These former players are making ice hockey Korea's trendiest leisure sport

Olympic Sports

Published: 15 Feb. 2024, 17:14

These former players are making ice hockey Korea's trendiest leisure sport

Korea beats Romania 5-2 in the International Ice Hockey Federation Men's World Championship Division I Group A match against Romania in May 2023. [YONHAP]

Ice hockey, which has never been a particularly popular sport in Korea, was an unlikely candidate for social media fame. But one marketing-savvy club in the greater Seoul area might just make the sport Korea’s next big star.

A night out at Seoul's hottest ice rink

Ice hockey “had that charisma,” said Shin Sang-yoon, the marketing director for ice hockey club Rockets. “Those kinds of things that people could be attracted to.”

Rockets, which bills itself as “hobby hockey,” occupies a sort of middle ground between intramural sports and group fitness. The club offers membership packages to attend practices at any of its four rinks in and around Seoul and daily one-day classes for anyone interested in trying the sport for the first time.

“[P]eople said it wouldn't work because there has never been an example of us,” said Shin, one of the club’s three co-founders. “They always said you should try doing kids, not adults. But we ignored them.”

Shin, 26, and his co-founders, 27 and 28, are all ice hockey players themselves. They each played for Korea University and on junior national teams, and Shin and one other founder had brief professional careers with now-defunct teams in Korea.

They opened Rockets in 2022 while still playing professionally, but running the club has since become their sole focus.

Their goal was to make ice hockey accessible, like other popular leisure sports in Korea, according to Shin.

A decade or two ago, sports like tennis and golf were pretty expensive for normal people, but lately, it seems like everyone in Korea plays either of the two, he said.

“There’s no hurdles anymore. So that’s what we wanted to do with ice hockey,” Shin said.

Indeed, ice hockey has a high barrier of entry. A full set of gear can cost hundreds of dollars and can be awkward to lug around, especially in a city oriented toward public transportation. But Rockets sought to remove that obstacle with free gear rental.

“They can just come with their clothes on, play hockey and leave,” Shin said.

Nearly two years after opening, the club has around 300 members who attend practices on a weekly basis and can play exhibition games on a team against other members of the league — the “RHL.”

About 400 to 500 new people come to the club per month, Shin said.

One Monday night in January at the club’s Yeoksam rink in Gangnam District, southern Seoul drew about 30 people total, with half attending a one-day group session and the other half at a members-only class. Each person on the ice donned a jersey with the Rockets logo, a red cartoon rocket with the face of a shark.

The Rockets Ice Hockey logo. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Plastered on Rockets’ social media pages are well-shot and edited photos of people at class — thanks to photographers who join the group on the ice to capture the action.

Class-goers can download the photos for themselves.

“Koreans are really crazy about social media,” Shin said. “Korean people really like what they see, so we really tried to maintain the colors of our jerseys and logos. We put a lot of hard work into the designs.”

Rockets opened in March 2022 with an inaugural location in Hanam, Gyeonggi. Its first class was full, thanks to the founders’ friends and family.

“We had goosebumps,” Shin said.

At the beginning, the club ran two practices per week — Saturday morning from 7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. and Sunday morning at the same time.

Now, most practices take place after 9 p.m. on weeknights and during the day over the weekend.

Players exit the rink after Rockets practice in Yeoksam-dong, Gangnam District in southern Seoul on Jan. 22. [MARY YANG]

Shin said Rockets partnered with influencers to promote the club on social media, recruited ambassadors and continues to upload daily posts to nearly 10,000 followers across five accounts on Instagram — in addition to using sponsored content.

“Since I love skating, I tried this one. When I saw that on Instagram, I thought that this is very special,” Song Dah-won said. “I never experienced this type of sports in Korea before.”

Song, 31, attended a one-day class for the first time in January. She said she had discovered Rockets on Instagram, and two weeks later, she arrived at the rink for class. Afterward, Song was one of two people in the class who signed up for a membership.

“I stay in the office a lot of the time in my day, so I think I need to move a little bit. And today I was sweating so much, so maybe once a week I can do this one,” she said. “It’s fun. Yeah. I love it.”

Song said she was surprised to find an all-women class. “I thought there was going to be some boys who want to try some hockey, but many girls,” she said.

According to Shin, the marketing director, about 7 in 10 people who find Rockets are women.

“Maybe good-looking coaches, I don’t know,” Shin quipped when asked about the gender ratio.

All of the coaches at the club until last month were men. Rockets hired their first female coach, a former women's national team player, in January.

But Korea has never been an ice hockey powerhouse.

Nationally, Korea has made major improvements in the last decade, according to Harald Springfield, the Sport Development Manager for Asia and Oceania at the International Ice Hockey Foundation (IIHF).

Korea jumped from world No. 28 in men’s ice hockey and No. 26 in women’s ice hockey to No. 21 and No. 19, respectively, in the last 12 years, according to IIHF data.

“Still, there is something in between the university program and the elite level,” Springfield said. “This level seems to be missing,”

Korea has just one remaining professional men’s ice hockey team, Halla Anyang, who compete in the Asia League with teams from Japan. Korea's domestic league, the Korean Ice Hockey League, shuttered in the early 2000s.

Growing a league is expensive, according to Springfield. Part of the difficulty lies with the economy and the focused attention on national programs, but he said he hopes that there are efforts to bring back a feeder system and a carrier path.

“It is not a Korea problem, it is a worldwide problem,” Springfield said.

In Korea, Rockets is looking to bridge that gap, starting with a new image of the sport.

“What Korean media shows about hockey is always fighting,” Shin said. “People think hockey is a really aggressive sport and a sport for rich people. But actually it is not.”

The club hopes to expand to other cities in Korea, like Busan, and eventually other countries.

“We want to become a huge club, for anybody who wants to join hockey,” Shin said. “If I say Rockets to anybody, people will know.”

BY MARY YANG [mary.yang@joongang.co.kr]