By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
A month into the Year of the Rat, South Korea's elite athletes are pushing their bodies through sadistic training programs driven by the zeal for fame at the summer's Olympic Games in Beijing.
Beyond their grunts and sweat, however, are another group of sportsmen, who traded their shorts for designer suits and save their adrenaline for speeches rather than summersaults, but nonetheless will be seeking personal glory at the world sport's biggest stage come August.
In a surprise news conference last month, Lee Elisa, a Korean table tennis legend and current president of the Taeneung Athletes Village, announced her bid to be elected as an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member.
``Korean IOC members have been either politicians or business tycoons, and they had limitations in communicating with sports officials from other countries and gaining their trust," said Lee, joined in the news conference by 30 Olympic women's medal winners who declared their support for the 54-year-old.
``Korea now needs an IOC member with athletic credentials," she said. ``It doesn't have to be me, but if I do get the chance, I will put in everything I've got.''
Lee is the latest addition to a race that includes World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) president Choue Chung-won and active taekwondo athlete Moon Dae-sung.
Korean Football Association (KFA) boss Chung Mong-joon and World Badminton Federation (WBF) president Kang Young-joong are also rumored to be considering IOC bids.
The Korean Olympic Committee (KOC) will hold an all-members meeting on Feb. 27 to determine the Korean candidates for IOC membership. If Lee is selected, she will go up against other National Olympic Committee (NOC) representatives at the IOC executive committee in April in Beijing, which will hold elections for new IOC members.
The winners of the vote are subject to approval by an IOC general congress that will be held during the Olympics in August.
The heated domestic competition for IOC membership comes at a time when talking heads are rambling about the perceived decline of South Korean sports diplomacy.
Such fears were amplified after the country's recent failures in its shopping spree for international sporting events, which includes the Gangwon Province ski resort of PyeongChang failing on consecutive bids to host the Winter Olympics.
With the recent resignation of Park Yong-sung, the Doosan Group chairman and former International Judo Federation (IJF) president, Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee remains the country's only IOC member.
Lee Elisa, the winner of the 2006 IOC Women and Sport Trophy, believes she has a better chance than her competitors to be elected as an IOC member, as 20 percent of the spots are reserved for women. With five spots vacant, there are currently 110 active IOC members, of which 16 of them are women.
Lee's credentials are impressive, leading the country's table tennis team to a gold at the 1973 world championships in Sarajevo, and then coaching the women's Olympic team from the 1984-2004, adding a gold medal in 1988, then a silver and a bronze in 2004 to her collection. She has been the chief of the Taeneung Athletes Village, the country's top athletes training center since 2005.
Lee's announcement caught many sports authorities by surprise, as it came just a day after Kim Dae-shik, a member of the presidential transition committee for president-elect Lee Myung-bak, commented in a meeting with reporters that ``it's about time" Korea has a woman IOC member.
It remains to be seen whether the KOC will approve Lee as a candidate, as the IOC is seeking to fill its seats allocated to international sports federation leaders and athletes first, not NOC representatives. This makes Choue and Moon a natural candidate but not Lee.