The introduction of baseball in
Korea was presented in “YMCA Baseball Team” as an act of modernization. Also, I
think it could be used as a symbol reflecting the whole process of
modernization through which Korea went during the time of colonization. We see
at the beginning a few foreigners playing the game, which grabs Ho-Chang’s
interest in the sport right away, and as a result he ends up being part of the
first Korean baseball team. Of course as every new trend the sport is more
popular among the younger generations. As a matter of fact, the older people
seem to have an initial negative attitude about it and it is only natural for
older people to reject change. However, Ho-Chang’s father understands that there
is nothing wrong with it and decides to accept his son as a baseball player. An
interesting detail is the fact that he is a scholar, so he is supposed to be
wiser than others and understand that modernity can be beneficial.
As
every modern trend, the sport has supporters from all types of groups. For
example, we even see different social classes: a master and his former servant
as teammates. Initially, there was a conflict between them, mostly because the
higher class man didn’t want to be on the same level as a servant.
Nevertheless, by the end of the movie the two understand that they need to work
together if they want to move ahead. Overall, this shows that modernization
implies replacing old customs with new ones; it doesn’t mean that people will
only adopt a new sport, but they also have to change their mindset to fit a
more modern perspective, and in this case it meant getting rid of social class barriers.
In a modern society everyone is equal.
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