The 2015 statistics show that amateur baseball teams in Korea are based on the physical education of private institutes such as 202 Little Baseball teams, 100 elementary school teams, 103 middle school teams, 67 high school teams, and 31 university teams. Based on this, it is growing into a great performance in world baseball and enthusiastic sports of the Korean people. In addition, Korean players have entered various positions in the U.S. Major League and now play in the World Series and League Championships.
However, Korea has almost the same system as Asian countries such as Japan and Taiwan, with traditional HAGWON (Hagwon: a Korean word meaning private education institute) sports at the center. In Korea, professional athletes run the academy and club system in the elite sports system and systematically guide the expertise of youth and society through professional academies as well as institutionalized establishments. Above all, it is a desirable change for them to be nurtured into an elite academy system and to abandon such familiarity and expand their own know-how and expertise to individual instruction. The academy has moved away from elite baseball and is coaching with more freedom and expertise, and is expanding its base to a mostly weekend baseball league style.
But there is also a tendency to open academies or centers easily. It is still in the early stages of regulation and discipline, so it is not easy to determine the professionalism or responsibility of an instructor. At least, based on his long experience in professional life or college baseball, he/she needs minimum regulations, discipline, and regulation of places and facilities in order to secure safety. But it must be a great Korean baseball. Even though the total baseball population is not large, the performance of the world tournament and the U.S. Major League Baseball encourages professional leaders to expand and change the base of Korean amateur baseball based on policies and guidelines on social and sports.
Kil-sung Choi
Asia Journal
(Los Angeles Times Advertising Supplement)
