Korea looks for progress at IKF AOKC

Participating at this year’s IKF Asia Oceania Korfball Championship (IKF AOKC) gives the Korea Korfball Federation (KKF) great impetus for further development of the sport.

Korea finished sixth at last October’s Asia Korfball Championships in Tianjin, China, and currently sits at 31 in the IKF rankings.

Taking the three-hour flight from Seoul to Hong Kong for the ninth IKF Asia Oceania Korfball Championship, this will be Korea’s second time at the tournament after finishing seventh four years ago.

Since starting their preparation in March, squad members have trained once or twice a week.

Members of Korea’s squad come from diverse backgrounds, including in their number teachers, students and soldiers. One of the latter had to ask for special permission to exempt himself from a joint training exercise between the armies of the United States and Korea in order to travel with the squad to Hong Kong.

Most of Korea’s players started korfball as students of Seoul National University of Korea, when the sport was introduced by their sister university, National Taiwan University of Education, in 2005, with the most experienced of Korea’s international players starting korfball in earnest in 2006.

This squad is an important step in the development of Korean korfball, with a number of the players either trainee teachers or recent graduates who have started their teaching careers. As in various other countries, this makes them ideally placed to spread korfball and build its popularity through schools and universities, which they are in the process of doing, bringing increasing numbers of younger people into the sport through school korfball clubs and tournaments.