Set in the final years of the Empire of Korea, Lee Ho-chang (Song Kang-ho), the son of a scholar, first picks up the modern game of ‘baseball’ on a YMCA field. He then goes on to form Joseon’s first-ever baseball team with the help of Western-educated female coach Min Jung-rim (Kim Hye-soo), Japanese Confucian scholar Oh Dae-hyun (Kim Joo-hyuk), and pro-Japanese bureaucrat’s son Ryu Kwang-tae (Hwang Jung-min). The team’s ultimate game against a Japanese military team goes beyond a simple sporting match, instead transforming into a stage that symbolises the tension between a nation’s crumbling sovereignty and the late arrival of modernity.

This work is the feature film debut of director Kim Hyeon-seok and is a comedic reinterpretation of the true story of the Hwangseong YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) baseball team. As a sports movie with the texture of a romantic comedy, the film cheerfully draws out the aspirations, despondencies, and solidarity of young people trying to absorb the unfamiliar rhythm of ‘modernity’ in their own ways. When rewatched on the 80th anniversary of Korean independence, YMCA Baseball Team is a film that clearly shows how the seeds of autonomy and freedom can begin to sprout even before true ‘liberation’ arrives.

Park Se-ho