We started as athletes, too.” That’s how the head coach of the Breaking team, Jung Hyung-sik, explained why he participated in the Korean team’s dismissal ceremony for the Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games on Aug. 8.Hosted by the Korean Sports Federation, the team was seated off to one side of the banquet hall at the Grand New Century Hotel in Hangzhou, China, and stayed until the end of the ceremony. It was only in 2021 that the Korean Dance Sports Federation (KFD) introduced a national team for breaking, with the sport becoming an official sport at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games and 2024 Paris Olympics. The team only arrived at the Jincheon Athletes’ Village for the first time in April last year, but they’ve made it all the way to the Games, showing the potential of breaking as a sport.
The team, which won one silver medal on the 7th with Kim Hong-yeol (Hong10), also attracted attention at the disbanding ceremony, where everyone wore hats and showed off their “b-boy” and “b-girl” attitudes. Coach Chung attributed the reason for attending the disbanding ceremony to their identity as “athletes” .”From the moment we enter the athletes’ village, we are athletes,” he said. “This was the first time Korea Breaking attended the Asian Games as a national team, and that alone was a meaningful event.” “As a breaking player and coach representing Korea, I will try harder with the pride of an athlete,” said Chung, who has been breaking for more than 30 years.
The breaking team was then invited to the podium to take a commemorative photo with the officials of the Korean Sports Federation (KOF), including KOF President Lee Ki-heung and Asian Games Team Leader Choi Yoon. At Choi’s suggestion, everyone was free to show off their style. This was different from the other teams’ photos, which showed them in a “fighting” pose with one arm raised.” Each sport has its own personality, and that’s the beauty of breaking, so we should respect it,” Choi said. “I’ve actually been an athlete before, but we have our own ‘scene’ (stage),” Jung said. “We have to combine our activities. It is our task to combine our activities in that area.”
As an art form, breaking relies on judges’ scores to determine the winner .As a sport, the mechanisms to ensure fairness are not yet clear. In many ways, the sport needs an institutional overhaul if it is to evolve into a sport where the winner takes all the glory and honors. As I played in this tournament, I realized that the system, including judges and operations, is constantly changing. I also felt the need to regularly participate in judges’ training sessions,” Jung said, explaining that “if we don’t grasp the flow in our scene, we will struggle in sports.” “I can’t say that there is a part (of breaking) where the judgment is not objective yet. How to make objective judgment without subjectivity is an important aspect ahead of the Paris Olympics,” he said. “This is something 스포츠토토링크 we need to work on if we want to be recognized (as a sport),” he added.