Olympic coverage in Korea

Although I saw the Opening Ceremony of the Athens games in Honolulu, everything else I've seen has been from a Korean point of view. Like all other things, this has its ups and downs.

On the upside, you get to see a lot of stuff you'd never see in the States (if only because there are no Americans in those events). The downside is that you have to be interested exclusively in Korean athletes, and because there are so many events to show, airtime is only given to Koreans who win.

This isn't universally the case -- I got to see Paul Hamm in the indivual men's gymnastics all around competition. At first I was pissed because I thought they were only showing his tumble on the vault, but then was ecstatic when they showed his kick-butt horizontal bar performance that got him the gold medal with a hair and some teeth skin to spare. After watching Lee Won Hee's gold winning judo clips about 10 times in the past three days, I was particularly pleased to see a Korean not take the gold.

Of course, now there's the debate about who should get/keep which medal. If you haven't heard the jist of the story. Lee Won Hee's parallel bars performance was not given the right difficulty rating. He should have been rated a 10.0 because of the difficulty in transitioning from move to move, but because of the 9.9 he got the silver medal. Had his coaches protested the rating on the floor, his case would probably have been heard, but they didn't. As a result, I doubt they'll consider his appeal, despite the judges admission of the mistake.

Naturally, this is in the news here every day, but I was happy to see that the issue had made the U.S. news as well. Whether they whatever committee decides to hear the appeal or not, I don't care, just as long as they don't start crucifying Americans because of some other country's judging sins....