K-Sports highlights with Jason Lee

Time for the latest in the world of K-sports, from a great achievement by Korean golfers, and updates on the KBO's upcoming all-star game, to football news. We are joined by our sportscaster Jason Lee in the studio who will bring us all the highlights. Hello Jason!

Q1. Let's start with success for Korea at the LPGA. (we would have to go all the way back to the first week of May for the last time a Korean won on the LPGA, but that all changed last weekend when) Korea had not just one, but TWO winners at the Dow Championship what happened there?

Yeah, last weekend's LPGA event was a team event where players played with a partner of their choice and in the end it was Lee Somi and Im Jin-Hee who came out victorious after beating Lexi Thompson and Megan Khang, both of the US, in a playoff.

Both Lee Somi and Im Jin-Hee were rookies to the LPGA tour last year and this was the first victory for both of them so I'm sure it was very special for them compared to the other pairs in the tournament.

Q2. How is the team event played? Is it just the best combined score from each pair?

Actually, the way the tournament worked is it was alternate shot for the 1st and 3rd rounds so each pair basically plays with the same ball, but they alternate hitting the same ball.

For the 2nd and 4th rounds, each player plays their own ball, but the score is the better of the 2 so if one play birdies the hole whereas the other player pars it, they would get a birdie for their score.

Lee Somi and Im Jin-Hee both had birdie putts on the 18th hole which could've won them the tournament, but they both missed while Lexi Thompson birdied the final hole to force the playoff.

But in that playoff, it went back to alternate shot and Im Jin-Hee sank her birdie putt set up by a nice tee shot by Lee Somi.

Megan Khang actually missed a shorter put to hand the Korean pair the victory.

They become the 17th and 18th champions on the season as the tour has not had a 2-time winner yet this season.

Q3. Moving on to the Korean baseball league, on Wednesday, the KBO total attendance for the season surpassed 7 million fans, in the fastest time ever in KBO history, and we are still more than a week away from the All-Star break.

That IS amazing speaking of the All-Star game next weekend we talked about the starting line up a bit last week, but I understand the rest of the team has now been finalized what can we look forward to?

I mentioned last week that Samsung's Kim Seong-Yoon didn't get voted on despite leading the league with a.347 average I have to say I was very surprised to see he wasn't selected as a sub either with his own manager Park Jin-Man electing to go with a pair of KT outfielders instead in Ahn Hyun-Min and Bae Jung-Dae.

Ahn is a front runner for Rookie of the Year with 15-home runs and a.337 average so I totally get it, but I was honestly pretty surprised Bae Jung-Dae made the team.

Fans can get another look at LG outfielder Kim Hyun-Soo again as he's been selected to his record 16th All-Star appearance.

That's 1 more than Samsung catcher Kang Min-Ho who will make his 15th appearance.

Q4. Also kicking off next week are the East Asia E-1 Football Championships featuring both Korea's mens and womens national soccer teams with matches in Yongin, Suwon and Hwaseong, what are some updates you can give us on the tournament?

The big story is that Hong Myung-Bo has elected not to call on his European players for the tournament.

So most of the players he'll be using are from the K-League with a few also playing in the J-League in Japan.

Jeon Jin-Woo of Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors played really well in his first 2 games with the Senior team and I think he'll be a guy the team will try to use a lot.

Joo Min-Kyu is a bit older at 35 years old now, but he's been playing well in the K-League 1 and I could see Hong Myung-Bo counting on him for leadership with what's a bit of a less experienced team for the most part.

Korea's first game will be Monday against China at 8pm at Yongin's Mireu Stadium should be worth your while to check out if you're in the area.

Q5. Speaking of Mireu Stadium in Yongin, it could be host to a new professional soccer team as the K-League looks to expand what are the details on that?

Yes, there are 3 teams that want to join the K-League 2, which is the league under the K-League 1 and one of the bids is coming from Yongin that would use Mireu Stadium as their home.

The other bids are from the Paju Citizen, just north of Seoul and Gimhae FC, which is in the suburbs of Busan.

The 2 latter teams play in the K-League 3, which is a semi-pro league, but it's a league that doesn't yet feed into the K-League 2 like the K-League 2 promotes into K-League 1.

There are plans to add K-League 3 and K-League 4, which exist right now as independant leagues, to eventually have promotion to K-League 2, but that's a couple of years away.

As for Paju, Gimhae and Yongin, one of them should get into K-League 2 next season which would make it a 14 team league.

You've gotta think Paju and Gimhae have the upper hand since they both already have teams in K-League 3.

Q6. Staying with the K-League, it was announced this week that the league will be inducting 6 more members into its Hall of Fame who's being honoured?

Yes, the K-League created their Hall of Fame 2 years ago in 2023, which was the league's 40th anniversary.

6 members were selected for their innaugural induction and 6 more were chosen for the 2nd induction which will take place every 2 years.

The 4 players selected this year were Yoo Sang-Chul, Kim Byung-Ji, Kim Ju-Seong and Dejan Damjanovic along with coach Kim Ho and builder Jung Mong-Jun.

Yoo Sang-Chul was a big part of Korea's 2002 World Cup team that went to the semi-finals.

Kim Byung-Ji was also a part of that team, but never saw the field as the team's back up keeper he also holds the K-League record for most appearances.

Dejan Damjanovic is the first foreign inductee as the league's 2nd leading scorer only behind Lee Dong-Gook, who was inducted 2 years ago.

Kim Joo-Seong was league MVP in 1997 and was a top player mostly in the 90s.

Q7. And one more soccer question as you mentioned last week that Ki Sung-Yeung and FC Seoul were parting ways, but it seemed that the FC Seoul fans weren't ready to let him go

Yeah there was quite the protest to his release and news of him joining the Pohang Steelers as expected.

FC Seoul fans over the weekend were visibly and audibly disgruntled over having to see him play in a different K-League uniform.

FC Seoul actually hosted Pohang on Sunday and won the game 4-1 but the fans didn't seem to care much they even blocked FC Seoul's team bus after the game for almost an hour in protest of Ki's release and Ki did not play in that game.

Q8. And one more thing with baseball, there seems to be a lot of talk about the possibility of the NC Dinos leaving Changwon for another city how likely do you think that is?

Yeah, this goes back to the opening week of the season in March when an NC Dinos fan died after being struck in the head by a large metal piece that fell from pretty high up into a crowded area.

Obviously there was a lot of finger pointing after the incident and the Dinos aren't happy about how that was handled by the city of Changwon.

That among other issues has led them to explore the possibility of moving to a new home.

Now, I still think there's a good chance that the 2 sides will figure things out as I think it's a bad look for both sides if they were to move, but the team says they already have much better offers from prospective new homes.

I don't know where they could move to, but if I had to guess, the places that make the most sense would be Gimhae, Yangsan or Ulsan as I'm sure they wouldn't want to go too far away from their original fan base.

But again, I would think it would be best for all parties to figure out a way to stay in Changwon.

Alright Jason, thank you for the updates, have a great rest of the week.

Thank you Bella, see you tomorrow.