by Sion Ahn

18.44 meters. The distance between the mound and home plate. Unlike a pitch thrown by a pitcher, which reaches the catcher in the blink of an eye, it took a long time for the hearts of seniors and juniors to reach one another. That was because of the senior-junior culture represented by school years and class cohorts. In Korean baseball in the past, senior-junior culture also became a justification for violence that suppressed individuals and enforced team discipline.

On March 21, 1979, Yonsei University lost 4-2 to Dongguk University in a college baseball tournament. A pitcher named Chul-soon Park started the game and gave up two runs, and then a pitcher named Dong-won Choi came in and gave up two more, allowing four runs in total. These two pitchers would later become legendary figures in the KBO. After the loss, the upperclassmen on the Yonsei University baseball team gathered the underclassmen together. In a session meant to look back on the game, the seniors beat the juniors in the name of disciplining them. At that gathering, Chul-soon Park struck Dong-won Choi with a baseball bat. As a result, Dong-won Choi suffered a serious back injury that left his underwear soaked with blood and required two weeks of treatment. Later, this injury would put the brakes on Dong-won Choi’s professional career and become one of the causes of his early retirement. It was later revealed that this violence against juniors had not happened only once, but had also occurred after a previous practice game and after a game against Korea University the year before. Years later, Chul-soon Park chose this as the incident he regretted most in his life. But it reflected the dark side of the atmosphere of the times, when violence was tolerated if it was for the sake of victory, and of a senior-junior culture in which it was not seen as strange for seniors to punish juniors in the name of discipline.

The team discipline of the Haitai Tigers in the 1980s and 1990s, the predecessor of today’s KIA Tigers, was also famously fierce. Unlike today, Korean professional baseball at the time was based on a strong regional franchise system. The Tigers, located in the Honam region, had an overwhelming number of players from Honam, and this created a powerful bond that could not be found anywhere else. From a distance, the close bond within the team seemed to reduce disputes or conflict among players. But when behavior violated the rules between seniors and juniors, beatings and physical punishment would immediately follow. Juniors had to prepare the field and snacks before games, and it is said that they could even be slapped if they laughed during practice when the team mood was bad. On top of that, there were various forms of discipline, such as gatherings after games and fanning cigarette smoke away from seniors when they smoked. There were even separate “discipline chiefs” who strongly controlled this atmosphere.

As an extension of this atmosphere, unwritten rules also emerged in Korean baseball. Korean baseball has unwritten rules that include not only respect for the opposing team and its players, but also respect for seniors. For example, when pitchers hit a senior player at bat with a pitch, if they do not bow and apologize, they are seen as players without manners toward seniors. Conversely, if a junior batter is hit by a pitch thrown by a senior pitcher and shows discomfort, it is taken as a challenge to the senior, and the atmosphere in the ballpark pushes the junior into the position of being a rude player. In addition, when a junior hits a home run off a pitch thrown by a senior pitcher, celebrating too much or running the bases slowly is also seen as an act that does not respect the senior. In this way, the dark side of senior-junior culture forced freedom of expression into the frame of “manners” and gave birth to new unwritten rules.

The wind of change began to blow through this vertical culture in Korean baseball because of players who started to see the role of seniors not as “domination,” but as “support.” Players who disliked having trained under a dominating atmosphere tried, once they reached the position of seniors, to lead their teams in a different atmosphere. Historically, seniors led teams through fear and power. Now, they lead through a kind of leadership that passes their experience and strengths on to juniors. Unlike the past, when seniors gathered everyone together and used violence over every mistake made by juniors, seniors now approach juniors directly, talk to them so that they can come to realizations on their own, and offer advice.

Korean baseball no longer moves under a strict and rigid atmosphere. It does not kill individuality, suppress freedom, or force only one person’s way on everyone else. Shin-soo Choo and Kwang-hyun Kim take juniors overseas and help them train, while Hyun-jin Ryu personally covers the cost of juniors’ overseas training and asks them to actively ask questions. In this way, seniors are instead approaching juniors directly.

Furthermore, there are no longer juniors who find it difficult even to ask questions because they are afraid of seniors. Instead, there are now many juniors who directly ask about seniors’ strengths, learn from them, and try to make those strengths their own. Juniors ask directly about pitching methods, hitting know-how, and situational judgment, and they try to receive those skills. This attitude among juniors has raised not only the level of teams, but also the overall standard of the league. In this way, seniors in Korean baseball today have become not figures who block the growth of juniors and feel jealous of them, but figures who actively support juniors so that they can grow.

Korean baseball has evolved from an atmosphere of “obedience,” born from the darkness of past senior-junior culture, into “respect” for one another. Dong-won Choi’s back, injured by a senior, hurt terribly, and the hit-by-pitches that could not even be expressed because of senior-junior relationships hurt as well. But healthy communication, achieved without simply passing those pains down unchanged, has given the next generation of leading figures in Korean baseball both strong ability and a better atmosphere.