What drove Korean judo to a crushing defeat?

Judo, which has always been one of the strongest sports for the Korean Olympic team, crashed at the Sydney Olympic Games with a humiliating record. The first gold medal from judo for Korea was won in the 1984 L.A Olympics. At the time, An Byung-Kun paved the way for the Korean team by winning a gold medal and Ha Young-Ju soon followed to give Korean judo a total of two gold medals. Then the gold medal rush followed in judo with two gold medals during the 1988 Seoul Olympics (Kim Jae-Yup and Lee Kyung-Kun), one gold medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics (Kim Mi-Jung) and two gold medals in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics (Chun Ki-Young and Cho Min-Sun), threatening the stranglehold of Japan, which claims to be the suzerain nation of judo.

However, Korea can no longer claim to be a strong judo nation and no one is sure what caused Korean judo to slump like this. Most are blaming the Korea Judo Committee¡¯s self-complacency and egotism for the fall. The decline in the Korean judo team was long expected. The team was in full of pride after winning three gold medals in the 1997 world judo championship following the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games with Chun Ki-Young, Cho In-Chul and Kim Hyuk each winning a gold medal. However, after the retirement of Chun Ki-Young, the team¡¯s star, Korean judo fell into a slump owing to its failure to foster the next generation. Moreover, the Korean judo team neglected to find suitable talent and to gather information from overseas. The main reason that gold medal hopefuls Jang Sung-Ho and Cho Min-Sun lost to unknown Algerian and Cuban competitors is the lack of information on African and Latin American teams, which are rapidly rising as new judo powers.

Bringing back retired athletes such as Cho Min-Sun and Jung Sung-Sook failed to substitute for the neglect in fostering new talent. We have much to learn from how France and Japan prepared for the Sydney Olympic Games. Especially Japan, which once lost ground to Korea, has improved its skills against European competitors by participating in every major championship held in Europe. Even right before the Sydney Olympics, they went on field training in Europe. They have even drastically changed their methods for selecting players for the national team. By selecting two teams after three trials, they made them participate constantly in overseas competitions. In that way, the players were given an opportunity to cope with diverse techniques.