Going to a Baseball Game in South Korea

Baseball is the most popular professional sport in South Korea, and one of only a few professional sporting options in the country. On the international scene, South Korea is most known for speed skating, taekwondo, and academic excellence, but baseball is absolutely the national pastime.

Founded in 1982 with six teams, the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) now consists of 10 teams from 8 different regions (Seoul has three teams). In 2017, KBO baseball games had more than 8.4 million attendees during the regular season, with the average of 11,600 fans per game. It sounds small compared to American MLB games, but considering the smaller stadiums and population of 9.8 million, that’s a lot of Koreans attending baseball games.

Foreigners Playing Baseball in South Korea

It’s not uncommon to see some non-Korean faces on the team. However, to keep with their nationalist attitude (not said in a necessarily negative way), only three players can be foreigners, with no more than 2 being pitchers, and only 2 can be on the field at one time. Most teams max out these limits. Foreign players are limited to one-year contracts and their salaries are capped at $1 million. If your skillset isn’t quite enough to get you into the MLB, playing baseball in South Korea can be a very lucrative backup plan.

Over the league’s history, more than 200 Americans have played in the KBO, 80 players from the Dominican Republic, 20 from Venezuela, and a smattering of other players from all over the globe. American Tyron Woods was the first notable foreign player. In 1998 he was the first foreigner to hit a homerun, eventually breaking the homerun record that year. He was also the first player, Korean or not, to be thrown out of a game by an umpire… In 2007, American Jerry Royster was the first foreign born manager in the league, managing the Lotte Giants for four seasons.

Every now and then, Korean KBO players make their way to the MLB, but that transition is not common. In the almost 40 year history of the league, 23 Korean players have signed with an MLB team; however, most never make the roster for the major league team, spending their time on minor league teams. Korean players are more likely to find success in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league, where they have set hitting, pitching and scoring records.

Let’s Play Ball!

During my 2 years teaching in South Korea, I went to games in both Seoul and Busan, and experienced the magic that is baseball in Korea.

Tickets will set you back $7-18 for general seating, more if you want box seats or packaged food and drink deals. You can buy them online or at the stadium. The first game I got the mid-range general seats in the outfield, which are better and cheaper than the nosebleeds in the MLB. For the second game, I decided to step my game up and get the most expensive seats behind the plate, running about $45. It was definitely worth spending a few more bucks to get the VIP experience.

The biggest difference from an MLB game is the food and drink situation. You don’t have to plan on spending $25 for a beer and a dog. KBO games offer cheap food and drinks inside and outside of the stadium, and you can bring food and drink into the stadium. What a concept! At the Lotte Giants game in Seoul, you’ll find agimas (Korean for grandma, a term used to describe any older woman) selling traditional Korean foods like fish cake, rice cake, gimbap and other goodies, cheap, right outside the stadium.

Inside the stadium, you can munch on fried chicken, tteopokki, and other Korean classics. At both Lotte Stadium and in Busan, there is a 7eleven where you can pick up some chips, popcorn, candy, dried squid and other Korean convenient store goodies at normal prices, including beer. They have cups you can pour the beer into or you can just bring the cans to your seat. Its amazing!

The energy in the stadium is like a more polite, less violence-inducing Venezuela soccer game – intense fans, big flags waving, chants, but with a decorum of taking turns saying said cheers and peaceful intensity. Beer is cheap, food is cheap, stadiums are new and nice and the pitching usually sucks, so you’ll see an exciting offensive game.

When the players are at bat, each player has a song that the fans know and sing. When they come up to bat, there aren’t announcers to announce them or pump up the crowd, nope, no announcer at all, it’s all cheering fans. They have a mascot with a few cheerleaders for both the home and visiting team leading the fans, but the fans are always the impetus for the cheering.

In the end, I didn’t even remember the scores. I remembered the excitement, the sense of community and camaraderie. And I really enjoyed leaving the stadium, heading to the subway with fellow revelers, drunk and full, with still a few bucks in my pocket.