After ‘Miracle in Kiev,’ Jim Paek sows seeds for hockey boom
Jim Paek, director of the national hockey program, has been compared to Dutch football manager Guus Hiddink after the men’s ice hockey team achieved what local media called a “miracle in Kiev.”
It refers to Korea’s stunning success during the 2017 International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) Championship Division I Group A in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev in April. The national team finished second there after defeating several teams that were previously seen as unbeatable.
Korea was promoted to the top division for the first time and will play against the world’s strongest teams in next year’s competition. It will be the only Asian team to play in the top tier IIHF league in 2018.
What Paek has done for the men’s hockey team since he took the helm in July 2014 was comparable to what Dutch football coach Hiddink did for Korean football back in 2002 during the Korea-Japan FIFA World Cup, when Korea made it to the semi-finals.
Hiddink coached the national football team for two years from 2000 to 2002 and headed back home after the World Cup to PSV Eindhoven where he coached for three years.
“It’s a great honor to be compared to such a great sportsman,” Paek said at the Korea Ice Hockey Association (KIHA) conference room in southern Seoul on May 11. He said Hiddink did so many great things for Korean football, adding he was in Korea back in 2002 and watched how the Korean football team made it to the final four.
“What a fantastic job that was!” he said. “To compare myself to him, I don’t know if that’s fair to him. I don’t know him personally. I just saw the results and what happened with his football team... Football and hockey are different sports with different numbers of players and so many different parts of it.”
Paek was a star athlete in North America before he retired as a player in 2003. He won the Stanley Cup twice with the Pittsburgh Penguins. He was the first player of Korean descent to play in the National Hockey League (NHL) when he made his league debut in 1990. He immigrated to Canada with his family in 1968 when he was a baby and was raised in Toronto. Later he earned U.S. citizenship while playing in the NHL. Paek is the first foreign citizenship holder to coach the men’s national team.
The situation Paek faced in his early years in Korea after joining the national team in 2014 seemed to be a lot tougher than what Hiddink had faced back in the early 2000s.
Football was and still is one of the most popular sports in Korea. The professional football league — K League — has consistently attracted spectators to stadiums since the league was launched in 1983.
Unlike football, hockey was and still is an unpopular sport in Korea, compared to other winter sports such as speed skating and short-track speed skating for which Korean athletes have collected many Olympic medals. A recent survey found Koreans’ favorite winter sport is figure skating.
The ratio of the hockey-playing population in Korea falls far below that of North America. There are only 230 registered adult male hockey players in Korea, whereas 138,000 adult males are registered as hockey players in the United States.
Yang Seung-jun, chief officer of the KIHA, said Paek is a game changer in Korean hockey, calling him an engaging, interactive coach.
Paek knows everything about each and every player in the national team and tries to help them out when they are in trouble because their personal issues affect their performance, he said.
Yang, also a former hockey player, said Paek is a world-class coach completely different from his predecessors.
“There are no other hockey coaches who can possibly be compared to him,” he said.
“Korean hockey has a relatively short history, compared to North America, and there was no system in place when Mr. Paek joined the national team,” he said. “Mr. Paek was trained under great coaches and mentors and played in the NHL which is a dream career any hockey player would die for. His players admire him partly because of his credentials and partly because they were convinced by his systematic and strategic approach.”
Paek attributed the success of the men’s hockey team to his hockey players’ hard work and KIHA President Chung Mong-won’s dedication to the sport and generous funding to push it forward.
“President Chung is our best supporter. Without him, honestly hockey would not be in Korea,” he said. “He allows our staff to work efficiently... He is always there to support.”
History says the legacy of the World Cup and other major international sports events outlive those events.
The Hiddink legacy, for example, has stayed alive in Korean society after the World Cup. The Dutch coach was mentioned as one of the most inspiring foreign-born leaders in a 2005 public opinion survey taken by the Korea Leadership Center. Abraham Lincoln topped the survey of 1,200 people, followed by Hiddink.
The Dutch football coach also prompted a post-World Cup publication rush about his leadership as experts sought to find possible lessons from Korea’s dramatic rise to the semi-finals during the World Cup for business and other sectors. There was a football boom after the 2002 World Cup as well. The K League saw an increase in spectators.
Asked if he expects there will be a post-Olympic hockey boom that can be comparable to the football boom in Korea after the 2002 World Cup, Paek said he thinks so.
“I think hockey fits our Korean personality,” he said.
According to him, hockey is an emotional sport and emotions come out while playing and watching hockey games.
“Having more resources and more arenas and more players attracted, I think when we play in the Olympics, that’s a second beginning because what we’ve done in the past in Korean hockey has been great,” he said.
Paek was optimistic about the future of Korean hockey.
“With the players I’m coaching now and with their world experience, all these tournaments in high divisions and seeing other coaches will help and then the will pass it on,” he said. “So once they retire they can come back and coach young kids (to help hockey continue to grow).”
It remains to be seen whether the forthcoming Winter Olympics could stir such a research boom about Paek’s leadership after the 2018 Winter Olympics just as the 2002 World Cup did.
It hinges on how much Korean hockey can inspire home fans.
I think hockey fits our Korean personality.