P- Motor Sports in Korea
Intro: Welcome to season 5 of Hwa-Ting Sports Podcast! I am your host Mr. S! Our show focuses on all things Korean sports with irreverent takes and 100% accurate never wrong sports commentary. Special episodes as the need arises. Snark and Salt sprinkled throughout *joke sting*. And with that, say it with me, 1-2-3 HWAI-TING!!!
*Car engine noises* The sound of revving engines, the descending lights at the starting gate, the shaking of the ground as the fans rush to their seats. Ah, the glory that is motor racing *race car goes by* akkk the smell of diesel cough cough cough. And now I see why people watch this at home! *joke sting*. Today we’re talking about motorsport in South Korea, a sport that should be more popular, considering the number of speed demons on the roads here that DRIVE like they’re F1 racers. OYE! WATCH THE ROAD! I’M WALKING HERE!
Car racing history
You’d figure that in a country that became famous for auto manufacturing that they would have a great motorsport history but that’s not the case. One issue was after the Korean War, resources went towards industrialization, housing, and farming. Sports investment went towards baseball and football. Another issue is with all the mountains. Kinda hard to have a flat racetrack in a region that’s mostly hilly and mountainous. Speaking of hills, the 1st Korea Automobile Racing Championship was a mountain road race on March 19, 1987 from Jinburyeong to Yongpyeong - a 150km course won by Park Kwon-chun from Suwon. You can see little clips of it on Youtube and woo boy dem cars were NOT sporty. The first Grand Prix was in 1987 on some gravel ass road in Gyeongju. Link in the description. Bless the film crew; they tried the very best to make it look cool, but it…ain’t. *joke sting* Anyway, this lead
to Korea building a proper racecourse starting with the Yongin Natural Farm Motor Park opening in 95 and motorsport really got going. MBC sports and Kia got into it and the early gen Kia Prides became the car racing choice. Hyundai Oilbank even got into it and sponsored the Oilbank Racing course. And right when things got going, you know it, the IMF crisis hit and sponsorships of racing collapsed, many circuits like Everland closed, leaving Taebaek as the only functioning course. And guess what? They raised the rents 60% so the KGTC held a race in…Japan! Yeah that’ll show em *joke sting*. This was a problem until the Yongin and Yeongnam circuits got built, then Everland reopened in 2013. There is some backstory to the Everland track that y’all should know about and boy howdy it’s spicy! WHOO! Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee at the time in 2009 either had the track shut down or defied orders to shut it down. Either way a scandal hit the press in that he was spotted by Hanky reporters as he was driving his supercars around the track. It was his love of fast cars that led to Samsung getting into the industry, even though they never build an engine before. This led to partnerships but a lot of failure, and Samsung sold their unit to Renault. When Kia went bankrupt, Samsung lobbied politicians to prevent the financial industry from providing additional aid to Kia Motors because he wanted to buy it as alleged in the “X-file” recordings, which experts say was one of the factors behind the IMF bailout. Which leads to discussion of another problem.
There are a lot of reasons why the sport didn’t take off. First we start with the culture. There wasn’t a big racing culture pre-war or post-war. People say that circuit races are boring and compared it to model trains going around a house course. Which to be honest is kinda true. When I went to the F1 in 2011 I saw people sleeping in the stands somehow. I mean fuck, it was hella loud by the checkered flag! How did they sleep? So until 2010 there just wasn’t the national interest in it. Another reason relates to how annoyed people are with aggressive drivers and the lack of an exciting racing car culture. Regular people didn’t have cars until the late 80s and early 90s and with so many people living in small apartments, not a lot of garages to work on cars yourself. Police regulations also made it hard to get your tuned up car to the racetrack and back because they weren’t road certified after so many changes. Until the government teamed up with the auto racing association, police officers would raid auto warehouses and confiscate all the cars. The family would not approve *joke sting*. There’s also not a lot of places to race until recently, so people would race on the highway or the hillside roads, often leading to accidents and police crackdowns. They even put a center bar on the bulgak skyway in Seoul to stop drifting events. Another big problem that needs to be covered is the lack of interest by Korean automobile companies. The genesis coupe and the tiburon were pretty common among racing teams but after 2014 the coupe lost favor because Hyundai stopped making models with high engine output so people imported cars from Japan. Hyundai is taking pro racing a bit more serious these days with their own Magma racing team in the hypercar division. So, where can you actually see a race if you are so interested?
Info on the races & courses and where to watch
Finding information on auto racing in Korea is actually one of the harder things to do in the sports world. Naver Sports and Daum Sports didn’t even have a dedicated section to motorsports. Even in the general sports category, there wasn’t any mention of races. I saw more about foot races than I did about cars! I tried a general search in Daum about car racing and I got a Malcolm X article. *joke sting*. Eventually I found an article from last week from Baby News, yes that’s what it said on the caption, that Buckaroo has launched a collaboration collection to continue its official apparel partnership with the ONE Super Race Championship. They’re making racing themed t-shirts. Anyway, the actual race wasn’t mentioned until the last sentence of the segment. Which is next weekend at Everland by the way. To find any sort of useful information, you have to go to the race’s website and even then it might be a struggle! For example, SuperRace still had last year’s race schedule on the front page so you had to wait for the rotating banner to show you this year’s race info, or just click 2026 season. But if you watch all the banners, you can see a link to their season pass which is 160k on interpark. This gets you into all 8 of their races. Yes, 8 races. But anyway the kids club pass is only a mesely 89k! Though you gotta admit the drawbag is kinda cool *joke sting*. They’re in Everland 5 times and Inje once so it’s more convenient for Seoul fans. SuperRace is mostly stock cars and touring cars but they also have motorcycle racing and some kinda Formula 1 style called Radical Car. They have a bit of everything it seems.
The Hyundai N Festival focuses mainly on Hyundai cars like the avante and the ionic, and it runs from May to November at the 5 racetracks in Korea. Instagram Link in the description since their website was utterly useless.
Kic-Cup Challenge Touring Car race goes from april to november but with only 4 races in Yeongam it feels like it’s dying out. I’m including the entire Yeongam schedule because honestly it’s more accurate than the race’s facebook page or their own website.
Inje Speedium in Gangwon also has its own homegrown race called the Inje Masters. I’m including the schedule in the description just to make your life easier. The racetrack has a hotel so you can do weekend stays and chat with the racing teams in the buffet line *joke sting*. They also have drag races and drift competitions along with time trials so it’s a bit more varied that the other racing competitions. No word on whether they have flying car competitions like Fast 11 *joke sting*.
The road racing championship is also in Yeongam and it runs 5 races from April to October. I’ll include the link in the description but I wouldn’t count on their website. And now we’re going to talk about what everyone really tuned it for, the racing girls.
the racing models
So the Korean term is racing models, which in English refers to the cars but here it refers to the ladies who stand around at motor shows in front of cars so leering men with telephoto lenses can take photos of their pores *joke sting*. And that’s pretty much the auto racing culture in a nutshell. There are great drivers and fast cars but people only pay attention to the racing models. And with that attention came money in tens of millions per month and even 60 mill a month *cash register sound* Even though F1 phased them out, Korea’s motorsports system is wholly dependent on them, to the point where the sport reporters know more about them than the cars that are on the damn track! If you type something like Seoul Autoshow, you’ll get mostly pictures of the models, not the cars. Yeah it be like that! Some of the models like Kim Seehyang went into modeling and acting. Since Covid the interest in racing models has declined but interest in the sport has increased due to youtubers taking part in drives around the tracks. It hasn’t always been easy for the racing models that don’t go on to greater fame. Former model Lee Hae-reun died in 2024 of suicide under suspicious circumstances, though that speculation was mostly due to a coincidental murder happening around the same time. Anyway, if you go to an auto show or race, be kind to the models. Or at least, don’t fetish their feet, mmkay? *joke sting* And if you don’t go, you might still find one on the cover of Maxim or any of the various men’s mags or sports mags out there.
the future of auto racing in korea/Gwangju Autobahn
There is some hope for the sport, even though interest has not kept up with the times. Hyundai is investing money in the N Festival, and has created a hypercar team called Genesis Magma that will participate in the World Endurance Championships next week, and finished second overall at the opening round of the European Le Mans Series. They say it’s a hypercar but it looks like an F1 to me.
Another good sign is Mercedes hosted an F1 showcase in Yongin last year. According to statements in the Daily Sabah, Mercedes’ social media analytics saw a rise in young female fans ages 15 to 25. Who says boys are the only ones to like very fast cars?! *joke sting*
Back in 2022, KBS World covered the autonomous race car competition in Las Vegas in which KAIST ran a racecar there, making it to the semifinals. This led to the College Student Self-Designed Car Competition in Gunsan last year which had two types. There was a Baja race which was on unpaved roads and the Formula which favored speed. 35 teams from around the country competed in the race. So over the next few years, expect to see more about autonomous car races which hopefully won’t lead to death races like that Fast 9 movie!
Hyundai Motorstudio Seoul finished its remodeling and is now open in Gangnam. There is a library of automobile related books, a bunch of car toys all over the place, but don’t worry they’re on the walls so you won’t flop on them like the wet bandits in Home Alone *joke sting*. There are test drive programs and car talks, so it’s more than a dusty diesel fueled museum. If you’re tired of beauty shops and hot chicken restaurants, check it out. Link in the description.
A while ago, Road & Track magazine sent a reporter to Korea and it led to a big 300 car meetup of illegally tuned cars late at night, complete with spying police cars passing nearby. With how strict the rules are in Korea regarding cars, it’s no wonder so many drivers showed up just to prove there’s still a place for gearheads. The problem is that with the strict rules, expensive import taxes on car parts and foreign vehicles, lack of open driving spaces, narcs EVERY FRICKENWHERE, and the double license for manual transmission driving, getting the young into racecar driving will prove to be a difficult task and thusly you won’t see much from this sport in the future.
GQ had an article about the problems with motorsports these days, and the one-car races here are seen as a major reason why. If you like Toyotas, you can’t root for Toyotas here because they aren’t allowed in the big race. Also they don’t do a lot of mixed vehicle type races here which makes for a bit of a plain race, especially if you can’t emotionally connect with the drivers. Think about baseball or footie- you might like the sport more if you knew a player or coach, or if a player came from your city or country. Or if you saw them on TV and liked their style of play. Motorsports here in Korea is starting to create the narrative especially through social media and influencers coming to the track. They’ll just need to let the drivers drive…to the track. Like… I don’t need y’all drifting into the MceeDees while I’m cycling past and y’all sideswipe me! *joke sting* Go do that in Yeongam and not while I’m trying to park!
And finally there was a proposal to build a Germany style Autobahn with no speed limits from Gwangju to the Yeongam racetrack as a way to boost interest in motorsports. It was originally proposed during the Yoon administration as a way to provide drivers with the means to test their vehicles at high speeds. Needless to say it was shat on by many, including the Gwangju News which called it a death trap and a quote autopsy hub unquote. I mean, they ain’t wrong! There needs to be a lot of changes in regulation and driving culture before such an idea even hits the road *joke sting*. As of this writing, the no-speed limit highway is being considered by the ministry of transportation. Hopefully, wiser heads will prevail.
Volleyball/basketball playoff info
The women’s volleyball championship ended early last week with a 3 to oh sweep of Gimcheon. Gimcheon went without their head coach because his contract wasn’t renewed over the abuse allegations, leaving the senior coach in charge for the series. The Men’s title comes down to tonight’s game 5 with the Korean Air Jumbos hosting the Hyundai Capital Skywalkers in Incheon. If you like volleyball at all, you’ll wanna see this game at 7PM because it could mean a surprising comeback for the Skywalkers.
In basketball, the women’s playoffs started Wednesday with KB Stars beating the pants off Woori and Samsung losing to Hana Bank. This weekend’s games will be in Asan and Bucheon. On the men’s side, the last game was Wednesday and here’s the playoff matchup. Seoul SK will be playing at home against the Sono Skygunners on Sunday at Jamsil Student’s gym at 2PM. Sono won their last matchup in March but SK is a much better team. I will talk more about both playoff series next week so stay tuned!
Worst Persons
Speaking of volleyball, we’ve got more zany news from the league, but only tangentially this time. And yes it involves another tournament. According to reports in the Joongang Daily, the Asian Volleyball Confederation stripped the hosting rights of the 2026 Women’s Volleyball Champions League from Incheon and moved it to Bangkok due to what was reported to be severe lack of preparation by the managing firm including failures to secure basic infrastructure, accommodations, transportation and competition venues. Wait, what? That’s like inviting people to the party and you forgot the chips, the drinks, the snacks, and hell the whole house! So now the league has moved to Bangkok which means that if winner GSCaltexx wants to participate, the team has to pay their own way and hopefully win to get the $20,000 in prize money per team. That is around a thousand per person which wouldn’t even cover their apartment rent for a month. Yaaayyyy…. This is mainly because KOVO and the volleyball federation do not want to cover the expense and didn’t even initiate the bid for the champions league to play in Korea. But you would figure they would take an interest to make sure H&L Partners didn’t cock up the bid. And now there’s more reason to be distrustful of Korean volleyball in the eyes of foreigners which is why…they get the Bulhwa or Fluroide award.
Also the Kovo is getting called out for its Galapagos rules in regards to video replay. In a match on the 4th, the ball hit the line but was ruled out. According to FIVB rules the ball is considered “in” as long at it is within 1mm of the line. But in the KOVO league, the inner line must be obscured at the point where the ball is pressed down to its maximum extent on the ground. According to the Outside Hitter blog, this rule difference is obsolete because the replay quality has improved. Nonetheless it confused the heck out of the Hyundai Capital fans and foreign coaches. Decisions about the ball’s placement are made by supervisors using the broadcasting firms’ cameras, which can be inconsistent since they move all the time. Fans remain skeptical about whether the supervisors, composed of elderly retired players and coaches, possess the expertise necessary for precise screen analysis. And that’s why KOVO gets another word, the Radon Award
Our final award goes to the KBO pitchers for issuing so many walks the average game length went up 10 minutes from last year, according to reports in the Joongang Ilbo. This negates the benefits of the pitch clock. Also this year, the leaguewide ERA is 5.20, and seven clubs have an ERA of 5.00 or worse. And it isn’t just the local staff behind this either! The foreign pitchers, well the ones not on the DL, are not pitching well. lvin Rodriguez of the Lotte Giants has walked a league-worst 10 batters while striking out four in 11 innings. Wilkel Hernandez of the Eagles has seven walks six strikeouts in 10 innings. KT Wiz starter Matt Sauer has seven walks and only four strikeouts in 11 innings. All a y’all are ass this season! Did you spend too much time indoors watching the World Baseball Classic??? To the benches with you! The KBO pitching crew, today’s plutonium award winner!
GOTW
In Baseball I’ve got my eyes on SSG vs LG this weekend. SSG needs to prove it can win against good teams which it didn’t against Hanwha. LG has not been good but they have shown improvement lately. This weekend we will find out if SSG’s a paper tiger or not.
In semi-pro soccer an interesting match has come up. Chuncheon Citizen in the K3 is hosting Gangneung City Sunday at 2PM. There’s beef between the two cities because Gangwon FC moved to Gangneung and Chuncheon made their own team as a result. It also helps that both teams are struggling and could use another win. In K4 Namyangju FC is also hosting a match Sunday at 2PM against Seoul Jungang FC with both in good position to get up the standings. Whomever wins could be in second place in case Jinju falters against Gijang United, which has lost a lot of funding due to city hall issues.
The marquee matchup in the pro leagues will be Seoul vs Jeonbuk on Saturday at 2pm. If you want some details about this match, tune in to the From Outside The Box podcast. There’s one thing I’ll say they might not; Seoul’s been trying to make a championship team for years but never got over the hump. If you’re a believer in history or psycho-history *joke sting* you should bet on Jeonbuk to win.
*Breaking news sound* An update on the Women’s K-League. Only Suwon FC sells tickets so don’t worry about it there. At the other stadiums, they now require attendees to sign up at the KWFF website to create a QR identity code or to create a code at the stadium. This appears to be their way to track attendance, something they haven’t done much of these days. Claire H. Evans of WK-League News wrote a detailed guide in English on how to make it work on your phone. Link in the description.
Ending
Thank you for tuning in today. We hope you learned something about Korean Sports because if you didn’t, you will be visited by Dalgyal gwishin tonight *joke sting*. What? Didn’t you hear? Season 5 was ruled a national monument by the government *joke sting*! Pass this pod on to anyone interested in Korean sports and especially rookies because they are doomed without us *Joke sting*. If you wish to read along or contact the show, visit our website at hwatingsportspodcast dot com or our Facebook page and everything you need is right there. Give our podcast 5 stars if you have time. Music notes like the opening song thanks to DumiAFava. You can reach him on Instagram @daf_daffy247. Cover art thanks to our cycling expert James! A shoutout to our listeners in Telford England, home of the Telford Tigers ice hockey team! Yes there is ice hockey in England and no that’s not an AI hallucination! Thanks for listening!
(AI voice) Guests of the Hwa-ting sports podcast get new threads at Not-So-Unique-o, the hottest fast fashion shop with locations all over the peninsula. Do you have too many gochujang stains on your best shirt or blouse? They’ll hook you right up as long as you are flatter than a pancake! They also sell the famous studded belts that come in handy when threatening your peeking tom landlord! This week only, all slightly smelly underwear is 20 percent off! Shop now & look not-so Unique today!
Notes:
Genesis Magma Racing - NamuWiki
Korea International Circuit | RacingCalendar.net
korea-road-racing-championship
South Korea - RacingCircuits.info
Asian volleyball governing body strips Korea of champions league hosting, moves event to Bangkok
With walks aplenty, KBO games taking longer despite pace-of-play rules - The Korea Times
제네시스 마그마 레이싱, '2026 세계내구선수권대회' 공식 참가 | 연합뉴스
Korean automotive engineers host self-driving car competition for university students - CHOSUNBIZ
Hyundai Motorstudio Seoul reopens as playground for car enthusiasts - CHOSUNBIZ
Inside South Korea's Vibrant Illegal Underground Car Scene
https://wkleaguenews.com/2026/04/08/qr-code-entry-system-guide