Colonial Hero: Son Kijŏng in Narratives of Popular and National Korean History.

Son Kijŏng's monumental victory in the 1936 Berlin Olympic marathon propelled him to the status of hero in both colonial Korea and Imperial Japan. His triumph symbolised the successful fulfilment of Japan's colonial policy of assimilation (dōka). Yet, this very event – the moment when assimilation was ostensibly realised – created the opening for a legendary act of resistance to Japanese colonial authority: the publication, in the Tonga ilbo, of a photograph with the Japanese flag on Son's chest blotted out. This article explores colonial-era representations of Son's achievement as well as the formation and solidification of a historical narrative that portrays Son as a champion of Korean nationalism. Rather than any act performed by Son, it is the malleability of representation established during the colonial era that has allowed for the valorisation of Son as a symbol of resistance to Japanese colonial authority. More recently, colonial-period images of Son, building on the established dominant historical narrative of resistance, have been refashioned as blank canvases from which imagined historical outcomes can be created and formed into narratives that speak to current ideological demands for portrayals of active resistance to Japanese colonial rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]