Ven. Hosan, founder of the Dalma Open Championship, performs a halfpipe trick at the competition's fifth edition at Vivaldi Park Ski World in Gangwon Province, Feb. 6, 2007. Yonhap
What does Buddhism have to do with Korea’s unprecedented back-to-back snowboarding medals at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics?
More than you might think, actually.
Halfpipe gold medalist Choi Ga-on, alpine silver medalist Kim Sang-kyum, big air bronze medalist Yu Seung-eun and Lee Sang-ho, who nabbed the nation’s first Olympic snowboarding medal at the 2018 PyeongChang Games, share a common trait.
All four once competed in the long-running Dalma Open Championship, organized by the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, the country’s largest Buddhist sect.
Behind this unlikely convergence of religion and sport stands one man: Ven. Hosan, abbot of Bongseon Temple in Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province.
Big air bronze medalist Yu Seung-eun, left, and alpine silver medalist Kim Sang-kyum at the 2026 Winter Olympics / Yonhap
His relationship with the sport began by chance. In 1995, after being asked to offer prayers for safety at a nearby ski resort, the monk received a lift pass in return.
Watching skiers glide down the wind-scoured slope, he saw something familiar in their movement — a kind of freedom.
“In Buddhism, too, we seek ultimate liberation from the cycle of birth and death,” he said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency. “I felt I could relate to the hearts of those young people on their boards.”
Source: Korea Times News
