Baseball player compares school sports in Korea to Seattle

Most 16-year-olds could never imagine moving across the world to a place they’d never been before. This life altering change was what Julian Pyo experienced in December of 2022.
Moving from Daegu, Korea was a shocking experience.
‘’I grew up there my whole life until moving here,’’ Pyo said.
The small city where he grew up had a different culture, especially for education. Pyo started playing baseball when he was just seven years old. His love for the sport of baseball would begin to detract from school life.
In fact, throughout middle school and high school, Pyo didn’t even attend school.
‘’Korean education [is] very different,” Pyo said.
Instead of a school and sports schedule typical to American high school athletics, Pyo followed a rigorous full-time baseball training schedule.
“I couldn’t go to class because I was a baseball player, and our school practice was all day,” Pyo said.
Despite the all-consuming nature of South Korean high school baseball, Pyo loved being able to play the sport he is so passionate about all the time.

Pyo plays the middle infield and outfield positions.
He is very consumed by this sport, and the dramatic change that came with adopting Seattle’s more limited sports schedule was a major shift.
‘’It’s very weird to only play 2 hours a day,’’ he said. ‘’I used to play 10 hours a day.’’
However, Pyo knows that his education is very important. In fact, a higher quality education was the primary reason his family decided to move.
‘’Our school culture was bad, I knew I wanted to go to college and be educated.’
Pyo feels that the popularity of baseball in South Korea has a lot to do with the lack of competing major sports.
‘’We don’t have football in Korea, it’s just baseball, which makes it a lot more popular for people to play,” Pyo said.
Although this has been a drastic change for Pyo, he believes that Seattle is where he is supposed to be.
“I miss my players in Korea, but I am happy to be here,” he said.