University Aims to Diversify Koreas Success in Sports
By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
Twenty-eight Olympic gold, twenty-eight silver and twenty bronze medals are not the feat of a state, but that of a single university in Seoul.
During the just-ended Vancouver Winter Games alone, speed skaters currently enrolled at
Korea National Sport University (KNSU), the elite sport college located in southern Seoul, won three gold and two silver medals.
The university will hold a grand welcoming event for the three gold medalists on March 18, with all of its students, professors and staff members attending.
The school is already set for the celebration, with huge banners featuring the medalists' successful performances hung up around the school's perimeter.
"If they had won in a domestic event or a not-so-famous international competition, such congratulations wouldn't be offered," Kim Jong-wook, the school's president, said. "Some may say we are quite mean by putting no value on the participation itself. But that's the way we have dealt with students and it has absolutely worked."
Kim said that the school's skiers are next in line to win Olympic medals.
From its code of behavior to curriculum, KNSU has gone to great lengths to nurture some of the world's best athletes.
The university is officially a "smoking-free" zone and bans all practices that can pose health risks to students.
Students caught smoking can be suspended from school for a certain period of time.
The daily schedule, which starts at 6 a.m., is mapped out for time-efficient training and studying.
Students spend two hours in the morning warming up by stretching and jogging. After a one-hour break for breakfast, all registered students are forced to attend regular textbook-based classes on a variety of subjects that continue until midday. And then the afternoon training continues until 5:30 p.m. Night training is optional, but not many students skip the extra training, the president said.
"Unlike other universities, we don't give grades to those who skip regular classes for training. I believe athletes with ample knowledge on a wide range of issues give better performances and enjoy better lives after retirement," Kim said.
This is in line with the Lee Myung-bak administration's campaign to establish a "studying atmosphere" in departments dominated by student athletes, who have for decades regarded physical training as their primary task during their 4 years of college.
KNSU is paying particularly attention to language education, especially English.
"A variety of indicators show our students have already reached a certain standard at the international level in performances. But what they're still lagging behind in is their foreign language proficiency, particularly English," Kim said. "This has been a great hurdle for our students to study overseas or be recruited as coaches for non-Korean athletes."
To cope with the problem, KNSU has mandated its students to attend at least one English-only class each semester starting this year and will invite students from English-speaking countries in phases through scholarship programs.
KNSU is already known as one of the most sought-after training camps for non-Korean students majoring in Taekwondo and archery, whose top ranks have long been dominated by Korean athletes.
Many athletes from the United States, China and other Asian countries take a six-month to one-year crash course particularly in these two fields at the school.
"Some overseas colleges even invite our students for a semester or more under full sponsorship to make it easier for their students to spend time training with Korean students and learn up-to-date techniques."
The president emphasized that the assumption that Korean athletes are only competitive in a limited number of sports such as speed skating and archery is naive.
"As shown by swimmer Park Tae-hwan and figure skater Kim Yu-na, Korean athletes' stock has notably grown in sports in which people previously believed we were inferior to athletes from Western countries," he said. "Who knows? Korean athletes could win gold medals in Alpine skiing, the half pipe or ski jumping at the next Olympics."