Sports minister who knows little about hockey
17 January, 2018
He dismissed the public's worries that South Korean hockey players will suffer if a unified women's hockey team with North Korea is formed.
"In ice hockey, players are replaced every two minutes (because hockey is a physically demanding sport)," he said regarding the worries that the unified women's ice hockey team would deal a blow to South Korean players who have sweated for many years for the Olympics. "So, all players are going to get an opportunity to play during the Olympic Games."
His remarks came amid the worsening public opinion about the Moon Jae-in government's plan to field a unified women's hockey team for the Olympics to send a message to the world that sport unites divided nations.
Technically, the poet-turned-sports minister may be right.
But his remarks indicate he doesn't fully grasp how team sports work. In a team sport, teamwork is more important than any other element for winning.
South Korean football hero Son Heung-min scored 21 goals in the English Premier League last season. He broke South Korean football legend Cha Bum-kun's record of 18 goals by a Korean in one season in European football which had stood for almost three decades.
But Son's goal records in the national team for the World Cup qualifiers were very different. He had not scored a goal for 336 days until September last year since joining the national team.
Football fans know why there is such a gap in Son's performances in the national team and the Premier League. Like ice hockey, football is a team sport. His goal tallies in the Premier League reflect he is a great team player because he needs great teammates who can assist him to score goals. On the national team, Son's teammates are not as strong as his Tottenham Hotspur teammates.
Sports Minister Do is one of the key politicians who pushed for the joint women's ice hockey team. He initially put forth the idea last June and said sports diplomacy would ease tension triggered by North Korea. His proposal met a slew of criticism. A joint team would inevitably limit South Korean players' opportunities to compete in the Olympics.
Do has been under fire since he tried to keep the proposal alive earlier this year after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un remarked positively about sending a North Korean delegation to PyeongChang.
The South Korean team has less than a month to face off against Switzerland as their first game during the Olympics. Integrating North Korean players into the team is not as easy as it sounds.
Sarah Murray, the head coach of the women's ice hockey team, said last year cultural difference was one of the barriers she had to overcome to make the team stronger in her early days.
She said she had a list of things she intended to change to transform the national team into a strong one by instilling a competitive North American hockey culture. The women's hockey team received the spotlight last year when it was promoted to the upper-tier division after winning the international championship Division II Group A competition. This came after the Canadian coach made strenuous efforts to upgrade the South Korean national team.
There certainly would be cultural differences between South and North Korean hockey players as they were trained under very different circumstances. If a unified team is formed weeks before the Olympics, Murray will face a call to fulfill an impossible mission _ training the North Koreans in the way she has transformed the national team into a stronger one for the past three years.