Elite Sports Development in South Korea:Characteristics and Debates

This chapter outlines South Korea’s elite sports development system with a particular focus on its key features and the tensions surrounding Human Rights in Sport policy initiatives. Shaped by policies inherited from the authoritarian regimes of the 1960s–1980s, the current system path-dependently maintains extensive financial support from governmental, public, and private sectors. While its unique mode of incentivising athletic commitment has secured continued international success, it also presents significant risks, such as inherent vulnerability to abuse and a lack of convincing justification for sustained elite sport investment. Since the early 2000s, efforts to address abuse and shift policy priorities towards sports for all have made positive changes. However, the Human Rights in Sport agendas and policies have also faced substantial resistance and debates, largely due to implementation challenges and conflicting views within the sport sector. The chapter concludes by highlighting the need for updated empirical research on individual athletes of today and their engagement with the legacy system.