Abstract
South Korean student athletes are able to enter university or college without an academic Grade Point Average (GPA), and with only their successes of tournament or competition. This is one of elite sport policies that occurs result-oriented nature for the elite sport in Korea. The result-oriented nature of the elite sport system forces athletes to specialize and over train from the early years, which potentially disregards their rights as students(e.g., taking part of universal education). This negatively affects the academic performance and future career aspirations of student athletes after they retire from the sport. Given that over 90% of Korean student athletes early retire and choose a non-sport career, it is important to extensively discuss the possible strategies to prevent student athletes from early retirement, and to develop a support system for student athletes who experienced early retirement. The purpose of this paper was to systematically review why the student athletes have early retired and what academia has discussed about the retirement in Korea. Furthermore, this paper will discuss future directions for elite athlete development by proposing potential implications and discussing the limitations of previous studies. The paper followed Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses(PRISMA). Finally, a total of 18 studies examining the reasons and the development plans for the retirement was searched by the protocol. As a result, the Korean student athletes early retire due to over training, injuries, future orientations, lack of enjoyment/fun/interest, stresses of training and/or competition, issues with peers and coaches, and lack of study time. The papers proposed strategies, such as educational attainment and career support programs for student athletes who early retire to improve their well-being. This report also found that early specialization is has a major impact on Korean student athletes’ early retirement. As the Korean sport literature has not discussed athlete development, this paper will suggest a new route that may positively influence upon the early retirement rate among Korean student athletes and can improve the elite sport system in Korea.
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