If anyone can find his birth parents it would be Korean netizens:
Some netizens here have volunteered to help Olympic gymnast Yul Moldauer, born in Seoul and adopted by American parents, search for his birth family. The 25-year-old U.S. gymnast has made waves in Korea for his Korean heritage.
Korea Times
While airing the artistic gymnastics men’s apparatus final, local broadcaster KBS introduced Moldauer’s Korean name, Kyung-tae, and the sportscaster explained, “He has a longing for Korea and is searching for his older sister, who may still be living in Korea.” Moldauer finished sixth in the finals.
The subject of Moldauer soon lit up Korean social media. Much of the attention has focused on searching for his birth parents and sister.
You can read more at the link.
It looks like someone at MBC is going to get in trouble for having a sense of humor:
MBC went too far during its coverage of the Tokyo Olympic opening ceremony on Thursday, so much so that the broadcaster found it extremely challenging to make up for the mistakes.
Korea Times
Its hours-long livestream of the ceremony was filled with factual errors including nonsensical, scathing and discriminatory descriptions of some countries which sparked a furious online backlash.
When Chilean athletes marched during the opening ceremony, MBC used the image of the Routes of Santiago de Composte, a network of four Christian pilgrimage routes in northern Spain. MBC staff seemed to have confused the Chilean capital Santiago with the Spanish pilgrimage routes of the same name. It also used an image of the Atlantic Ocean, instead of the Pacific, for Micronesia, a tiny country consisting of 2,100 islands in the Western Pacific Ocean.
MBC left its viewers speechless with its inappropriate images for several countries. It used salmon for Norway and pizza for Italy. When the athletes of Republic of the Marshall Islands marched, the TV caption told viewers, “It was a nuclear test site for the United States.”
Some of the graphics used were insulting. For instance, the image of Bitcoin was used for El Salvador as if the TV station was trying to remind viewers of the Central American country’s adoption of the virtual currency as its official tender. An image of riots was used to represent Haiti.
You can read more at the link.
This is down right childish, but what do you expect when it comes to the continuing pissing matches between the ROK and Japan:
South Korea on Saturday took down banners at its Olympic athletes’ village with a nod to history, following a request from the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
The Korean Sport & Olympic Committee (KSOC) said the IOC had raised issues with the message written across a few banners, initially hung on balconies at South Korean athletes’ rooms at the village in Tokyo. The letters translated as, “I still have support from 50 million Korean people.”
This was in reference to the famous words left by Admiral Yi Sun-sin before he and his undermanned fleet took on Japan in a naval battle in 1597. Yi, one of the most revered historical figures in South Korea, told King Seonjo of the Joseon Dynasty: “I still have 12 battleships left” and then maneuvered those dozen vessels to take down some 300 Japanese ships.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but instead of worrying about something that happened in the 16th century you would think these athletes would be more focused on the competition.
The abusive behavior is likely going on in more sports than just curling, but they were the ones that caught:
South Korean curling officials and coaches who abused the national women’s team members for years have been slapped with lifetime bans.
The Korean Curling Federation (KCF) announced Monday that its former Vice President Kim Kyung-doo, his daughter Kim Min-jung and her husband Jang Ban-seok will no longer be allowed to set foot in the sport.
he Kims were once considered the royal family in South Korean curling. Kim Kyung-doo was a founding member of the KCF in 1994. Kim Min-jung was the head coach of the women’s team when South Korea won silver at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. Jang coached the mixed doubles team at the same Olympics.
South Korea’s surprise silver medal, led by skip Kim Eun-jung, was one of the feel-good stories at the 2018 Winter Games. But later in that same year, Kim and her teammates claimed that they had endured years of verbal and emotional abuse by Kim Kyung-doo and his family. The sports ministry launched a probe into the athletes’ charges, and the ministry concluded in February 2019 that those allegations turned out to be true. The Kim family also owed the athletes millions in prize money won at international competitions.
Yonhap
I think that is what really got them was the embezzlement of the prize money. That is pretty low to take all the prize money from the athletes who did the majority of the work to earn it.
Congratulations to Choi Ji-man and the Tampa Bay Rays:
In just a few years, Choi Ji-man has evolved from a player seemingly no club wanted into a key member of a World Series-bound team.
The Rays defeated the Houston Astros 4-2 in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series (ALCS) at Petco Park in San Diego on Saturday (local time). The Rays won the first three games of this series before dropping the next three in a row. They just avoided becoming only the second team in major league history to squander a 3-0 series lead to lose a best-of-seven postseason round.
Choi played in five of the seven games and went 5-for-13 with a home run, an RBI, three runs scored and four walks. He was 2-for-3 with a walk and a run scored in the clinching contest.
He is now expected to become the first South Korean position player to appear in a World Series game. The Rays will face the winner of the National League Championship Series between the Atlanta Braves and the Los Angeles Dodgers, who will meet in their own Game 7 on Sunday.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
The KBO and ESPN have finally struck a deal to air Korean baseball games, however neither side is disclosing what the financial terms of this arrangement are:
The U.S. sports cable giant ESPN will broadcast South Korean baseball games to its American audience, starting with the first day of the season on Tuesday.
The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) announced Monday that ESPN has struck a deal with Eclat, the Korean company with international distribution rights to KBO games. ESPN will air one game per day and six games per week, with an opening day game between the Samsung Lions and the NC Dinos leading things off. The game is set to begin at 2 p.m. Tuesday Korean time, or 1 a.m. Tuesday Eastern Standard Time (EST).
The KBO said ESPN will also offer KBO highlights.
In its own press release, ESPN said it will become “the exclusive English-language home” for live KBO games, and the deal covers the postseason and the Korean Series, the best-of-seven championship final here. Games will mostly air on ESPN2 and on the ESPN APP.
ESPN will announce its game selections on a week-to-week basis. It added that its play-by-play voices, analysts and reporters will provide commentary in English, remotely, from their home studios. The group will include Karl Ravech, Jon Sciambi, Eduardo Perez, Jessica Mendoza and Kyle Peterson.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but it will be interesting to see how American fans take to watching Korean baseball. It is too bad the stadiums will not have fans because it would be interesting to get American reactions to Korean baseball fans.
So who would be excited to watch some South Korean baseball games on ESPN?:
U.S. sports media giant ESPN was seeking free rights to broadcast South Korean professional baseball games, leading to a stalemate in its negotiations with its counterpart in Seoul, informed sources told Yonhap News Agency on Thursday.
According to sources with knowledge of the talks, ESPN wanted to acquire rights to Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) games for free from Eclat, which owns international rights to KBO games.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but clearly ESPN is desperate and I don’t blame the KBO for playing hardball on them. If they want programming they should pay for it.
