Most Koreans know that Son Kee-chung won gold in the marathon at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Less well known is that in that same race, a runner from Suncheon named Nam Seung-yong won bronze, finishing in 2 hours, 31 minutes, and 42 seconds. Both men were Korean, but under Japanese colonial rule at the time, both had to stand on the medal podium with the Japanese flag — not the Korean flag — on their chests.
The "Japan Flag Erasure Incident," in which a Korean newspaper defiantly retouched a photo of Son's gold medal ceremony to erase the Japanese flag from his uniform, remains a celebrated act of resistance in Korean press history — but in the shadow of that famous incident, Nam Seung-yong's own story as bronze medalist has received comparatively little attention. Nam went on to become a leading figure of Korea's first generation of marathon runners and passed away in 2001. Today, a road in Suncheon — Nam Seung-yong-ro — carries his name, and a marathon race held every November honors his memory. Behind the glory of a gold medal, there's often a bronze-medal story too, and behind that bronze medal was an era when even that achievement had to be claimed under someone else's flag — a fact the city of Suncheon quietly preserves in the name of a single street.