A Critical Review of the Korean Women’s Football Development Policy: A Focus on the Women’s Football Development Plans since the 2002 FIFA World Cup

Abstract

This paper investigates historical changes of the women’s football development policy plan from the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup in South Korea, when the interest towards women’s football was high, to 2020, to suggest policy and historical implications with sustainable guidance. Throughout this period, various aspects of feminism revealed changes in theoretical perspectives of equality and women’s rights, which raises questions of whether the policymakers were aware of that or not. This study concludes by suggesting three policy implications: firstly, despite its meager 20-year history, diachronic discourse of women’s football reflects zeitgeist; secondly, value creation from overseas case studies germinated with certain master plans; and lastly, this area is to be independently recognized beyond that of the men’s league with empathic understanding and political will. With these findings in mind, it has been identified that the feminist theories under the discourse of women’s football policy in the Republic of Korea expect the evidence or justification of the argument from the foreign trends of women’s football discourses.