Serious issues in Korean sports have emerged due as a result of school and sexual violence acted out by the sports players revealed by their victims. Piles of related cases have been reported, including ‘Twins’ violent behavior’ in Korean woman volleyball and prominent baseball players’ school violence. Moreover, the majority of the industry tells that reported cases are just the tip of an iceberg. Then, in this chaos of Korean sports, why are the people in the sports world particularly suffering from those serious problems? Let’s talk about causes and solutions through some associated cases.

First, players' and coaches’ personal attitudes result in meaningless violence. Relationship in Korean sports is not horizontal but vertical compared with other countries, such as the U.S. So, it is hard for low-status players to talk or behave freely. Sportsmen who adapt to this vertical relationship have abused it to insult or commit violence. ‘Twins’ violent behavior’ which is previously mentioned is also the same. Their mom was ex-national volleyball player, So Lee jae-young and da-young have become the highest- status players, who were not intervened even by any coaches. It consequently made them think and act like queens. Resistance, it was hardly imaginable.

Next, there are lots of structural causes Korean sports have in themselves. According to an knue interviewee who was an elite youth soccer player, “These days the elite sports hold too many tournaments so they nearly focus on Immediate results, rather than students’ growth”. It gives players too much burden to get good results with no exceptions and makes coaches to punish them violently. In this context, currently there’s an opinion that insists ‘National Youth Sports Competition’ (소년체전) be abolished. Those tournament rankings have a huge influence on University entrance exams. So players are eager to participate at all costs, putting up with wrongfulness which they receive. And that eventually get them seriously injured.

And School sports are too much limited in ‘Elite sports’(Opposite concept is “Club sports” well-known as private sports-academy). Elite players must work out during school time unlike club players. So it’s hard for them to learn with variety. Players with narrow-minded education hardly resist but adjust to abnormal structure of Korean sports, committing violence.

Finally, the competition system in sports acts as a main cause. Every team sport unfortunately divide into two groups, the starting and substitutions. Some senior players take violent actions to blow out their anger if junior is included in starting. It’s not only about team players. In personal and record sports like swimming or speed skating, some seniors push juniors to make their records worse than them.

Then, what would be the solutions for Korean sports’ violence? Before that, it’s crucial to define which one must be solved. In past, like the 1990s to 2000s, team-violence also known as ‘ 얼차려’, and physical punishment were common. So, it seems hard to make legal punishment to players and coaches who were ‘socially’ violent. However, definitely there has been excessive immoderate violence, still now, and it must get rigidly punished.

To deal with those structural causes, the number of tournaments should be decreased.

Competitions in youth sports should be ‘means’ for growth as a better player, not ‘ends’ so that they make a social atmosphere to concentrate on long-term enhancement. Moreover, the right to get educated must be guaranteed for youth players. In the U.S.A, NCAA established a system about 10 years ago that college players who don’t pass a credit standard can’t play. Also, Korea brought in similar one in 2017.

Likewise, not only college players, but youth must also get some management as mandatory.

At last, in order to cope with some private causes, players’ personal effort is necessary. Unlike the old one, this is a society with various networks developing minute by minute. So it isn’t difficult for players to communicate with the other world. In other words, they should be aware of the possibility of changing abnormal structures to desirable one. Rather than using vertical relationships to justify violence, they must do their best to change with open mind.