The government plans to spend nearly W2.1 billion to nurture young athletes in 15 sports that are unpopular in Korea but have the potential to achieve strong performances on the international stage, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance said Monday.What caught my attention in this latest article, though was the list of fifteen unpopular sports
It is the first time the government will set aside a budget to promote unpopular sports. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is working on a detailed plan, aimed at discovering and nurturing the next Mo Tae-bum or Lee Sang-hwa, the first-ever Korean speed skaters to win Olympic gold medals.
To be included in the 15 sports are skating, skiing, fencing, hockey, boxing, judo, wrestling, shooting, cycling, weight lifting, gymnastics, canoeing, rowing and yachting.specifically, hockey. From neither the English nor the Korean versions is it clear whether they mean ice or field hockey. Though I've never heard a thing about field hockey while I lived in Korea, the women apparently have had success: winning three out of seven Hockey Asia Cups (and placing in the top three six times), two of the last three Women's Junior Hockey World Cups, four of the last five Junior Asia Cups, and earning either gold or silver at six of the seven Asian Games. The men earned a silver at the 2000 Summer Olympics, and the women in 1988 and 1996.
If they're talking about ice hockey, that's intriguing. I've wondered aloud if the success Koreans have had at skating might encourage people to get interested in ice hockey. But it's been said by many that Koreans aren't really interested in sports, they're interested in Koreans doing well at sports. People here aren't fans of figure skating, soccer, or short-track, they're fans of Kim Yu-na, the national team, and the perennial medal-winners. The lack of interest in the domestic soccer league compared to the kimcheerleading when the national team is on is evidence of that.
Before this plan gets too far along, somebody had better tell the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism that just because ice hockey is "unpopular" in South Korea doesn't mean it isn't highly competitive internationally, and that Korea has an incredibly long way to go to catch up. The men's national team is ranked 30th in the world and the women 27th, neither good enough for an Olympic appearance or even a pre-Olympic qualification tournament. Wikipedia has some information about the men's national team in an article that says South Korea beat Thailand 92-0 in a game in 1998, and that in 16 games against Japan, Korea has never won and has been outscored 150 to 23. Korea does have two professional men's teams that compete in Asia League Ice Hockey, though neither has ever won the championship, and people have said the level of competition is comparable to North American juniors or the ECHL. An ECHLer shared his experiences in a 2005 article:
Like everything else in South Korea, it took Liebenow some time to adapt to a new style of hockey.There's really no way a national team from South Korea will be competing at the international level with a North American or European squad anytime soon. Size is one issue. Looking at the national team roster from last spring (.pdf file), we see no players are taller than 5'11" and only two are heavier than 185 pounds. The the Canadian roster from the 2009 World Championships shows there's only three skaters under 6'0" and one under 200 pounds. Of course size isn't everything, and smaller players can have success by being fast and fundamentally-sound, but small defensemen will be overmatched against even medium-sized forwards, and smallish forwards will get thrown around by much larger defensemen who, don't forget, often move around pretty quickly themselves.
"It's a lot different," said Liebenow, who played in South Korea from October through February last season. "You play on Olympic-sized rinks. It's pretty much like trying to land a 747 on a hockey rink. They're huge."
Not only are the rinks bigger, there is absolutely no fighting, no way to retaliate if a player feels an opponent takes a cheap shot. Liebenow said Korean hockey is more about skating, but the overall quality of the game isn't as good.
"They were paying me to do it," said Liebenow, who first heard about the Asia League through former Condor Steve Howard. "The experience was easily a 10, even with the hockey being so bad. I had an awesome time."
Experience is another issue. Ice hockey is an expensive, time-consuming sport, and thus one off-limits to Korean students. The rigors of the Korean education system make it just about impossible for students to even have hobbies---sleep and computer games are the two most common---let alone get good at sports. Conversely, players for the top teams in the world learn to skate just as soon as they can walk, and spend their whole lives playing hockey. When students reach college and finally have the time and the freedom for recreation, the best athletes in North America and Europe are already being drafted by NHL teams.
Korea's grab for medals isn't just about pride, but about its need to diversify if it's to bring the 2018 Winter Olympics to Pyeongchang
Among the 31 medals earned by Korean athletes in the Winter Games up to the 2006 Turin Olympics 29 medals including all 17 gold medals came from short track speed skating.All the medalists this year are in skating events as well.
With all these medals concentrated in one event a shortcoming has cropped up in Korea's bid to host the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in Gangwon Province.It's a backwards approach, trying to promote sports for the purpose of attracting the Winter Olymipcs, and one similar to the one the government has taken toward trying to produce a home-grown Nobel Prize winner for the sake of producing a home-grown Nobel Prize winner. It's also backwards to try and develop hockey and other sports for the sake of medals when the interest in sports isn't there. Trying to promote interest in hockey and develop local talent isn't a bad idea, and trying to boost the level of competition on its domestic teams is a good thing. However, the government will need to rethink its push for a championship in "unpopular" hockey, and look first at finding a way to keep the sport viable among a youth and public that can't easily support it.
Experts said this caused Korea to lack versatility as a potential host for the international sports festival.
Kim Jin-sun, governor of Gangwon Province and co-chair of the 2018 Pyeongchang Bid Committee said at that time that the bidding process was not easy since not many people even knew that Korea is a country that participates in various winter sports.
However, it seems that the Vancouver Winter Olympics could change Korea's reputation and status as a winter sports powerhouse since Korean skaters have captured two golds and two silvers outside of the short track category as of Thursday.
Jim Paek (백지선) is one of two Korean-born players to skate in the NHL. Raised in Canada, Paek played a few seasons your Pittsburgh Penguins in the early 1990s, and now coaches in the US.
14 comments:
As a hockey fan, I've been looking more into the Asia League Ice Hockey. While a Korean team has never won thus far, the Anyang Halla ended this year's season in first place and - I think - will probably win their Cup (or whatever it is, I'm still learning) this year.
But yeah, the level of play is much lower than the top teams in the world. Still, I'm glad there IS interest in Asia and people need to remember that the NHL started small back in the day too.
That being said, your analysis about the difference in how North American players are raised and how Korean kids are raised to study/play sports is spot on. In the Korean system, raising hockey pros will require sacrifice to studying time.
I, for one, hope to see it expand to make the tournaments bigger and better.
I think its interesting to see the mix of sports - hockey might not be popular in Korea but judo has a pretty big following.
Korea actually won a gold and two silver medals in judo at Bejing. Shouldn't be too surprising, given that they are 3rd overall in medals won for Judo since its introduction to the games.
Of course, there is plenty of room in the weight categories for more Korean medals (which might also acount for the investment in boxing and wrestling - both sports in which Korea has had some olympic success).
That comment about soccer, the K-League and national team is all wrong, IMO. Any countries national team is way more exciting (when the best team is fielded) than any club team. It's all the qualifying and building up to World Cup.
Compare MLB to the WBC. It's the total opposite. People view winning the World Series as much more important that the WBC. Who cares what team won K-League? Who won World Cup is what matters.
Hey a picture of Jim Paek. Cool, before he played for the Penguins, he played for the Muskegon Lumberjacks, who were rivals of my hometown's team the Kalamazoo Wings.
Hockey is indeed very expensive and it takes a lot of time for training, but Korea has a few advantages in hockey that players in North America don't have, and that is that Korea is a small country.
I remember the kids who played hockey on teams when I was younger always talking about how they had to go to hockey tournaments that were as far flung as Detroit or Chicago or Indianapolis. This meant that the're individual club would have to drive at least two hours just to play a game. Korea has an advantage in that respect.
On another note, I think that it is a bit unfair to say that Koreans aren't interested in sports. Soccer was listed as a sport that Koreans weren't intersted in. That is a rather laughable statement because Korean people play soccer all the time in pick up games. Give a kid a basket ball, and he'll try to kick it around. Oftentimes people from other countries living in Jinju get together to play soccer on Sundays, half of the other players there are usually Korean.
Also let's not pretend that government investment in high medal games is something new. China did it during the summer olympics with things like rowing.
The other sports on your list are interesting too, and the bureaucrat leading this programme probably isn't even aware of the countries that dominate those sports or the time it takes to nurture world-class athletes. Weightlifting is dominated by Balkan countries and has been so for years, gymnastics by ex-Soviet bloc, China and USA. That doesn't mean Korea can't be successful. It means it will take a long time before any results will be seen but in the Korean political climate there is no room for any programmes that need more than 5 years since the next president could easily cancel them.
And where would kids find the time to do these sports anyway?
I'd like to say hockey in Canada crosses socio-economic lines and hockey in Korea is still very much a sport for rich kids but then when I look what it takes to get to the NHL, you have to be in the right upper class neighborhoods to get into the high profile minor league teams.
Equipment costs/ice time are not inconsiderable although within reach of most families in Canada. But I think in Korea it's pretty huge.
Anyway, I think it will be a long, long time before Koreans can raise generations of hockey kids. Like soccer, they raise great individual players but they can't field a credible world cup team because there's not a domestic league system to match Europe or South America.
The Russians had a policy not to enter an olympic sport until they had a credible chance of getting a medal.
I still don't understand why there aren't more Korean cyclists. There are already plenty of guys out on the street who could ride on European continental teams with just a little extra training.
With a serious push of funds, I think you could have some serious riders in not a lot of time.
In particular, I think Koreans could do great in track cycling. The Japanese, and strangely, the Malayasians do well at the international level as well as Olympic. Also, you ride in tight oval-shaped laps, just like short track so it's almost gauranteed to be a hit.
About nine years ago or so, I watched a Korea vs Australia hockey game...for less than a period!
Damn it was bloody boring.
Yeah, in Canada, hockey is expensive. It's crazy.
That's why I did Judo and Karate for seven years. Even playing rec was too expensive in the long run.
I had been under the impression that Koreans are interested in sports as well.
The Canadian hockey scene is so big that there are four official languages for live broadcast: English, French, Chinese, and Punjabi. Interesting note: the Sikh population of Canada is the biggest immigrant patron of hockey.
Chances are that this article refers to investment into field hockey. Near Jecheon in Chunhcheongbuk-do there is a large international field hockey complex that I would frequently see signs for but never actually visit myself. (Apparently this complex has the only two internationally accredited field hockey fields in Korea.)
And piggy-backing on Foreigner's comments, most of these "unpopular sports" are sports that South Korea already has an international presence in and won Olympic medals (For example, judo, shooting, weight lifting, etc.) Only a few (like skiing, fencing, and yachting) are new areas of investment. Still, I won't be surprised to see a Korean win a canoeing medal by 2016.
Didn't Jim Paek actually win a cup with the Penguins and Mario? His hockey shop in Kangnam is pretty good, too!
Very interesting post, Brian. Fascinating observations as to how the Korean student's lifestyle conflicts with the development of a true "sports culture" in Korea, as one sees with hockey in North America, soccer/football in South America, etc. It will be interesting to see if that changes in Korea over the next few decades.
What is this initiative going to actually DO in order increase the popularity of these and other sports? Cancel hogwans and let kids play on teams? Cancel hogwans and encourage families to spend time at parks together? Plant grassy fields in parks where there is now dirt fields?
I don't want to be a nay-sayer but I think there is more to fostering athletic interest than $2 million bucks and a poster campaign akin to "walk on the right."
The Korean government would be really pressed to change the mindset of the average parent to allow their kids to do sports other than martial arts. In some cases the parents send their kids to those gyms more as a babysitting service than to develop coordination. And most kids quit after a few years. How many adults continue to practice martial arts in later years? Chances are they might do dae han gumdo(with the armor and stuff), but even that can be expensive (armor) and with the amount of work to be expected at Korean companies, where will they have the time?
The kids have a full time career starting at 1st grade it seems by going to school and then the countless hagwons in the afternoon and evenings. Time management wise they would be hard pressed to sacrifice any amount of time. A hagwon schedule would have to be sacrificed and how often do parents allow anything to interfere with hagwon time?
The only ones who could do such sports are the ones from well to do families since daddy is the owner of the company and little Kim will get it in the future no matter what happens. They could afford it, money and time wise while every one else has their books in front of their faces most of the time.
In regards to bikes, there are a lot of bikes out there, but most of the people are adults. And those bikes are expensive. I have never seen so many cinelle's, colnagos, pinarellos, treks, before in one city. How often do people ride them? In order to be good in bikes, you go out 12 months of the year weather permitting, otherwise you have a trainer at home(addition to the rear wheel to make it stationary). Or another sport like swimming to stay in shape. Those people in Europe will spend every month training like that. How in Korea would it be possible for a high school kid to do that? That's where a lot of kids either make a decision to stay with it and train, or give it up. The Korean government has its heart in the right place, but the parents are more concerned with money and time for education.
In order to promote those sports, the government would have to provide facilities and organizations to promote those activities from the elementary school age and up. How many kids who watch the Olympics become dazzled by a certain sport and then try it? Some fail. Some make it a hobby. Some who are lucky enough might make it a career. But the decisive factor rests with the parents. Would they spend 1 million one a for 5 months for English class or a bike and gear so the kid could go out and ride during the time?
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