Reporter's Diary: Korea’s real superhero

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I’m not sure how many of you remember the night China’s Liu Xiang rocketed to world attention by becoming the first Asian man to win an Olympic gold medal on the athletics track – the men’s 110-meter hurdles.

It was back in 2004, I was living in Hong Kong at the time and doing the Olympic analysis for CNN for those Athens Games.

Liu Xiang changed the way the world thought about Chinese athletes and the way China thought about itself.

He went on to become one of the most liked athletes amongst his International peers.

It’s the kind of influence countries can’t buy.

Well, now it’s South Korea’s turn.

He’s known as the "Iron Man" because he wears a helmet that resembles the mask of the Marvel Comics superhero that goes by the same name.

Only Yun Sung-bin is real.

This week he flew down the skeleton track at the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics reaching impossible speeds and flying headfirst into a gold medal.

He’s the first Asian man to win a sliding sport, and the first South Korean medalist – ever – not from a rink-based sport.

South Korea had won 26 Winter Olympic gold medals ahead of PyeongChang, all of them in speed skating, short track and figure skating.

For many years the ice rink has been their palace.

Now, thanks to Yun Sung-bin, they are seeing themselves as kings of the mountain as well.

The locals have gone crazy for him.

In an interview on Sunday, he told me his life is no longer his, but he bears no grudges because it is others who believed in him, and the support of his country, that saw him become Olympic champion.

He can’t show his face in public anymore without being mobbed.

I saw men, women and children – from the very old to the very young – asking for his autograph, bursting into tears once they got it and holding the papers he signed to their hearts once he left. A high school PE teacher encouraged him to take up the sport and with no tracks to compete on in his own country he trained on grass till he could travel overseas.

It’s his belief and determination that saw him make history this week.

Yun Sung-bin, the real "ron Man," is South Korea’s perfect marketing tool: young, brave and a world beater.

I asked him what he’s looking forward to most once the cauldron is extinguished in a week’s time and his life, to some degree, becomes his own again. Sleeping, he said, a good long sleep. And by then the media will be gone.

The cameras, the interviews, the audience will have all moved on to their next momentary obsession and he can get back down to the business of doing what he loves: sliding down an icy winding track, face first, for the pure joy of it.