The Forthright Political Stance of Sport for Development in Korean Official Development Assistance

Abstract

The rapid growth of Sport for Development (SFD) policies, practices, and organizations over the past two decades has been widely studied. However, by far the preponderance of attention has been focused on SFD initiatives and analyses concentrated in traditional Western donor states, where they have been characterized by a focus on social development objectives and civil society-led modalities. By contrast, SFD efforts emanating from non-Western countries have been relatively neglected. This paper contributes to correcting this imbalance by focusing on the important and distinctive Korean approach to SFD within its growing Official Development Assistance (ODA) programmes. In contrast to mainstream Western SFD, Korean SFD has been forthrightly oriented towards support for top-down, state-based objectives. Moreover, it has reflected a distinct hybrid character, blending a superficial prioritization of global social development norms exemplified by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals with strong and persistent characteristics of the Korean developmental state in its approach to sport.