Park Si-hun

Korean spelling
Hangeul	박시훈
Revised Romanization	Bak Si-hun
McCune- Reischauer	Pak Sihun
See also : Korean name

Park Si-hun (born December 16, 1965 in Haman, Gyeongsangnam-do ) is a former South Korean boxer . Park was the 1988 Olympic champion in Seoul in the light middleweight division (-71 kg).

Career

In 1985, Park became the light middleweight world cup winner. He won against Freddy Sánchez from Puerto Rico, Michael Timm from the GDR and Kevin Bryant from the USA in Seoul . In 1985 and 1987 he also won the Asian Championships in Bangkok and Kuwait City .

After Park had already defeated the Italian Vincenzo Nardiello in a controversial manner in the quarter-finals of the 1988 Olympic Games , he defeated Raymond Downey , Canada (5-0), and then met Roy Jones junior in the final . The future professional world champion Jones dominated Park over all three rounds: The New York Times unofficially counted 86 hits for Jones and 32 for Park. Still, Park won 3-2 judges' votes, which went down as one of the biggest scandals in Olympic history.

Park was so embarrassed about his gold medal that he ostentatiously raised Jones' arm in the air at the awards ceremony. The US broadcaster NBC called 50,000 people of Korean origin and apologized for the verdict. The Berliner Zeitung later reported that a Stasi spy noticed a payment of US $ 10,000 from the South Korean multimillionaire Kim Seung-youn, who was president of the Korean boxing association at the time. It was spicy that members of the IOC were informed about it, but stayed out of it. The scandal caused the Olympic point system to be changed. Before that, the five judges could decide without giving an account of their score. Today, when a blow is hit, a "hit" is only decided if three referees press a button on a boxing computer within a second.

End of career

Park ended his boxing career shortly after the Seoul Olympics and worked as a physical education teacher after completing a bachelor's degree in sports until he became assistant coach of the South Korean national team in 2001. In 2008 he was the coach of the South Korean youth team and is currently in charge of South Korea's reserve team.

Web links

• Jens Weinreich: The boxing officials are searching without a goal. In: Berliner Zeitung . July 24, 1996, accessed September 7, 2015 . 
• New York Times article

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Korean. Park is the family name here, Si-hun is the first name.