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 The limited social safety net for athletes who get seriously
injured, or who fail to make the grade, is a concern for many
sportsmen and women in South Korea, a country which arrived on the
global stage with the hosting of the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
Park Chung-hee's regime of the 1960s saw sport as an avenue to raise
Korea's global profile and gain legitimacy at home, and poured huge
amounts of money into creating an elite athlete program as well as
bidding to host international competitions.
While the program boosted Korea as a sporting power and produced
world-class athletes, it also has a darker side.
Athletes at schools and universities rarely excel academically and
are encouraged to focus all their efforts on joining the sporting
elite.
Those who fail to win international titles or make national teams
have little to fall back on when their sporting careers end, and
they can expect little help from the government, according to
support groups.
South Korean lawmaker Elisa Lee recognized the need to provide
better support for athletes and introduced a bill that would provide
pensions to national team members who sustain serious injuries,
designating them 'people of national merit'.
The proposal was passed into law in January 2014 but has taken
almost two years to finalize guidelines and standards.
The Sports Ministry only began accepting applications on Oct. 1. A
ministry official said it expected four applications this month.
"This law is symbolic in that it shows the country is protecting its
national team athletes," Lee told Reuters. "But if the country
really wants to help its sports people, it needs to reform the
sports welfare system, this is the bottom line.”
Lee, a former table tennis world champion, said it was unlikely the
law would be extended to include non-national team members.
"I wish the country would come up with ways to help sports people
when they retire as well as athletes who have lost their way in
life," she said.
"It's not a great amount of money we're asking for."
MADE INTO MACHINES
Former national volleyball player Chang Yoon-chang said athletes
have a hard time getting jobs and adjusting to society when their
careers end because they are "made into machines" through years of
training and competition.
Chang, president of the Korean Association of National Team Members,
which aims to protect the rights of the local sports community, said
very few athletes reach the pinnacle of their sport and most are
unprepared for what comes next.
"Ninety-nine percent of athletes disappear before they bloom," Chang
told Reuters. "Only one Kim Yu-na comes out of 1,000 figure skaters.
Same with soccer, one Park Ji-sung out of thousands of soccer
players.
“It takes a tremendous amount of hard work to win a medal, but the
government has a tendency to look down on these elite sports people.
The treatment athletes receive after their retirement is
unbelievably bad."
Kim Yang-rea, who led research into the status of 3,000 retired
athletes for the Korea Institute of Sport Science, said close to a
third end up unemployed.
The sports industry is too small to employ all of Korea's former
athletes, Kim said, and they often struggle to adapt to normal life
not governed by training and competition.
Serious injuries further limit their opportunities.
“There needs to be a system that can support athletes by managing
their careers and improving their general job skills," Kim said.
"Since they are not capable of working right after retirement, (the
government) should give them money or at least help them attain the
skills needed for other careers.”
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'IT COULD HAVE BEEN ME'
Kim the weightlifter was one of those athletes who poured his heart
and soul into sport.
He won a gold medal at the 1990 Asian Games, as well as silver and
bronze medals at the World Championships a year later, and was
viewed as a potential Olympian until a motorcycle accident in 1996
left him paralyzed from the waist down.
Unable to find a job and struggling to survive on a pension of some
$500 a month awarded to medalists from international competitions,
Kim's body was discovered in his flat by a neighbor in June.
The cause of death was not disclosed but media reports said he had
suffered various illnesses.
Kim's death shook the sports community to its core in South Korea,
where leading sports figures earn huge endorsement deals and Olympic
champions receive lucrative bonuses and lifetime pensions.
Kim So-young, a former gymnast who was paralyzed from the neck down
after an accident on the asymmetric bars, said the weightlifter's
death should be a wake-up call.
"It could've been any athlete's story, including mine," said Kim,
who now works for the Korea Spinal Cord Injury Association.
"There is nothing a disabled athlete can do. For us, sport was
everything."
One former athlete, paralyzed from the waist down two years ago
while training, told Reuters it was impossible to combine athletics
at the highest level with traditional schooling.
"It's a common saying (in South Korea) that 'athletes are dumb.'
This is wrong," said the athlete, who declined to provide his name
due to an ongoing lawsuit.
"Athletes are very clever but in a way we are ignorant because we
don’t learn the knowledge taught at school."
Almost every waking minute was dedicated to sport at school, he
said, with training starting at six in the morning and continuing
after school until 10 p.m.
"If I went to school, it was really hard to stay awake. I didn’t
really participate in class, even in the really basic ones," he
added.
"You can ask all the athletes out there, and I guarantee they all
sleep in class. Teachers used to say that even if we sleep
throughout the entire class, if we attend we’re doing a good job."
Former gymnast Kim knew the late weightlifter when he was competing
and remembers him as outgoing and magnanimous, always surrounded
with lots of friends.
Cho Hong-joong, one of the chief inspectors who recovered the body,
said Kim had no family when he died. His funeral was organized by a
local sports committee and held at Kangwon National University
Hospital.
He was 46.
(Writing by Peter Rutherford; Editing by Ian Ransom)
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