EWC: Last time we chatted you were getting ready to start the Olympics coverage. One month after, what Korea-related image or news event still stands out in your mind?

Jee-ho: It’s baseball. Hands down. There are two sporting moments that ever made me cry. One is Canada’s winning hockey gold medal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and the other is Korea winning the baseball gold in Beijing.

I was actually at the office, sitting in front of the television and watching it with some colleagues. Going from one out and bases loaded (meaning, obviously, a base hit could end the game for Cuba) to a game-ending double play happened so quickly that it didn’t really settle in for me for some minutes.

But because I was at the office, watching it on TV with some colleagues and working on a really tight deadline the excitement wasn’t as great as it would have been if I were at a bar. I had to write the darn story (in Korean) so I had to come down fast.

For days afterwards, Korean cable stations showed replays of the final, sometimes every one of the nine games in a package. And they still sent chills. I had told whoever would listen that I would trade one baseball gold for every other gold Korea would win at Beijing. I stand by that.

As an aside, a close second would be Jin Jong-oh winning gold in shooting. This guy settled for silver in Athens because he lost his lead in the finals due to a mechanical glitch. He spent four years answering questions about that. Now he is a gold medalist. My favorite feel-good story.

EWC: Who is your favorite Korean sportswriter? Why?

Jee-ho: I will be very biased here. My favorite is Hur Jin-seok of the JoongAng Sunday (the Korean one). Okay, he’s my sports editor. He’s been a sports writer since 1989, mostly covering basketball. He is a Korean sports journalism legend in his own right—about as close to Jack McCallum (From Sports Illustrated) in Korea as you will find, only younger—and there are several reasons why I admire him so much.

First, he is not your prototypical, aggressive, cussing, ink-stained Korean sports writer. I think he is one sports writer that has shown me that you don’t always have to be bad-assed to your sources or look down on them to become a fine sports journalist (that’s sort of a Korean way in journalism as a whole). He is a gentleman with a dry sense of humor and has other interests beyond sports.

Two, he has, to quote another sports writer’s assessment of him, “the depth of an editor at a sports magazine, and the wide perspective of a sports editor at a major daily.” Sometimes, an editor who has spent his entire career at a sports daily may not have the perspective necessary to develop certain stories; by the same token, someone who’s been at a daily may not have the depth of a sports paper veteran. I think Hur is someone who has the best of the both worlds.

And because he was a literature major at college, Hur has literary sensibilities that other Korean sports writers I’ve read don’t have. His feature writing can be best compared to that of Gary Smith or Charles P. Pierce: it’s stylish (some may say excessively so) and flows well. Hur’s published a couple of books of poetry, too—how many sports writers can say that?

EWC: As of now how do you think the KBO playoffs will unfold?

Jee-ho:think the Lotte Giants are a very intriguing bunch. Sure, they have been up and down and have really struggled since clinching the playoff berth. But, as I once wrote in my column, would you really want to play in Sajik with 30,000 fans wearing orange plastic bags on their hands, drumming rolled up newspapers against their hands, and chanting “Ga-r-ci-a” in four syllables?

In a short series, I think home crowds would really come into play. And believe me, Busan fans can be rather tough on out-of-town fans cheering on the other team. I even heard some Doosan fans left Sajik in tears, fearful for their well-being, during the last weekend’s three-game set. The Giants must feed off that one way or the other.

On paper, the Giants’ pitching is kind of suspect and you know what they say about pitching and defense in the playoffs. The SK Wyverns are still the team to beat. I can see Kim Gwang-hyun winning the MVP. The Wyverns will beat the Giants in six games and Kim will pitch in five of them, starting in three and pitching in relief in the other two. He will throw two complete games and pitch 35 innings in the Korean Series—never to be heard from again (just kidding).

I am not sure if the Doosan Bears have what it takes this year. But if Kim Hyun-soo keeps hitting the way he has all season—he’s something else, isn’t he?—you never know.

But right now, I’d take SK over Lotte in six games.

EWC: Do KBO teams set up buffet tables for players and coaches after games?

Jee-ho:Absolutely. But it’s not quite the healthy, chicken-pasta-steak variety of the major league baseball. Mostly (for both before and after games), the clubhouse spread includes some udon noodles, gimbap (rolls), hardboiled eggs and some fruits. Post-game spread might differ from team to team, but some teams serve fried chicken and snacks, like tteokbokki.

tteokbokki story

One thing that has me puzzled about Korean athletes in general is how little they pay attention to what they eat. While living in Toronto, I would read so much about hockey players and other professional athletes avoiding too much carb (rice!!) and feasting on proteins (pasta and chicken) and generally avoiding red meat in favor of white meat (not so much beef or pork). Here, players eat rice and some even order jjajangmyeon from the local Chinese place.

Diet has gotten better over the recent years, and none other than Julio Franco deserves some credit for it. When he played for Samsung a few years back, he took some Korean guys under his wing and showed them how to take care of their body. Franco, of course, is legendary for his strict regimen and eating all those egg whites.

On an interesting aside: recently, Doosan and Hanwha played an 18-inning game in Jamsil. Doosan clubhouse folks had prepared their usual post-game spread of fried chicken and snacks. The players got so hungry during the extra innings and some snuck into the clubhouse to munch on stuff. By the time the game was over, there was nothing left in the clubhouse.

EWC: The Korean Basketball League is starting next month. What is the biggest storyline going into the season?

Jee-ho:Former Portland Trail Blazer Ha Seung-jin, all of 7-foot-3, is making his KBL debut this season. His KCC Egis are the only team that could start four guys over 6-foot-9. Veteran center/forward Seo Jang-hoon, nicknamed ‘National Treasure,’ has slowed considerably but can still score inside and out. Ha, if he can stay off the trainer’s table, will make a huge impact on the league. There’s simply no one who can guard him one-on-one in this league.

Ha

Ha has all the physical tools and has a shockingly soft pair of hands in the paint for a man his size. Just feed him the darn ball and let him do the rest.

The rookie class is very impressive this year. It features players like Kim Min-soo (SK), Yoon Ho-young (Dongbu) and Gang Byung-hyun (ET Land)—players with power forward body type who can play post-up games and shoot from the perimeter.

I am giddy about young players that are just entering the league or are playing in college. In the past in international play, Korean basketball relied on smallish shooters because we didn’t have anyone physical enough to battle inside. Now we’re seeing bigger and taller guys who have serious game. Who knows, maybe basketball will follow soccer and baseball in shocking the rest of the world someday.

EWC: How does being a sportswriter in Korea play with the families of women you date? Is it looked upon as a stable job with good prospects, or are Korean parents leery of journalists? Where might it rank on a list of preferred future-son-in-law jobs?

Jee-ho:Journalists in general—not just the sports hacks—aren’t close to the top of the list of preferred jobs. The recent outrage—from some quarters anyway—toward the coverage of U.S. beef case by JoongAng, Chosun and Dong-a hasn’t helped our image.

This line of work is regarded as a thankless (not true), low-paying (true) job with odd hours and little time off (somewhat true). Maybe it’s stable, but a journalist is nowhere near doctors, lawyers, bankers or other professionals in terms of parents’ preference. That’s kind of frustrating because journalists are almost as well educated as any of those professionals and are, for the most part, as decent human beings as they are.
You’d be surprised by how many women here would only consider men’s wage, instead of other aspects like their personality and etc. Believe me, I’ve seen girls who are on a mission to marry men with one of the following jobs: medical doctor, lawyer, prosecutor and asset manager.

As for myself, I am dating a girl (a pharmacist) who thinks my job is really cool and she knows next to nothing about sports. She thinks a journalist in general is an interesting job and she isn’t the one to judge a man by how much money he makes. I am a lucky man. I haven’t met families of girls I’ve dated because I never really met anybody that long.

I just wish that people didn’t look at a journalist and immediately start thinking he is a boorish guy who would do anything to get a scoop on others and who has little respect for feelings about people he’s writing about. It couldn’t be further from truth.

You can find the first two editions of Ask a Korean Sportswriter here and here. You can find more of Yoo Jee-ho’s writing for the JoongAng Daily here, here and here.