Korea: something is happening south of the 38th parallel. It's become a breeding ground for a hot new export: lady glofers

Golf Digest, April, 2004 by Tom Callahan

"Golf is not yet the national game of Korea, eh?"

--Gert Frobe as "Goldfinger," apologizing to James Bond for the inexperienced caddie Oddjob.

Journeys to Korea don't usually start just outside Rochester, N.Y., but this one does. It's mid-June. The Ladies Professional Golf Association has pitched camp in Pittsford, a leafy little Christmas-train-set city that, from the head of Jefferson Road to the foot of the Locust Hill Country Club, is a perfectly idealized version of the typical American town. As the sun is going down on the tournament's opening day, the center of activity is the driving range.

Mi Hyun Kim is hitting balls. Se Ri Pak, who has finished hitting them, helpfully points her out to a visitor: "That's Kimmie." That's Hee-Won Han. That's Soo-Yun Kang. That's Jeong Jang. That's Young-A Yang. That's Ara Koh. That's Minny Yeo. That's Jimin Kang. "That's Gloria Park," Se Ri says, "and her dad, Steven."

Under a nearby tree, just a few moments earlier, Grace Park had responded to the inevitable question--why so many Korean women, so few Korean men?--by laughing like a Gatling gun and trilling like Beverly Sills, "Because women are better than men! Stronger and better!" Not until you get to Seoul will you find out she wasn't kidding.

Se Ri didn't really have to identify Kimmie. Five-feet-1 and required by the length of her driver and the nearness of the ground to swing like John Daly, Mi Hyun Kim is probably the most recognizable (after Queen Se Ri herself, and Grace Park) of the now-21 card-carrying Koreans on the LPGA Tour. Kimmie hardly seems to mind being 5-1, and it certainly doesn't keep her from moving the ball a surprisingly long way. "The smaller red peppers," she says like Confucius, "are the spicier ones."

Why is Korea turning out so many women pros, and so few men? "Because of me," Se Ri replies without bluster. "It all started with me. I'm the one who made them all come out to play."

Up close, even in the legs, she looks less like the shot-putter she used to be and, especially in the pigtails, more like the exhausted and terrified little girl made to duckwalk the avenue and sleep in the graveyards of Seoul by her stage father, a former nightclub bouncer.

"Before I came over to the U.S.," Se Ri says, harkening back to 1998, when she was only 20, "the mind-set was: 'It's not going to be easy there.' New life. New food. New language. [New loneliness.] But, when I qualified right away and won two major championships for my first two wins--won the U.S. Open just like that--everyone back home said, 'OK. If she can do it, I can do it.' But I dreamed it first, before anyone else. Or maybe my dad did first. He pushed me. That's the way our culture is. Parents want you to be strong and always right there mentally. They're always watching. You have to be the best. No. 1. 'Be No. 1! Be No. 1! Be No. 1!' You think, Someday, you'll have more fun. And, someday, you do. Still, it's never easy going first."

After taking a breath, she concludes: "As for the few men and the many women, the men's game is much harder, I guess. The women's is much more mental, I think."

Gloria Park, who honed her golf skills and her English in Australia, says, "I'm an only child." Even those with siblings seem to be only children. "I like to have somebody with me who loves me." Both of her parents are on the practice tee with her. Steven, a little round man in a bucket hat, made his money in slot machines (on the other end of the business from the moralist William Bennett), first in Tokyo, then in Sydney, now in Las Vegas. Lately Steven puts most of his coins into Gloria.

"I gave her pressure, a little bit too much, but now I'm mellower," he says in painstaking but pleasant English. "Many Korean parents push. I pushed. I don't push as much now." Maybe this is because Gloria, 24, has learned to push back.

"Most of the players have parents on the road with them, pushing them a little," says Grace Park, who is a year older than Gloria and, of course, no relation. (Only the happy accident of a passport typo has set Se Ri distinctively apart from Korea's legion of Parks.) "My first two years out here," Grace says, "my dad traveled with me full time. My mom came along maybe a third of the time. They still go back and forth probably 10 times a year. I started coming to the U.S. when I was 10 and moved here at 12, but I'm still a Korean citizen. I came here for golf, the one and only reason. I still consider Korea home. I'm definitely proud of myself and the other players from my country for our successes. I don't know whether you've noticed, but every day the first one to arrive at the golf course is Korean. The last one to leave, Korean. Why are there so many Korean women on the LPGA Tour? The answer is simple. Hard work."

Where should someone interested in the culture go looking for golf in Seoul?

"Have you been there?" Grace asks.

Yes, but not since the 1988 Olympics.

"Oh, you won't recognize it," she says. "Go to Sam Won Garden."

Sam Won Garden?

"It's a restaurant," she says, "a beautiful restaurant. Ask for my dad."