Former local hockey star makes mark in S. Korea
Brock Radunske carries the hockey dreams of a country on his shoulders.
It’s just not the nation you’d expect for a lanky forward who first drew the attention of NHL scouts on rinks around Waterloo Region.
Radunske, a blond 29-year-old, has become the first professional athlete without Korean lineage to become a citizen of South Korea.
The country of 50 million will be host of the Winter Olympics in 2018.
And while it boasts homegrown stars in sports such as baseball and tennis, it’s hardly known as a hockey powerhouse.
Radunske’s newly awarded citizenship is rare in a country that’s historically wary of outsiders and reflects the importance South Korea has placed on achieving a respectable performance in arguably the Winter Games’ most popular sport.
South Korea would need to improve about 10 places from its world No. 28 ranking to qualify for the Olympic hockey tournament, and it’s counting on Radunske, a one-time Edmonton Oilers prospect, to help it get better.
For Radunske, the chance to play in the Olympics would cap a hockey career that has hardly been star-studded.
After the New Hamburg native was drafted by the Oilers in the third round of the 2002 NHL draft, Radunske bounced around the minors, struggling with the aftereffects of family tragedy.
While playing hockey at Michigan State University, shortly before he was drafted, Radunske’s mother Connie was hit by a car while jogging near their home outside Kitchener. While she survived following massive facial reconstruction surgery, brain damage left her with no emotional attachment to her family.
“She knew who they were, she recognized them, but she felt nothing for them,” said Brad Robins, who has known the Radunske family since he owned the amateur Aurora Tigers and Radunske played for them as a 16year-old.
“It was all messed up,” Radunske said. “They said in the grieving process it would have been easier if she had died. I didn’t know how to wrap my head around that.”
After bouncing between North American minor-league teams, Radunske signed with Anyang Halla, one of the Asian Hockey League’s seven teams, on the outskirts of Seoul.
Five years on, as Koreans slowly learn about hockey — spectators watch games while munching on delicacies such as deep-fried squid dipped in chocolate — Radunske and his family have become unlikely cultural icons in Korea. “We’ve tried to fit in and have come to really enjoy the country,” said Kelly Radunske, Brock’s wife. “We’ve got to the point where we actually keep kimchi (a garlicky pickled cabbage) in the fridge.”
Eight-month-old daughter Lucy has been featured in photo shoots for ad campaigns in Anyang, a Seoul suburb.
Radunske said the skill level of South Korean hockey is comparable to the East Coast Hockey League but is steadily getting better. The skaters are quick, like Europeans, he said, and there’s even the odd fight.
“It’s more UFC-type fighting,” he said. “There’s no rule book, no code where you square off with a guy. You have to look out behind you because that’s the guy who’s going to get you. They come in packs.”
Radunske, whose citizenship test required that he sing the South Korean national anthem, read and write in Korean and recount the country’s national holidays, will slip on a South Korea national team jersey for the first time during this year’s world championship, which begins in Budapest on April 14.
“I’m so excited to be able to represent a country,” he said. “They were pretty definite about wanting to know about what I really liked about Korea, what was my contribution to society outside of hockey. They didn’t just say, ‘he fits the bill to play on the hockey team.’”
Ito Peng, a University of Toronto sociology professor and South Korean native, said Radunske’s acceptance comes as South Korea slowly opens to foreigners. Last year, Jasmine Lee, who was born in the Philippines, became the first naturalized citizen, and the first nonethnic Korean, to win a seat in South Korea’s Parliament. South Korea also recently began to accept multi-ethnic citizens into its military. The changes are no small matter in a country where only a generation ago, school texts urged students to be prideful about being homogeneous and of “single pure hyeoltong (bloodline).”
“People have been taught they are homogenous and should be proud of being part of a pure Korean race,” Peng said. “When you start saying that should change, it can be strange and frightening to some people.”
To be sure, some South Koreans bristle over the influence of foreigners.
According to a 2007 study published in Sociology of Sport Journal that examined how Dutch soccer coach Guus Hiddink became an adopted national son after helping South Korea place fourth at the 2002 Korea and Japan World Cup, Korea remains a closed society in many respects.
Fewer than 10 foreigners per year were naturalized from 1948 to ’85, according to Korean Justice Department statistics cited by the study. In addition to restrictions on land ownership, foreigners cannot apply for a Korean credit card, nor can they buy a cellphone, said the study, co-authored by University of New Zealand sociology professor Steven Jackson. The government even requires foreigners who come to the country to teach English to take HIV tests, even though they don’t require the tests of ethnic Koreans who are raised abroad and move there.
Last year, the Korean Olympic Committee rejected a request from a domestic soccer club for then-31-year-old Brazilian midfielder Eninho to be given citizenship, the Korea Times reported. While Eninho could have represented the country in qualifying for the 2014 World Cup, he couldn’t speak any Korean after five years in the country, the newspaper said.
“We’re not talking about a country that’s been open to outsiders,” Jackson said. “Remember, 85 per cent of government officials all come out of three universities. Society is very structured.”
Radunske’s path to acceptance, however, was relatively easy, Peng said, “because he is a hockey player and sports stars are seen as celebrities. If we were talking about 100 Canadian teachers getting citizenship, there might be more hard feelings, more tension.”
Radunske has never played a game in the NHL and doesn’t presume he alone will help push South Korea into the Olympics.
He said South Korean hockey officials plan to lobby the government for citizenship for teammate Bryan Young, another former Oilers prospect.