Riding High
KOREA TIMES
03-12-2009 16:56
 A man pedals his bicycle with a woman riding behind him along a street in Jungnang-gu, northeastern Seoul, in this 1974 file photo. / Korea Times |
By Andrei Lankov
Nowadays bicycles are not too common in Korea. It’s true there are a number of cycling fans, some of whom manage to negotiate the ever-clogged Seoul streets (a very risky business, frankly).
However, those people are clearly an exception. Unlike China, where the bicycle has been the major means of transportation for decades, and unlike Japan, where it is being revived, Korea has made a choice in favor of the motorcar, and a rather large car at that.
However, just a few decades ago bicycles were a common sight on Korean streets, and were a major means of transportation in the countryside. Only in the 1970s did car drivers push the cyclists aside.
Who was the first Korean cyclist? Well. There are different answers to this question.
It seems that some Western diplomats and missionaries began to ride bikes in Seoul around 1892 or so, but their habit, being seen as yet another eccentricity, so usual for foreigners, had almost no impact on Korean society. The history of cycling began when a young Korean began to ride a bike in Seoul.
Some people believe that the bike was introduced by So Chae-pil (Dr. Philip Jaison), the first Korean to get an M.D. degree from an American school, the founder of the first Korean modern newspaper, and the first Korean political party.
It seems, however, that in this case, the honor should belong to Yun Chi-ho, another prominent Korean reformer.
This educator, diplomat and politician who, among other things, might have been the author of the Korean national anthem, came back to Korea in 1895 after a few years in the United States. He brought a bicycle along with him and began to frequently ride it in Seoul.
In June 1897, Tongnip Sinmun, the most popular newspaper of the era, ran an advertisement which made clear that by that time at least, one shop in Seoul was selling bicycles. In a few years, a specialized shop, run by a Russian expat, began to sell American bicycles “straight from Chicago.”
However, in the early 1900s, the imported bikes were still too expensive for the average Seoulite. Owning a bicycle was remarkably more difficult than owning a car nowadays. In April 1900, the Hawangsong Sinmun paper advertised bikes for sale.
One model was priced at 140 won, while another cost 70 won. This was a large amount of money in the days when a low-level official made 15 won a month.
A bike which was stolen in 1909 from an official’s house was said to cost 300 won, the equivalent of a Porsche today (but this was a custom-made bicycle from England, specially designed for cycling competitions).
Only in the 1910s did prices begin to move down, driven by an increase in production and further technological developments. Around that time, the bike became a tool of trade for a postman or, somewhat later, a delivery boy. In the late 1930s, for an example, a rice shop in Seoul hired a young countryside lad to deliver rice sacks.
He stayed with the shop for a while, and then went out on his own in a way which eventually made him one of Korea’s richest and most famous industrialists. Chung Ju-yung, the soon-to-be founder of the Hyundai Group, began his career pushing the pedals of a delivery bike.
The bicycle was also used for recreation, with cycling competitions held as early as 1906, which is when the first recorded cycling competition took place.
Since then, such races became a part of life. It seems the period before 1910 was the golden age of cycling, for it enjoyed broad popularity, being seen as a quintessentially modern sport.
In the early 1910s, Korea produced its own cycling star, Om Pok-tong. Born in 1892, he learned cycling while working at a bike shop in his native Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province. The very existence of a bicycle shop there gives a good indication of just how common bikes had become.
By the 1920s, Om was a celebrity, perhaps one of the first sporting celebrities in Korean history (incidentally, the very idea of a “celebrity” is a very modern one). There was at least one popular song about him, and Om’s name was enough to draw crowds to the stadiums where competitions were held.
However, bikes were mostly used for transportation in those days. In 1931, Seoul, with a population of some 360,000, had 17,541 registered bikes ― in other words, one bike per 20 inhabitants. And the number of bikes kept growing. From the 1940s and 1950s, the bicycle was a major means of commuting for the Korean middle classes and skilled workers who lived far away from their jobs.
In those days bicycles had to be registered with the police, their owners had to pass some tests and were required to display number plates ― much like car drivers nowadays.
Incidentally, similar regulations are now in force in North Korea where the use of the bicycle, once despised by the authorities, has been revived in the last decade.
Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He has recently published “The Dawn of Modern Korea,” which is now on sale at Kyobo Book Center and other major bookstores. The book is based on columns published in The Korea Times. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com.