The rules of obedience to leader orders, which have been regarded as a major obstacle to the protection of athletes' human rights in the Korean sports world, are finally removed. An official from the Korea Sports Council said, “The mission of the national team specified in the national training management guidelines has been decided to delete the provision of obeying the leader's instructions and orders.”


The National Team Training Management Guideline, established five months before the opening of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, has been recognized as a'constitution' in the Korean sports world. It has been used as a'duty' that must be followed by national players as well as unemployed and student athletes.


Among the various provisions of the <National Team Training Management Guidelines>, the most controversial among them is the mission of the national team as set forth in <Article 8, Paragraph 2>. According to these guidelines,'the national player must obey the instructions and orders of the leader during and outside the village and during life and training'. In other words, whether you are in the Jincheon Athletes' Village or when you are outside, you must obey all of the leaders' orders and orders in training and in everyday life. Under this article, players cannot judge whether a leader's instructions and orders are just and reasonable.

These provisions have acted as a kind of shackles to suppress the human rights and freedoms of athletes. It is hard to imagine that even if the coach gives unfair directions and orders, the players resist or challenge it, because the manager has been holding the so-called'life and death rights' for more than 30 years. It was a reality.

When the shocking'sexual assault' incident of Cho Jae-beom's short-track coach broke out in January of last year, all sectors demanded the deletion of this clause, but not a single letter was changed. It was also considered that if this clause was deleted in the midst of strengthening training ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, it would be difficult for the coach to effectively control the players.

However, the mood has changed dramatically since the'Choi Choi Suk-hyun' incident last month. As the consensus that there should be no more sports violence now spreading across our society, the Korea Sports Council eventually decided to delete this provision.

The deletion of this provision will not allow players to refuse any instructions from the coach. If that happens, the meaning of training with national leaders and athletes will disappear. So, the Athletic Association has come up with a new alternative.


As shown in the picture above, the mission of the national team has been largely defined as four, and the most important is the'implementation of what the national leader has instructed for the proper protection of human rights and safety'. In other words, it can be interpreted that the leader is not obliged to follow in the case of unfair directions.

The Athletic Association has also established mandatory provisions for leaders to protect human rights of athletes. It is a new mandate for national team athletes to guide their life training and protect human rights and safety.

An official from the Korea Sports Association said, “The directors are thinking that they should change now, but they are even saying that it would be better to organize the athletes' committee so that they can freely discuss the difficulties of the athletes. I think the derailment of the people will also decrease."

However, some athletes believe that the elimination of the toxin provisions in the national training management guidelines will not immediately eradicate the violence and sexual violence in sports. This is because the misunderstanding of leaders who think that they are “winning medals” still exists, and as you can see in this case, the local unemployment team clearly showed that it was a blind spot for human rights surveillance.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism plans to launch the <Sports Ethics Center> to protect the human rights of athletes in the near future and to announce specific measures. The Korea Sports Association is also taking measures to eradicate violence and sexual violence. As important as these legal-institutional countermeasures is the awareness of the frontline sportsmen and the correct sports culture. It is believed that only the great awareness of sports leaders and the thorough zero tolerance principle of the administration that no matter what happens, violence-sexual violence is no longer the key to solving the problem.