Talented but with nowhere to play: Korea's baseball girls forced to leave sport

The Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL) opened its season at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois, on Aug. 1 with a game between the New York Heights and Los Angeles Queens.

The matchup carried historic significance as the first game of the WPBL, revived after 72 years.

At the top of the first inning, a short-haired pitcher in the Heights’ pinstriped uniform confidently took the mound. It was Kim Ra-kyung, 26, who made history as the first female player to hit a home run in the Korean Little League baseball and, in the same year, became the youngest player ever selected for Korea’s women’s national baseball team at age 15.

Kim is not the only Korean competing at the highest level of women’s baseball. Catcher Hyeonah Kim, 26, joined the Boston Hunters, while infielder Jua Park, 22, made the San Francisco Firebells.

Their success, however, is hardly evidence of a strong development system for women’s baseball in Korea. Players such as Kim Ra-kyung are outliers who have reached the world stage through extraordinary talent and effort despite the lack of a meaningful pathway for female baseball players at home.

As the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) league has surged in popularity, more girls have become interested not just in watching baseball but in playing it. Yet the number of female players who can properly learn the sport through school or club teams remains extremely small. No matter how talented they are, there is virtually no path in Korea for them to become professional players.

For the most gifted girls, that can make the question of their future even more difficult.

No Korean baseball rulebook explicitly says that baseball is a sport only for men. In practice, however, that is largely what it has become.

There is not a single girls-only baseball team at an elementary, middle or high school in Korea. According to the Korea Baseball Softball Association (KBSA), just 11 of the 11,155 elite youth baseball players registered with the association in 2025 were female. All played on mixed-gender teams.

Many promising girls switch sports by middle school, when physical differences between boys and girls begin to make training together more difficult.

"I had two female players switch to softball before entering middle school," said Yang Yoon-hee, 46, head coach of the baseball team at Seoseok Elementary School in Gwangju. "With no girls' baseball teams at the middle school level or above, it (switching to softball) was a realistic choice if they wanted to continue their athletic careers."

Park Min-seo, who was selected in the WPBL draft, also played Little League baseball through middle school. But after entering high school, she found few opportunities to continue playing baseball and switched to golf.

The absence of girls' teams also keeps female players out of major competitions.

There is effectively no place for female baseball players at the National Junior Sports Festival, Korea's premier youth sporting event, because baseball is designated as a boys' competition under the event's rules.

The Korean Sport & Olympic Committee and the KBSA, which organize and oversee the competition, say the lack of female players and teams leaves them with few options. Because the festival requires teams representing the country's 17 cities and provinces to advance through regional qualifiers, creating a girls' division would require multiple teams nationwide. There are currently no registered girls-only teams.

A KBSA official said mixed-gender participation has also become difficult.

"Because there is a performance gap stemming from physical differences between boys and girls, a structure has become entrenched in which teams are reluctant to include female players on their rosters," the official said.

The result is a vicious cycle: There are too few players because there are no teams, and no teams are created because there are too few players.

Experts say breaking that cycle should begin by opening major national competitions to female baseball players.

"Women's baseball needs to become an event at the National Sports Festival so that city and provincial associations can receive funding, which can then be used to establish girls' middle and high school teams," said Hwang Jung-hee, vice president of the Korean Women's Sports Association and former president of the Women's Baseball Association Korea.

"If the number of school teams increases and a steady pool of players develops, an environment where women can play professionally, including in corporate leagues, will naturally follow," she said.

The situation is markedly different in neighboring Japan, one of the world's leading countries in women's baseball.

Japan has a well-developed pipeline extending from youth baseball to adult corporate teams. The NPB Girls Tournament, an elementary school-level competition organized by Nippon Professional Baseball, was launched in 2013 and is being held for the 14th time this year. A record 48 teams entered this year's tournament in Shiga Prefecture.

At the high school level, girls' baseball has its own governing organization. The Women's Baseball Federation of Japan currently has 72 girls' high school baseball teams registered. Players gain competitive experience through the annual national high school girls' hardball championship, often described as the women's version of Koshien, Japan's iconic high school baseball tournament.

In the United States, girls can continue playing through club teams into their middle and high school years even when their schools do not offer girls' baseball.

The nonprofit Baseball For All operates girls' baseball teams and national tournaments across age groups ranging from 12U to 18U. Major League Baseball and USA Baseball also operate separate development programs for female players from youth through high school age.

The system means girls have teams and competitions available even outside school, while standout players can move into elite development programs.

Despite Korea's limited infrastructure, interest among young girls is growing.

"Baseball has become so popular that we're seeing more girls who want to learn to play," said Yoon Yi-rak, executive director of the Korea Youth Baseball Federation. "The number of female players has increased noticeably, particularly over the past two or three years."

The number of female players registered with the Korea Little League Baseball Federation reached 36 this year, up 11 from a year earlier.

The women's baseball community is now seeking ways to build a development system step by step, beginning with regional clubs.

"Our first priority is to secure a youth player base by establishing club teams in major regions, like the Cheonan Junior Women's Baseball Team," said Lee Soo-mi, secretary-general of the Women's Baseball Association Korea.

"Based on those resources, we plan to work with middle and high schools to establish school teams and demonstrate to sports authorities that we're ready to compete, laying the groundwork for entering the National Youth Sports Festival and the National Sports Festival."

This article by Kang Ye-jin and Park Si-mon of the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, was translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.