"It has been a time to retrace the path the foundation has walked and redefine its role."
Park Jang-soon, an Olympic gold medalist and chairman of the Sports Safety Foundation, reflected on his past year in these terms as he recently marked the first anniversary of his inauguration. Having taken office as chairman on May 15 last year, he assessed that he "led substantive changes across the foundation's overall management through field-centered administration." Park is a "wrestling legend" who won gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and silver at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Over the past year, the foundation significantly strengthened its education, research, inspection, and certification operations to build a field-centered safety management system. "We developed online educational content for local governments and for safety management officials and safety personnel who are subject to mandatory training," Park said. "We also advanced sports event safety inspection indicators to maximize their applicability in the field." He added, "In particular, we developed a comprehensive sports event safety management manual and supported sports event safety management system certification for a total of 24 organizations, including all KBO clubs, building and spreading a standardized safety management framework."
Expanding the safety culture through partnerships with related organizations was another notable achievement. The foundation reinforced its safety network within the sports community by renewing its memorandum of understanding with the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee, and joined hands with the Korea Sports Industry Association to foster a safety ecosystem across all areas of the sports industry, including sporting goods, facilities, and services. The foundation also launched a "Sports Heat-Related Illness Prevention Campaign" together with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Dong-A Otsuka, presenting a multi-dimensional safety campaign model based on cooperation among the public sector, private sector, and corporations.
Entering his second year in office, Park is focusing on eliminating "blind spots in sports safety" in the wake of recent accidents at boxing and marathon events. He judges that institutional reinforcement is essential, given the limits of relying on private-sector efforts alone. Accordingly, the foundation is actively supporting the "Partial Amendment to the National Sports Promotion Act," which Democratic Party lawmaker Lim O-kyeong introduced as the lead sponsor in December last year. Its core provisions include granting local governments supervisory and disciplinary authority over sports event safety management, establishing a dedicated safety management agency, and building a national integrated data and information system for sports event safety management.
"To prevent recent safety accidents at sports event sites from recurring, we must firmly supplement the safety blind spots — where private-sector efforts alone fall short — with laws and institutions," Park said. "The amendment to the National Sports Promotion Act currently being pursued will be a crucial turning point that changes the paradigm of sports safety in Korea by clarifying the responsible parties and accountability for safety management."
