[Jeong Gyu-young's Gongseonunhak⑨] Operation of National Team Athletes' Village, Is It the Government's Responsibility?

Editor's NoteAsia Economy is serializing expert contributions to suggest directions necessary for improving the structural problems of sports in the Republic of Korea and achieving harmony among professional sports, recreational sports, and school sports. Jung Kyu-young, president of the nonprofit organization "Studying Athletes, Exercising Students (Gongseon Unhak)," offers his proposals. President Jung, who studied at Stanford Graduate School and served as the captain of the university's fencing team, established the nonprofit in 2015 to introduce the American school sports system he observed there into Korea, promoting awareness and scholarship programs. He points out the limitations of the domestic student-athlete admission system, school sports management, sports club development, and sports organization operations, comparing overseas cases and suggesting directions for progress.

Jung Kyu-young, President of the Studying Athletes Exercising Students Association.
Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

If physical education is recognized as an important subject in education, reflected in university admissions, and local sports clubs are revitalized so that student athletes can grow into national representatives, what should a national training center befitting this look like?

So far, it is no exaggeration to say that our national training centers have existed only for a very small number of elite athletes. They have been training centers aimed at winning Olympic medals rather than promoting recreational sports. Of course, this is not to belittle the sweat and sacrifices of countless athletes and coaches for elite sports and Olympic medals.

Everyone knows how effective Olympic medals through elite sports have been in enhancing the country's international status and competitiveness during the process of becoming an advanced nation. However, now sports should not exist solely for Olympic medals but should be established as an important subject in education, just like Korean, English, and mathematics, and national training centers should also change in a direction suitable for recreational sports.

This year, the operating budget for national training centers is about 120 billion KRW. The government calls national representatives to a place run by the country called the national training center and spends over 120 billion KRW annually to train them. We must recognize that this itself is the core factor hindering the establishment of recreational sports in Korea.

As explained several times before, the direction Korean sports should aim for is for physical education to be recognized as an important educational subject, expanding the base of recreational sports centered on studying student-athletes, and revitalizing local sports clubs. Just as the government does not spend huge budgets to create English academies in local areas for students to study, if physical education is recognized as education and established in schools, sports clubs can naturally be nurtured according to market economic principles.

Jincheon National Team Athletes' Village
[Image source=Yonhap News]

Operating National Training Centers + Allocating Budgets for Recreational Sports Is Like 'Pouring Water into a Leaky Jar'
Just as students are not gathered to study math competitions, local sports clubs should be entrusted to market principles

Student athletes produced by sports clubs in local areas cannot go to government-run national training centers. To enter the training center, students must stop attending school classes. Alternatively, they must enter sports-specialized universities, be athletes who do not have to study, or not be students. Also, if national representatives train only at government-run training centers, local sports clubs cannot be successfully operated. It is regrettable that the government operates national training centers every year only for elite athletes while allocating and using a separate budget of about 130 billion KRW for fostering recreational sports, which is like 'pouring water into a leaky jar.'

The places where national representatives are produced and trained should be local sports clubs, which are the bases of recreational sports. Also, it is appropriate that coaches of local sports clubs that produce many national representatives naturally work as national team coaches. National training centers should only serve the role of preparing national representatives for competitions and conducting training camps shortly before the Olympics. Except for that period, they should be thoroughly opened and operated by selecting private management companies in a way that helps expand the base of recreational sports. Running vacation education programs to help youth aspiring to be national representatives develop habits of balancing study and sports is also one method.

Every year, many personnel visit foreign countries with government budgets to investigate and research the status of recreational sports in advanced countries. Yet, I want to ask what changes this has brought to Korean sports so far. Numerous overseas students have already experienced, directly or indirectly, the exemplary student-athlete-centered recreational sports and national representative management systems operated abroad. Just by consulting them and obtaining information, ways to naturally integrate recreational and elite sports could have been derived and sufficiently implemented.

Let's reconsider. Does the government spend billions of won to gather students participating in math competitions in a specific place for intensive study? Does it give math study allowances to students participating in international math competitions? Does it support budgets to create and operate math academies in local areas? Does it create and operate separate places every year to teach students participating in the International Mathematical Olympiad? No. Students study voluntarily, and local academies operate voluntarily. There is an abundance of audiovisual materials for self-study. Establishing the premise that sports are education is necessary to approach and solve accumulated problems correctly. National budgets used in ways contrary to market economic principles can never be effective. (To be continued)

Jung Kyu-young, President of the nonprofit Studying Athletes, Exercising Students and CEO of Lorus Enterprise

☞References

[Jung Kyu-young’s Gongseon Unhak①] 'The Essence of Physical Education Is Education'... This Comes First

[Jung Kyu-young’s Gongseon Unhak②] Stanford, Yale, Harvard... Secrets of American Elite University Sports (Part 1)

[Jung Kyu-young’s Gongseon Unhak③] Instilling the 'Champion Mindset'... Secrets of American Elite University Sports (Part 2)

[Jung Kyu-young’s Gongseon Unhak④] Thanks to Sports... A Student Who Entered an American Elite University, Was Invited to the White House, and Got a Job in Finance

[Jung Kyu-young’s Gongseon Unhak⑤] To Produce Students Who Excel in Sports, Art, and Music... "Universities Should Have the Right to Select Students"

[Jung Kyu-young’s Gongseon Unhak⑥] Sports Clubs Are Not the Government’s Job... They Should Be Entrusted to the Market

[Jung Kyu-young’s Gongseon Unhak⑦] The Desirable Role of Member Sports Organizations under the Korea Sports Council (Part 1)

[Jung Kyu-young’s Gongseon Unhak⑧] The Desirable Role of Member Sports Organizations under the Korea Sports Council (Part 2)