[Choi Min-gyu's Baseball Prism] The Scene Created by Exchange Rates... Decreased KBO Zainichi Koreans, Increased Japanese League Entries

Early Pro Baseball Aces Jang Myung-bu and Kim Il-yong Among Zainichi Koreans
Higher Salaries Paid Than in Japan to Transfer, Yen Soared After Plaza Accord
Number and Skill of Recruited Players Declined... Only 8 After 1995

[Image source=Yonhap News]

It is an era of high exchange rates. The won-dollar exchange rate reached 1,363 won on the 5th, the highest level since April 21, 2009, right after the global financial crisis. According to data compiled by the Bank of Korea, since 1964, the annual exchange rate has only exceeded 1,300 won once before, during the height of the IMF crisis in 1998.

The exchange rate greatly affects the lives of the people. Professional sports are no exception. Ahead of the 1998 season, right after the IMF crisis, four of the eight professional baseball teams gave up overseas training camps. The teams that finished first to third the following year?Hyundai, LG, and Samsung?all had overseas spring training. This led to an anecdote that before the 1999 season, all teams held spring camps abroad.

If one were to identify the area of professional baseball most affected by the exchange rate, it would be the recruitment of Korean-Japanese players. The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) planned to accept overseas Korean players starting from its fourth season in 1985, after its establishment in 1981. Japan, where professional baseball was thriving and many Korean-Japanese resided, was the main target. However, due to a larger-than-expected skill gap among the six teams in the inaugural 1982 season, the implementation was moved up to 1983. At that time, voices in the Japanese baseball community expressed concern, saying "players are being taken away by Korea."

In the first year, four Korean-Japanese players stepped onto the Korean professional baseball stage. The effect was dramatic. Sammi, which had a winning percentage of 0.188 in the inaugural year, rose to second place in the first half and third place in the second half, emerging as a strong team. Much credit went to Korean-Japanese ace Jang Myung-boo, who won 30 of the team's 52 victories. Jang was a star who had won the Central League winning percentage title in 1980 with Hiroshima. Infielder Lee Young-gu also performed well, ranking sixth in Wins Above Replacement (WAR) within the team.

That year, the Korean Series championship was won by Haitai, which had accepted two Korean-Japanese players: pitcher Joo Dong-sik and catcher Kim Moo-jong. In 1984, Samsung, Lotte, and OB opened their doors to Korean-Japanese players. Samsung pitcher Kim Il-yong won 16 games and played as an ace. Lotte outfielder Hong Moon-jong set a new record with 122 hits.

However, the Korean-Japanese player boom quickly faded. Since 1990, the Korean-Japanese players who played as regulars include Kim Sil, who amassed 511 hits across three teams from 1994 to 2000, and this year’s Doosan player Ahn Kwon-soo. Kim Tae-ryong, Doosan’s general manager who started his front office career as a record keeper for Lotte in the inaugural year, said, "Almost all the players who could come have already come."

Jang Hoon, a special advisor to the KBO commissioner, played a bridging role in the early recruitment of Korean-Japanese players. Jang is a Korean-Japanese superstar who holds the all-time record for most hits in Japanese professional baseball with 3,085 hits. He has great influence in Japanese baseball and is well aware of the circumstances of Korean-Japanese players who prefer to keep their nationality undisclosed. Although the level of Korean professional baseball has steadily risen since its inception, the pool of recruitable Korean-Japanese players has gradually diminished, according to Kim Tae-ryong.

The exchange rate also had a considerable impact. Kim Il-yong, who played under the name ‘Niiura Hisao’ in Japan, was a left-handed ace for the prestigious Yomiuri Giants. He won the ERA and save titles consecutively in 1977 and 1978. Lee Kun-hee, then owner of Samsung, made great efforts to recruit him using his Japanese connections. In 1983, Kim’s annual salary at Yomiuri was 15.6 million yen. Samsung paid Yomiuri a transfer fee of 10 million yen and signed Kim to a three-year contract with a signing bonus of 20 million yen and an annual salary of 25 million yen, which was higher than what he earned in Japan.

However, a historic event occurred on September 22, 1985, during the contract period. The finance ministers of the Group of Five countries agreed at the Plaza Hotel in New York to devalue the dollar. This is known as the ‘Plaza Accord.’ Afterward, the yen’s value surged. In 1985, 100 yen was equivalent to 368.7 won. The following year, it rose to 526.3 won, a 42.7% increase. Kim’s salary at Samsung remained the same in yen for three years, but in won, it was 84.89 million won in 1984, 92.18 million won in 1985, and 131.57 million won in 1986. Due to the exchange rate effect, his salary in the final year was 55.0% higher than in the first year.

Of course, this was not a huge amount for professional baseball team owners. The parent companies of Korean professional baseball are much larger than those in Japanese professional baseball, which mainly focus on consumer goods. However, it was clear that the yen’s appreciation after the Plaza Accord weakened the motivation of Korean-Japanese players to play in Korea. Korean-Japanese players also face the risk of exposing their bloodline heritage the moment they join Korean professional baseball.

Conversely, the motivation to challenge Japanese professional baseball increased. After the Plaza Accord, Japan enjoyed a ‘bubble economy’ boom. Professional baseball player salaries also soared. In 1980, the highest salary was 81.7 million yen, earned by ‘Home Run King’ Oh Sadaharu in his final season. No player surpassed Oh’s retirement season salary record until 1984. In 1985, Yamamoto Koji surpassed it with 85 million yen. In 1987, Ochiai Hiromitsu became the first ‘100 million yen player’ (130 million yen). He subsequently broke the 200 million yen barrier in 1991 and the 300 million yen barrier in 1992. The average salary of all players also rose sharply: 6.02 million yen in 1980, 9.78 million yen in 1985, 15.27 million yen in 1990, and 26.95 million yen in 1995, increasing by 62.5%, 56.1%, and 76.5% every five years, respectively.

The average salary in Korean professional baseball was 12.15 million won (4.13 million yen) in the inaugural year, 16.56 million won (4.24 million yen) in 1985, 14.47 million won (2.94 million yen) in 1990, and 24.42 million won (2.96 million yen) in 1995. Although it increased in won terms, compared to the average salary in Japanese professional baseball, it dropped significantly from 43.4% in 1985 to 19.3% in 1990 and 11.0% in 1995.

Recruitment of Korean-Japanese players continued annually until 1994, even after the Plaza Accord. Twenty-two players joined between 1983 and 1988, but only nine joined in the following six years. Their careers and skills declined significantly in inverse proportion to the yen’s appreciation. The last Japanese professional baseball titleholder like Kim Il-yong and Jang Myung-boo to be recruited was Kim Ki-tae, a 34-year-old veteran signed by the newly established Cheongbo team in 1986.

Ahn Kwon-soo, who joined Doosan in 2020, graduated from Waseda University and went through the Japanese independent league rather than NPB. He is the eighth Korean-Japanese player to appear in 28 years since 1995. During this period, Korea experienced the IMF crisis, and the exchange rate of ‘100 yen = 1,000 won’ became almost common knowledge in the foreign exchange market.

Director of the Korean Baseball Society