Korea has made remarkable progress in democracy in short period of time. It's not a long time ago that democracy replaced authoritarianism, decentralization came to be a dominant ideology, and the people's influence on public matters became greater th...
Korea has made remarkable progress in democracy in short period of time. It's not a long time ago that democracy replaced authoritarianism, decentralization came to be a dominant ideology, and the people's influence on public matters became greater than ever.
However, Rapid westernization and information-oriented society, mate- rialism, and a variety of values and desires produced tremendously are challenging every aspect of Korean democracy. The cultural lag that emerges between current political systems and practical situations is triggering another social problem.
This study seeks good ways to Korean democracy more matured and narrow the gap through sports, taking a close look at its correlation with politics.
We enjoy our lives, get more healthy, and pleasantly contend for victory through sports. However, it's true that's not the case in reality. As one of 3S meaning Screen, Sex and Sport, sports in the modern Korean history played a significant role in leading people's attention to political apathy, which allowed the government to rule the country the way they preferred without being based on checks and balances. Meanwhile, a large number of affirmative points of sports that contribute to increasing people's pride and enhancing national prestige were neglected in many cases.
Considering scholars' opinions that people's morale is a principal factor of national power including economic and military power, sports can be a proper alternative for raising the morale as well as a measure of uniting the society and a diplomatic tool in international politics. In that sense, the paper deals with the effect of political socialization through sports, particularly how political values and attitudes are created,
From the point of view of the theory of the political system, sports have a concept of "support" as an input element, more concretely "diffuse support". This "support" helps the system to be maintained and strengthened. That's why such big sporting events as the Olympic Games and the World Cup attract worldwide interest. This study focuses on analysing the element of political values and attitudes.
As a result, the conclusion comes out that sports make huge contributions to building positive political values and attitudes at the state, community and individual levels. The study stresses that not only a steady education on values and attitudes by sports leaders, coaches and in sports clubs but also the extension of sports to new civil movement and political events is needed. They will serve as a driving force to internalize the fundamental values and attitudes of sports.
Korean sports are developed much enough since we have successfully held diverse major sporting events, kept staying in top 10 in the Olympic medal standings, and constructed excellent sports infrastructures. The fact conveys that efforts and energies should be put more into getting sports friendly with people this time around. Efforts to more popularize and activate sports will be useful for fulfilling the goal. Out of them, we can get a balance between internal and external development of sports.
Sports are also seen as a social system to diffuse values like fair play or obedience of rules. Rewarding in proportion to sweats and accepting cooly the result are tightly linked to democratic principles as well. Therefore, sports are often compared to politics. The ultimate purpose of this study is to form advanced political values and attitudes through interdisciplinary attempts combining sports and politics.