’. The article quoted an American ‘cultural consultant’, Avery Atkinson, who unloaded a barrage of complaints about South Korean society.
“Megalomania is a belief that you are more powerful and important than you really are,” Atkinson was quoted as saying. “Upon reading the racially insensitive commentary from Kim, the first thing that popped into my mind was, ‘Oh no, another Korean player suffering from social megalomania.’”
Atkinson went on to query when “[South] Korea, a place known as the ‘Hermit Kingdom’, [will] crawl out of its shell to live in the global community”.
Needless to say, her assessment was not well received. And the unfortunate reality is most Koreans I spoke with did not find Kim’s comments racist or insensitive. Raising awareness is important, but for the time being, campaigners might find themselves striking out.
Andrew Farrell works as an English language teacher in Korea.
