Badminton Association Raises Allegations of Unfair Evaluation of National Team Coaches...The association's response to the objection is full of unfairness and errors

Dec 19, 2024

An Se-young hugging coach Kim Hak-kyun and shedding tears of joy after winning the women's singles gold medal at the Paris Olympics. Yonhap News

A part of the Badminton Association's response to the coach/coaches, Gam Hak-kyun

While the Badminton Korea Association is causing a stir due to the backlash of the national team coach and coach against re-appointment, allegations of unfairness were found to be true during the re-appointment evaluation process. According to Sports Chosun's response to the objection obtained on the 19th, the association actually acknowledged the unfair evaluation by delegating the selection of external evaluation members to Chairman Kim Taek-kyu and distorting the recommendation of the Korea Sports Association's leadership evaluation method.

The response to the objection was answered by the association to the objection filed by Kim Hak-kyun, the head coach of the national team, and two coaches. When the association recently decided not to re-employment through performance evaluation, head coach Kim and others responded head-on, protesting against the violation of guidelines and unfairness.

The association said in its response that three of the five evaluation members, excluding two internal members of the Performance Improvement Committee, were appointed to Chairman Kim. The three outsiders appointed by the chairman competed with head coach Kim in the past in open recruitment of national team leaders, or were those who usually feud with head coach Kim and his aides.

Among the examples of the reappointment evaluation table of leaders delivered by the Korea Sports Council in 2020, the leadership competency coaching behavior item

A leader's qualitative evaluation item created by the Badminton Association by modifying the guidelines of the sports association

Chairman Kim has been shifting the blame to the coaching staff of the national team since the 'Ahn Se-young's decision-making speech situation. In particular, the prosecutor of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Sports has been criticized for poor administration, breach of trust, and embezzlement, and has been asked to dismiss him, and is under police investigation. Rather, it is enough to buy unfair suspicions in that the chairman, who is supposed to be evaluated, exercised his full power to select members who evaluate others.

The association also disclosed the evaluation guidelines without responding to Kim's objection, saying, "'It is unfair to pass the official document of the guidelines for re-appointment of leaders of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Sports Council in September and November to allow fair recruitment considering the results of major international competitions and to include an unscheduled qualitative evaluation based on the example of the re-appointment evaluation table notified by the Korea Sports and Olympic Committee in 2020.'

The self-modified evaluation guidelines by the association were also full of suspicions. For the example of the evaluation table recommended by the Sports Council, '30 points for performance + 20 points for performance improvement + 30 points for leadership competency + 20 points for coaching behavior' were allocated. The qualitative evaluation factor is 'coaching behavior', which evaluates ethics and communication with players, and the remaining quantitative evaluation is 80 points.

An official letter of cooperation regarding the reappointment of the national team leader sent by the Korean Olympic Committee to the Badminton Association in September

Guide to the 2020 reappointment evaluation form for leaders sent by the Korea Olympic Committee

On the other hand, the association transformed 'guided competency into a subjective evaluation item and transformed 'guided competency' into a quantitative evaluation 50 points + qualitative evaluation 50 points while creating a guideline with 'Gyeonggi performance improvement 25 points + guidance competency 15 points + communication 10 points + international competition management 10 points' in this evaluation. In particular, 15 points were allocated by establishing an interview evaluation that was not in the guidelines of the sports association. Considering that the re-employment cut line is 80 points, it is a decisive allocation. The interview evaluation was conducted by the evaluation committee appointed by Chairman Kim.

The association has no relevant regulations because it is the first time to conduct a leader's performance evaluation in its response. However, the committee and the chairman decided on the evaluation committee after consulting on the procedures they had done at the time of appointing the leader", and virtually acknowledged that the reappointment evaluation was carried out in a hasty manner.

Coach Kim said, `All amateur sports have strategic events for each part. But even in the quantitative evaluation, the association applied the average of all coaches' scores to the coach, making it unfavorable"How can we accept the unfair evaluation situation when it is revealed everywhere?" he said.

cms@sportschosun.com