Oh Eunsun "probably failed" in bid to reach fourteen highest peaks over 8000 meters

That, says the BBC, is according to the Korea Alpine Federation:

Fresh doubt has been cast on the record of a Korean climber, who was hailed in April as the first woman to climb the world's 14 highest peaks.

Oh Eun-sun "probably failed" to reach the top of the world's third-highest peak, Kangchenjunga, the Korean Alpine Federation (KAF) judged on Thursday.

Top Himalayan record keeper Elizabeth Hawley is investigating the KAF ruling.

If she decides to list the 2009 ascent as "unrecognised", the record will pass to Spanish climber Edurne Pasaban.

Ms Oh climbed Annapurna, the last of her 14 mountains above 8,000m, on 27 April. Ms Pasaban completed the list by scaling Shisha Pangma just under three weeks later, on 17 May.

Ms Oh responded to the Korean Alpine Federation's verdict - issued at a meeting of seven local climbers who have scaled the 8,586m mountain - by describing it as "a unilateral opinion".

I had earlier written about Oh Eunsun and suggested that her bid was being heavily scrutinized perhaps as a kind of "Hwang effect," but now as a Korean entity calls her achievement into question (à la MBC and Dr Hwang) it is looking even more and more like Hwang 2.0.

I wonder if anybody should be following the money.

At any rate, here's a neato graphic from the BBC about the fourteen peaks I will probably never ever get to the top of.

Is Oh Eunsun a victim of Dr Hwang and Korea's reverse halo effect?

It's nearly half a decade in the past, but I guess the Hwang Factor™ is still around: major accomplishments by Koreans are sometimes still regarded with a just-below-the-surface suspicion that there may be shortcuts or subterfuge involved.

This apparently is tainting what should be a celebrated accomplishment by Oh Eunsun, the South Korean who became the first woman to scale all fourteen of the world's peaks over 8000 meters.

From the Los Angeles Times:

In late April, the 44-year-old former government worker became the first woman to scale the planet's 14 highest peaks — all of them over 26,000 feet and located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges — narrowly beating three European women for the record.

Though hailed as a hero in South Korea, Oh says she has learned a bitter lesson about her endurance sport: Along with capricious storms and thin air, jealousy and resentment often await at the highest Himalayan altitudes.

Oh's record has provoked an avalanche of criticism. Her use of oxygen tanks and her reliance on Sherpa guides break unwritten rules of the sport, some say. Others dispute that Oh even reached the peak of Kanchenjunga on the border between India and Nepal, the world's third-highest summit, suggesting her victory photograph was taken somewhere below the top.

Oh, they say, is a cheater.

This is not a new story (I myself mentioned it several times), but the LAT's John Glionna addressed it a few days ago (with little play in the K-blogs), and he also drew that connection with Hwang Woosuk:

The controversy, many say, raises questions about fair play on both sides. Are Europeans so protective of their traditional success in alpine sports that they would attack an unlikely champion from Asia? Or is Oh the product of a hyper-competitive South Korean culture marked by such scandals as cheating on college entrance exams and the 2006 case of scientist Hwang Woo-suk, who faked groundbreaking stem cell research?

"It's heartbreaking," Oh says of criticism from some female climbers whose exploits inspired her. "But I'm also human. How could I not be angry?"

It sucks to be tagged in a negative way because of your compatriots. Sadly, it's something many of Ms Oh's fellow Koreans routinely do with people of other nationalities.

But at the same time, do these handful of prominent cases warrant such a broad-stroke impression? Cheating on college entrance exams is not unique to Korea, nor is academic dishonesty. Korea sometimes seems to be coated with whatever the opposite of Teflon would be. I wonder, for example, how much worse the fallout would be for Korea Inc in general if Toyota were a Korean company. One could easily argue that the rest of Japan Inc is insulated from Toyota's woes in a way Korean companies wouldn't be were the same problem to befall Hyundai or Kia.

UPDATE (June 2, 2010):
Inspired by a comment at this post at ROK Drop, I'm adding a little something in response to allegations that Ms Oh broke "unwritten rules" against using a sherpa or an oxygen tank, an elaboration of one of my own comments.

Yes, those apparently were "unwritten rules of the sport." And unwritten rules have a funny way of being brought to the light of day when it's most convenient, like for an opponent trying to discredit your victory. I note that this protest comes after the accusations that she was just shy of one of the summits apparently didn't stick.

The sherpa guide "unwritten rule" rings hollow to me, given that the first two people credited with reaching the top of Mt Everest were Sir Edmund Hillary and his sherpa guide Tenzin Norgay [see here]. That same link notes that "every climber carries an oxygen tank because of the lack of oxygen."

Unless the sherpa carried her and her oxygen tank up the frickin' mountain, gimme a break. Ultimately, as the LAT article points out, some Europeans apparently aren't ready for Asian alpinists to make a mark in "their" sport.

(UPDATE below) South Korean woman's claim of tackling world's fourteen highest peaks in doubt

Frankly, I blame Hwang Woosuk for all this.

As I mentioned a few days ago (here, too), Oh Eunsun is poised to be the first woman to reach the summit of all fourteen peaks over 8000 meters, but her next closest rival, Edurne Pasaban of Spain, is apparently claiming that Ms Oh may be cheating:

The two rivals met at Annapurna base camp on 7 April over a cup of tea. "It was a very pleasant chat… we laughed a little. It was good," Pasaban wrote in her blog.

But this week, after Pasaban's descent from Annapurna to Kathmandu, the gloves came off.
She began to voice doubts that Oh had reached the top of the world's third-highest mountain, Kangchenjunga, which both of them tackled in May last year.

Crucially, she sowed seeds of doubt in the mind of the world's most respected keeper of Himalayan mountain climbing records, Elizabeth Hawley.

Miss Hawley, an 86-year-old American, told the BBC that following her conversation with Pasaban on Thursday, she was altering her unofficial but authoritative Himalayan Database to mark Oh's ascent of Kangchenjunga as "disputed".

The stakes are certainly high (get it? high!): If Ms Oh is disqualified, Ms Pasaban gets all the glory and Apolo Anton Ohno will be awarded the bronze.

All kidding aside, this is some serious business, so much so that fellow alpinist Ko Miyoung died last year in the same race for these lofty bragging rights.

UPDATE (April 25, 2010):
Ms Oh's ascent of Annapurna has been delayed until Tuesday because of winds and snow. From AFP:

A 10-member team including Oh and a KBS producer on Friday reached camp three, located at a height of 6,400 metres (21,100 feet).

But they started descending on Saturday morning after giving up efforts to reach the next camp, at a height of 7,200 metres, because of strong winds, KBS TV reported.
Oh and her colleagues were planning to descend to a lower-level camp and wait for the weather to clear. Avalanches and ice falls have claimed the lives of dozens of climbers attempting to summit Annapurna.

Annapurna is particularly dangerous because it is both technically difficult and avalanche-prone, and it has a much higher death rate than Everest, the world's highest peak.
Oh, who was defeated by Annapurna last year, made the decision to delay her assault on the peak after being told by radio from her base camp that it would be snowy and windy at the weekend, Yonhap news agency said.

I'm glad they're putting safety over glory.

A truly amazing race

[above: An embarrassed Oh Eunsun realizes she left the "Tokto is our land!" banner back at camp.]

South Korean climber Oh Eunsun is racing against time and a Spanish woman for bragging rights of being the first female to have climbed the fourteen peaks over 8000 meters.

From The Times:

A Spaniard and a South Korean are neck and neck in a race to become the first woman to climb the world’s 14 peaks over 8,000m (26,247ft).

Edurne Pasaban of Spain reached the 8,091m summit of Nepal’s Mount Annapurna, one of the deadliest mountains in the Himalayas, on Saturday, leaving her with one peak to climb.

Ms Pasaban, 36, is scrambling to get back down and across the Chinese border into Tibet to begin her ascent of Shisha Pangma — the smallest of the 14 at 8,027m — early next month.

Meanwhile, Oh Eun Sun of South Korea is acclimatising at Base Camp Two on Annapurna — the last of her 14 peaks — and is expected to make a push for the summit next Sunday.

Although Ms Oh, 44, appears to have the advantage, the race hangs in the balance as Annapurna is more difficult: it has been scaled by about 130 people but has claimed the lives of at least 53. Ms Oh was beaten by fog and blizzards on the mountain last year.

Either woman could be foiled by avalanches, equipment failure or health problems, especially in the “death zone” above 8,000m, where oxygen levels are a third of those at sea level.

I think this is exciting, though one wonders why, considering how long these peaks and these women have been around, it is coming down to the wire like this. I just hope neither one of them does something foolish in order to be first.

UPDATE:
Another blog post, about doubts about her record.