The Anti-Business Sentiment Behind the Poor Olympic Results

Our national team’s results at the Beijing Winter Olympics were dismal. It was the worst performance since 1992. With 2 gold medals, 5 silver medals, and 2 bronze medals, the team finished 14th overall. Moreover, every athlete who won a medal had already been a medalist at the previous PyeongChang Olympics.

Host nation China increased its medal count amid controversy over biased officiating in short track, one of South Korea’s strongest events. Japan, following its strong performance at the Summer Olympics, also did well in the Winter Games. By contrast, our athletes performed poorly. At the previous Tokyo Summer Olympics as well, South Korea fell out of the top 10 for the first time in 20 years, finishing only 16th.

Why are Olympic results declining? In the background lies anti-business sentiment, which appears entirely unrelated to individual athletic ability.

Since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, South Korea’s Olympic performance has shown a steady decline. At the last Tokyo Olympics, it recorded its poorest result. Coincidentally, corporate sports sponsorship also fell noticeably over the same period. Even taking into account that reduced spectator numbers due to COVID weakened marketing effects and led to smaller sponsorships, it is unusual for corporate sponsorship to have declined by nearly half in the short span of just five years. This sudden reduction in support likely lowered the quality of equipment and facilities, and in international competitions where tiny differences determine rankings, such changes would have had a significant impact on the competitiveness of the national team.

Behind the sharp drop in corporate sponsorship is the spread of anti-business sentiment. Over the past five years, Korean society has faced an environment in which anti-business sentiment has deepened more than ever due to issues such as management succession and regulation of big tech companies. The spread of anti-business sentiment has constrained corporate activity, and corporate patronage such as sports sponsorship has naturally contracted as well. The contraction of corporate activity caused by growing anti-business sentiment has thus led even to a decline in national sports capability, something that once seemed unrelated to business.

Ahn Min-seok, a Democratic Party lawmaker, once said, “Samsung supported the Korea Skating Union for 20 years starting in 1997,” and “after the state capture scandal, Samsung pulled out of sports.” The political sphere needs to recognize that when companies are made into political scapegoats, the resulting damage is not confined to businesses alone, but can also negatively affect the economy as well as sports and culture more broadly.

A common misunderstanding about the factors of production, “capital” and “labor,” is that the two are in a substitute relationship. But a closer look shows that they are actually complementary. Looking only at South Korea’s sports world in the past, Spartan-style training methods that emphasized the efforts of the “individual” under the banner of so-called “hungry spirit” were regarded as orthodox.

But it is difficult to overcome the barriers of the global stage by emphasizing mental toughness alone. On the contrary, national sporting capability improved greatly as scientific training methods and upgraded equipment spread on the basis of corporate sponsorship. Likewise, behind South Korea’s escape from the “middle-income trap” and its rise to become the world’s 10th-largest economy was the activation of the “corporate economy and capital markets.” In a market economy, then, “capital,” represented by “business,” is a partner that helps “labor,” represented by the “individual,” fully realize its potential.

Vague hostility toward capital weakens businesses, and in the end the burden falls on powerless individuals. And a decline in individual capability leads to weakened national competitiveness. This time, the weakening of competitiveness caused by the contraction of business and capital appeared in Olympic results, something seemingly unrelated to everyday livelihoods. But the longer anti-business sentiment persists and the more corporate activity is constrained, the more that damage will inevitably expand into a real threat to our daily lives. At a time when competition is intensifying across all sectors of society, including politics and the economy, a pro-business sentiment that can view business and capital in a balanced way is needed more than ever.

Sung-no Choi, President of the Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

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Original title: 초라한 올림픽 성적에 숨겨진 반기업정서

Author: Sung-no Choi

Date: 2022-02-23

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=press&idx=24551