He was on the verge of being converted to a permanent production-line position at a large company when teqball was adopted as an official Asian Games event, prompting him to leave the job. Lee played football in the K4 League until age 21 and later competed in jokgu.
Lee won all five of his matches in the men's singles group stage at the Nagoya Higashi Sports Center in Japan on Sept. 17, without dropping a single set. Right after his final match, he shouted, "I'm unemployed right now."
After beating Japan's Akinori Wase 2-0 in sets in the group stage clash between the two countries, Lee said, "I thought there was no way I could lose this one match." He shouted louder than in his other matches and performed a celebration.
The other national team members are in similar situations. Lee Tae-bin, 25, who is competing in men's doubles, quit his job as a jewelry designer, and Kim Eun-jun, 23, of the mixed doubles team left a pharmaceutical company's jokgu team. Except for Jang Eun-seo, 21, who attends Korea National Sport University, none of them has an affiliation.
Their training conditions were also poor. Ineligible to enter the national training center, they trained in outdoor open lots until an acquaintance helped them rent an indoor court in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province. During the monsoon season, they repeatedly folded up tables at public facilities when it rained and set them up again when the rain stopped.
Lee traveled to Hungary in April at his own expense to learn advanced techniques. He contacted a local player through social media and asked for one-on-one training. As a result, he picked up Europe's distinctive ball spin techniques and header training methods and made them his main weapons.
"Preparing for teqball, I lived the hardest I ever have in my life," Lee said. "I thought I would regret it if I lost because of nerves, so I kept my confidence to the end."
Aiming to stand atop the podium, he said the thing he most wants to do if he wins a medal is "travel with my mother." "I want to rest for about a week without a single worry," he said. "I'll take my mother on a trip somewhere quiet."
Teqball is a sport combining football and table tennis, first devised in Hungary in 2014. Five gold medals are at stake at this Asian Games, in men's and women's singles and doubles and mixed doubles.
The game is played on a special curved table designed to make it easier to kick the ball, similar to a table tennis table, and strict rules require the ball to bounce only on the table. Because players kick the ball over to the opponent's side, it is sometimes described as jokgu turned into table tennis.
South Korea entered three events: men's singles, men's doubles and mixed doubles.
Lee Jun-seok and Lee Tae-bin, who competed in men's doubles, failed to win a medal. They lost 1-2 (8-12, 12-11, 9-12) to Vietnam's Ba Truong Giang and Le Anh Khoa in the men's doubles repechage on the same day.
They had advanced to the quarterfinals as runners-up in Group B with a 1-1 record, but lost 0-2 (9-12, 7-12) in their first knockout match to Iraq's Radhi Abdulrahman Ahmed Radhi and Alelayawi Ali Jaleel Mezher.
Kim Eun-jun and Jang Eun-seo play their mixed doubles matches on Sept. 18.
