Routledge Research in Sport Culture and Society, no. 87. London; New York: Routledge, 2018. ix, 265 pp. (Tables, graphs.) US$150.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-138-71509-7.
This edited volume is one of a handful of pioneering works addressing sport as a means of understanding contemporary South Korean society, culture, and history. Both as a postcolonial nation and as a divided state after World War II, South Korea has strived to construct its nationalism both on the domestic front as well as by proclaiming its independence and state-building to the world. South Korea has also experienced dramatic economic development under its authoritarian regimes and faced economic vicissitudes under globalization. Through these transformations, sport has been the focus of heavy investment by governments, markets, and even the public. Despite its importance, however, sport has continued to be one of the most significantly absent topics in discussions of modern Korea. This edited volume succeeds in tackling an important subject by collecting fifteen essays that deal with a wide range of sport-related topics in the context of South Korea.
The essays work around two core themes: one is the relation of sport to history and culture, and the other is the business and policies of sport. Such an approach is both intriguing and challenging, not only because of the diversity of topics and disciplines the book covers, but also because of the incongruence of methods, data, and perspectives among its chapters. Such inherent strengths and weaknesses of the book are a clear reflection of the editors’ intentions in regards to this project: in their introduction, the editors specify their goal of planting a “seed for scholars in the relevant areas to continue to embellish and elaborate the role of sport in their respective area of studies” (1).
In the book’s first part, the chapters trace the significance of sport in Korean history, nation-building, diplomacy, journalism, philosophy, and performance, as well as in inter-Korean relations, covering comprehensive topics from a qualitative approach. Dae Hee Kwak and Joon-ho Kang’s chapter provides historical background and discusses the importance of sport in Korea, offering an overview for readers not familiar with the topic. The chapters authored by Seok Lee, Inkyu Kang, and Jung Woo Lee delve, respectively, into colonial history, fans at the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup, and South and North Korean relations at the 2002 Busan Asian Games. Seok Lee discusses sports rivalry on the Korean Peninsula under Japanese imperial occupation, Kang illuminates the changing national identities of Korean fans with Korea co-hosting the World Cup with Japan, and Jung Woo Lee addresses the role of sports in inter-Korean relations, particularly for reconciliation and reunification. These chapters reveal the historicity, centrality, as well as the multi-dimensionality of Korean nationalism. Guy Podoler, Sang Keon Yoo, Song-Chong Lee, and Chuyun Oh’s chapters contribute to expanding discussions of sports in Korea into the areas of diplomacy, journalism, as well as religious and performance studies. These chapters fill the gap in the existing field of sports studies and simultaneously provide the possibility of expanding sports studies into much more diverse perspectives and disciplines.
The book’s second part deals with the development of the business of sport and related policies in South Korea, where chapters approach sport using quantitative methods and from a market-driven perspective. The chapter by Hayley Jang and Young Hoon Lee discusses cultural changes in fan behaviour in order to discover the habitual attendance patterns of fans of the Korean professional baseball league. In regard to Korean sports fan patterns, Stefan Szymanski and Jai Ku Sun show that Korean fans rarely change their favourite teams and leagues between baseball and soccer due to their loyalty to a given team in a given sport. The chapters of Sungho Cho, Dal-Young Chang, and Rodney Fort examine the structural and organizational dimension of Korean baseball. Cho and Chang explicate sports law from a comparative approach between the US and South Korea, highlighting the ineffectiveness of the Korean Fair Trade Commission. Fort suggests reorganization alternatives for Korean baseball based on its history, structure, and current setting. By deploying the idea of corporal social responsibility, Jaedeock Lee and Robert P. Fleischman’s chapter explores new possible corporate strategies for Korean professional sports teams and leagues. Yongjae Kim approaches a mega sporting event in relation to the national brand of the host country: his case examines Americans’ perceptions of South Korea through the 2001 World Track and Field event. The final chapter, by Yong Jae Ko, Il Rang Lee, Yong-Kyu Chang, and Jin-Bang Yang, explores the education and business of Taekwondo, a Korean traditional martial art.
Although this book presents very diverse topics and aspects of sport in Korea, it raises some questions and issues. One of them is a lack of theoretical engagement with sport studies. This book’s lack of theoretical foregrounding means it does not efficiently weave the collected essays into a whole or effectively situate these various studies of sport in the academic realm of Korean studies or area studies. Also, some noticeable differences in length, depth, and styles of each of the chapters could have been better remedied. Despite these minor shortcomings, Sport in Korea is a book that speaks to the necessity of facilitating conversations among scholars of various disciplines. Furthermore, the publication of this book is both opportune and important given the increasing relevance of South Korea and East Asia in the field of mega-sporting events, as well as the significant role of sport in the changing geopolitics of the region. As the world witnessed with the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, sports can be a game changer not only in inter-Korean relations but also in the diplomacy of the Asia-Pacific region. As the two next Olympics will take place in the region (Tokyo 2020 and Beijing-Zhangjiakou 2022), these collected essays provide valuable insights and useful reference points for thinking about the significance of sport in Korea, East Asia, and the world.
Younghan Cho
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea