Captured on grainy black-and-white film, surrounded by the roar of a stadium, a broken Olympian cast his gaze down to his feet. Looking utterly humiliated while clutching a laurel plant to his chest, the Korean Gold Medalist hears the anthem of a country that’s not his own. And so we start, on the “Road to Boston”.
At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Sohn Kee Chung (Ha Jung Woo) held a laurel plant to cover the Japanese flag on his shirt. (Japan had forcibly colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945.) So the day he set the marathon world and Olympic records, both Sohn’s uniform and the national anthem played were Japanese.
For that gesture of defiance, the Japanese government forbade Sohn from racing competitively again.
Korean marathon Gold Medalist Sohn Kee-chung bowed his head and covered up the Japanese flag on his uniform at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
But “Road to Boston” is not a somber, tragic story. Rather, it’s an ebullient, soaring testament to how sports can lift and inspire an entire nation.
Even after Korea was freed from colonization after World War II, Korea was unable to form an Olympic team because it was not yet considered an independent nation. In fact, as a “refugee country”, Koreans were required to both submit a hefty deposit and be sponsored by an American citizen to even set foot on American soil.
With those pieces in place, the stage is now set for Suh Yun Bok (Im Si-wan), an inordinately talented, rebellious mentee of Sohn, to make a dramatic entrance. Raised by a single mom who struggled with poor health, Suh grew up running up and down mountain trails to steal food offerings that villagers would lay out for departed family members.
As a college student, Suh was preoccupied with part-time jobs to support his ill mother. But his scorching win time at a commemorative race for Sohn, caught the attention of Nam Sung Yong (Bae Sung-woo). Nam, a bronze medalist, teammate and friend of Sohn’s at the Berlin Olympics, happened to be training young marathon runners nearby. Luckily for Suh, Nam was trying to create a Korean team for the 1948 London Olympics.
But first, Korea needed to prove themselves in an international competition, and an opportunity to compete came at the 1947 Boston Marathon. For reasons undisclosed in the film, Sohn had gifted renowned marathoner John Kelley a pair of running shoes after the Berlin Olympics. Kelley had finished 18th while Sohn finished first, but he was a legend at the Boston Marathon, winning it twice in 1935 and 1945, and racing in it 61 times in total.
In response to a letter from Sohn, Kelley extended invitations to Suh and Nam to enter the Boston Marathon. Kelley’s only request was that Sohn come along as Suh’s coach. With an invitation in hand, the Koreans are now on their own to raise the impossibly costly deposit and find an American sponsor. Even getting to Boston would be no easy feat, as there were no commercial airlines that flew from Korea to the US in 1947. Unbelievably, the runners’ flight had five layovers, traversing from Seoul to Tokyo to Guam to Honolulu to San Francisco to New York before finally landing in Boston.
If Suh placed well at the Boston Marathon (the world’s foremost racing event since there were no Olympics during and immediately following WWII), Korea’s positioning would be immeasurably boosted as it strategized about competing in the 1948 Olympics, for the first time. In the plainest terms, how Suh performed in Boston deserves a far more prominent place in sports, and Korean, history.
While “Road to Boston” may be a bit melodramatic for some, it’s a film worth watching about heroes who should not be forgotten. Korea today is a global player, with an unrivaled reach in its soft power through Hallyu’s K-pop, K-drama/cinema, K-cuisine and K-beauty. But it wasn’t that long ago when Korea, unbelievably now, was designated a “refugee country”. Although rightfully heralded by sports enthusiasts all along, Sohn, Suh, Nam and others deserve to be more widely remembered for their contributions to the foundations of today’s modern Korea.
