"It was really hard giving up my dream of making the national taekwondo team. But I never imagined I would end up wearing the national colors through esports, which I had played as a hobby. Now I will take on the Asian Games with the responsibility of a national team athlete."
Park So-yeon, 23, who will compete as a national team player in the esports title "Identity V" at the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, said this in a recent interview with the Seoul Economic Daily, adding, "I want to win the title and help pave the way for a professional team in this game to be founded in Korea."
Park is the only woman among South Korea's 36 national team players for esports at this year's Asian Games. But she herself does not seem to dwell on it. "At first, I didn't even know I was the only female player," she said, adding, "I feel no burden tied to gender, only the weight of representing my country."
Identity V is a mobile-only game released in 2018 by Chinese developer NetEase. One hunter and four survivors form teams to compete against each other. One hunter from Team A pursues and captures the four survivors from Team B, and each match sees the two teams swap the hunter and survivor roles.
China and Japan even run regular professional leagues and full-time professional teams for Identity V. But Korea still has no professional teams. Most players juggle jobs or studies alongside the game. Park, too, has trained in stolen moments while preparing for job applications, entering tournaments whenever she could. Her team, Pororon, spends the day on their separate routines before gathering at 10:30 p.m. to practice together into the early morning. As a result, they claimed the national colors at the national team qualifiers held in Busan this May. "In China and Japan, players can devote long hours to the game as their main job, but our conditions are poor," Park said. "I recently went to a training camp at the Jincheon National Training Center, where they analyzed data such as opposing teams' behavior patterns and preferred characters, which was a huge help."
Park was in fact an elite athlete who once dreamed of making the national taekwondo team. She started taekwondo at age 7 and majored in it not only through middle and high school but also in college. But at some point she hit a wall, set aside her dream of the national team, and stepped into the job market. Identity V is a game she began as a hobby in middle school on the recommendation of a close friend. The more she played, the more the competitive drive typical of an athlete kicked in. "As I spent more time interacting with all kinds of players in the game, I enjoyed gaining new experiences," she said. "My desire to improve grew stronger too, so I joined a clan of skilled players, entered various tournaments with them, and gradually began to earn recognition."
Having started esports as a hobby, Park now has her sights set on the top of Asia. Though it is esports rather than taekwondo, the weight of being a national team athlete is the same, in Park's view. "Unlike taekwondo, this is team play where many players work together rather than one person alone, so teamwork that unites the team matters more than one individual's brilliant play. Pororon's greatest strength is exactly that unity. In Nagoya, I will prove the strength of Korean esports."
