Although much that is written about Korean popular culture has revolved around Korean television drama, pop music, and film, a less explored arena is the relationship between sports and popular culture and history and popular culture. The film YMCA Baseball Team, a historical drama, presents the arrival of baseball in Korea in 1905 by showing how Koreans encountered and learned to play this new sport. Humor and physical comedy are used to highlight the ways in which Koreans learned about the new game, and how they eventually came to make it their own. At the same time, the film explores a more complex historical topic of Japanese colonialism and nationalism through baseball. One of the most valuable lessons that could be organized around this film is that contemporary popular culture is not just about “today” but about the past, and about how the past is still part of contemporary popular culture.
The director probably did not intend to be prophetic when this 2002 film was released, in light of what subsequently happened at the 2009 World Baseball Classic finals when Japan prevailed over South Korea, thereby capturing their second victory since the founding of this international competition in 2006. Rather on Kim’s mind, as well as others involved in the filmmaking and the general South Korean population, was the 2002 World Cup Soccer co-hosted by Korea and Japan in the months of May and June when excitement for the Korean team’s historical semi-final losing performance reverberated with cheers of fans chanting “Taehan minguk” (South Korea) throughout the entire country. While the successes of the 2002 World Cup were embraced by both South Korea and Japan, the territorial dispute over Tokdo/Takashima Island between the two countries loomed large, escalating nationalist sentiments and evoking memories of their century-long hostile relationship.
The underlying story in YMCA Baseball Team reflects the two countries’ colonial relationship. A parallel can be drawn, for example, between the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula and the Japanese soldiers’ takeover of the team’s YMCA baseball playing field. Also, when the team manager consoles the Korean players for their initial loss against the Japanese baseball team by saying that Japan began playing baseball thirty years before Korea, it helps relate Japan’s earlier modernization to Korea’s later efforts at modernization under colonial rule. Moreover, the film ends on a high note with the Korean YMCA team’s dramatic final inning win against the Japanese team on their rematch.
The youths in the film struggle with the changing times. Each grapples with their newly created position in society. Yi Hoch’ang (Song Kangho), the main character, is athletically gifted, but since physical activity for a scholar (sŏnbi) was discouraged, he must sort out his love for baseball versus his obligation to carry on the family tradition of becoming a Confucian scholar teaching children at a private Confucian academy (sŏdang). Min Jungrim (Kim Hyesu), Oh Daehyŏn (Kim Junhyŏk), Ryu Kwangt’ae (Hwang Jŏngmin), and Nomura Hideo (Suzuki Kazuma) must contend with their competing interests and obligations. Jungrim, who represents the New Woman (sin yŏsŏng), serves as a bridge between West and East, new and old, men and women. Daehyŏn questions his anti-colonial intellectual position against his friendship with a Japanese collaborator’s son. Kwangt’ae must choose between his allegiance to the Korean baseball team and the familial ties that bind him to his father, a Japanese collaborator. Hideo must carefully negotiate around his position as a young Japanese soldier who at times must play unfair, but finds baseball to exemplify ideals of sportsmanship.
Some of the best examples can be found in the scenes where a former servant, now a merchant, initially shows deference to the son of his former master, while the arrogant, young master refuses to catch the balls thrown to him by this former servant during practice asking, “How can a nobleman catch a ball thrown by a lowborn?” The young yangban refuses to use the former servant’s bat, even though he has become a master craftsman and makes the best baseball bats for the team. Comically presented as these scenes may be, Kim Hyŏnsŏk voices a harsh criticism of the stringent socio-economic organization that continued during the early twentieth century despite reforms and, to a certain extent, still guides Korean social life, even in the twenty-first century. Therefore, although some might criticize Kim’s cliché set up of the Korea versus Japan baseball game, a more valuable reading of baseball in this film is the one where baseball becomes the ground upon which social boundaries can be removed and a collective identity formed.
Kim’s YMCA Baseball Team presents a multifaceted narrative of Korea’s colonial history and its relationship with Japan while addressing the complex transitions taking place within Korean society.
