After a week in South Korea, our group killed time at Incheon International Airport doing a casual debrief before boarding our Asiana flight to Beijing.
The conversation kept coming back to a core idea: in South Korea, sport is treated more like a right than a privilege. The KSPO model prioritizes athlete welfare and public access over profit, which is a pretty stark contrast to the U.S., where there’s no centralized governing body and leagues run as for-profit businesses. Seeing that alternative up close for a week made the gap feel a lot more concrete than it does in a classroom.
The 1988 Seoul Olympics came up as a major inflection point, a moment that catalyzed long-term investment in sport at every level. That mindset never really stopped. Youth athlete development is taken seriously, and the results show. We also talked about how screen golf and e-sports took off partly because of how land-limited and densely populated the country is. People adapted sport to fit their geography. And with declining birth rates becoming a real factor, the future shape of the Korean sports market is something worth watching.
Fan culture was another recurring theme. There’s a different relationship with scale there. The market is smaller and people seem genuinely fine with that, because the orientation is community-first rather than growth-first.
About an hour into the two hour flight, chicken and potatoes along with some fruit and salad was served as lunch. A lot of people fell asleep but I watched two episodes of the Netflix series Yellowjackets!
Then we landed in Beijing, checked into the hotel, and went to dinner. Our tour guide, Ally, ordered for the tables, keeping everything on the milder side for our first night: Peking duck, multiple preparations of beef, sweet and sour shrimp, fried rice, and vegetables, all served family style. It was a great introduction to Chinese food, though I already know it’s nowhere near the full picture. I’m looking forward to trying spicy authentic Chinese food!
The meal ended with a plate of fresh fruit, which we were told is standard in Chinese dining. It functions as a palate cleanser but also carries meaning. Serving fruit at the end of a meal is a gesture of hospitality and a symbol of prosperity. It’s a small thing, but it reframes the end of a meal as something intentional rather than just the check arriving.
Beijing has a lot to offer culturally, historically, and from a sports industry perspective and we have a full schedule ahead. I am looking forward to seeing what this city has to teach us!
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