Yongchul Chung (Sogang University), YoungiI Na (Seoul National University)
Abstract: Korea has hosted three major international sporting events: Summer Olympic Game in 1988, FIFA World Cup in 2002, the IAAF Track & Field World Championships in 2009 and will host 4th major sporting event, PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games in 2018. Indeed, Korea is one of the strongest countries in sports. In 2012 London Olympic Games, Korea ranked 5th in the world with 13 gold, 8 silver, and 7 bronze medals. Korean women’s archery team won 8 consecutive gold medals in the summer Olympic Games. Every glory comes with guts and guerimja (i.e., shadow) however. There are numerous failure stories and disheartened defeats right beneath the shining victories and the aim of this paper is to shed lights on those guerimjas in Korean sports. We believe this process of uncovering will eventually contribute to the healthy development of sporting culture. In an effort to uncover those unjust sport practices in Korea, we will focus on three major issues: (a) the major violations of human rights among the elite athletes including violence toward student-athletes; (b) Korean grass root civic movement against those oppressions in sport; and (c) the way of civic solidarity to bring about a healthy sporting culture – slowly but surely. Finally, we content that this civic solidarity can go beyond our borders and propose an international civic networking movement to end those malpractices and unjust violations in sports, namely Sport Without Borders.
