SNU SOCIETY

How to Become a Sports Expert in SNU: Introducing the DTM program

A longtime dream of mine has been to become South Korea’s leading sports marketer: I would actively facilitate the inclusion of Korean sports athletes into broader international leagues. However, because the sports industry is not a promising industry yet in Korea, Seoul National University (SNU) currently only has a few classes pertaining to it. While looking for clubs and academies in SNU that would enable me to gain real-life experience in the field, I found the “L&K (Leading Key) Sports Management Group.” L&K is an academy under the Physical Education Department and allows students to have on-the-field experience by collaborating with various sports clubs and investors. I have participated as part of the seventh batch of L&K and through the experience, I learned about the “Dream Together Master” (DTM) program and thought this would be a great chance to introduce SNU students to the DTM graduate program.

What is DTM

DTM was launched in 2013, and is sponsored by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (MCST). It is a graduate program that educates future global leaders in sport management, and fosters sports administrational leaders from all over the world.

The program belongs to the SNU’s Department of Physical Education, and the main professor in charge is Kang Joon-ho from the Department of Kinesiology and Global Sports Management, within the Department of Physical Education.

Dream Together Master is a two-year, 36-credit program that embraces a wide range of topics with 10 total themes. There are three modules per theme, and the program offers one team project and one individual project per theme. The themes vary from focused topics like sports humanities to broader topics such as sports event management, sports marketing and sponsorship, and even deals with sports law and arbitration. Not only does DTM offer the courses, but it also provides students with various experiences in the sports field by holding special lectures and hosting on-the-spot study sessions during the semester. The DTM hosts the “Dream Together Forum” each year, where participants discuss various sports issues all over the world. The speakers in each forum vary according to the topic, and the event also calls on experts when needed—during the Pyeongchang Olympics, it involved officers from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Moreover, this graduate program cooperates with the L&K Sports Management group which is formed among undergraduate students. The members of DTM work as an advisory committee for the project that the L&K members conduct, which is about devising practical schemes about the sports Official Development Assistance (ODA) services targeting developing countries. They share their experiences on-the-field and provide local information that undergraduates have difficulty accessing. As such, under the core values of sharing and excellence, DTM’s ultimate vision is to promote global sports development through the education of international sports administrators and to establish a global sport network.

The program is hosted by the Department of Physical Education in SNU, but it is a cooperative project that is funded by the Sports Ministry and the Korea Sports Promotion Foundation (KSPO). It is also in cooperation with the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee and in partnership with the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), International University Sports Federation (FISU), and World Taekwondo (WT). Funded by various associations, DTM usually offers athletes or sports administrators from developing countries with full scholarship opportunities which cover students’ tuition, living expenses and flight tickets.

How do you become a DTM member

Since this program is a graduate program, there are several admission requirements and preferred qualifications. Admission processes also differ for international students and Korean students. These are several requirements that separate this program from that of other graduate schools.

For international students, the applicant must be a former and current sports administrator or athlete. As it is a graduate program related to sports, the applicant can have a bachelor’s degree or higher in any field. In a similar vein, if applicants are from countries recognized in the List of ODA Recipients provided by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) or have participated in major international sporting events (Olympics, Asian Games, World Championships), they become more desirable candidates. The DTM program is also open to Korean students, however, English proficiency is given a greater emphasis compared to foreign students, which means that standardized test scores are required.

What makes DTM so special

Despite SNU’s reputation as a prestigious university, it is not a leading institution when it comes to the sports industry as it lacks sufficient undergraduate courses in the field. Moreover, though there is a Department of Physical Education, it is under the College of Education and thus, the curriculum focuses more on the process of becoming an educator and lacks diversity in course options. Despite this, there must be reasons why DTM members chose this program over others. To hear more about the real-life experiences originating from the DTM program, I have interviewed a member of DTM, Ugrasena (Dream Together Master Program Tenth Batch).

Ugrasena has played baseball in Indonesia since he was 16 years old and played in national leagues and international games as a national representative. He realized that a career as an athlete and a sports educator was not promising in Indonesia. Thus, he wanted to study more about the industry and use this knowledge to grow the industry in his homeland. While he was searching for graduate schools, he discovered DTM in SNU.

(1) What brought you here to SNU DTM? What is its specialty compared to other sports management related graduate schools?

To begin with, I really liked the course structure of DTM. Most other graduate schools related to sports consist of 10 modules in a curriculum, so we get to learn 2-3 modules in a semester. But here in DTM, we handle 30 modules in one and a half years. So, I really like the fact that I could get to learn more compared to other graduate schools. Also, unlike other sports related graduate programs, DTM tackles sports ethics, which is not only about sports itself but also about sociology and philosophy. I believe ethics is such an important part in every industry, and especially furthermore in the future, and I really appreciated that DTM involves such a program.

Not only the classes in school, DTM provides students various chances to acquire practical sports fields from Gocheok stadium to ski resorts. It enables us to experience diverse sports stadiums, which were sometimes absent in our homeland.

(2) How diverse are the members of DTM?

There are 22 people in our batch, and we have students from 7 regions from 17 countries. The 7 regions include the Middle East, South Asia, South America, Africa and so on. Even though there are some students from the same country, since they are from different regions, they have different characteristics. Also, recently, the women’s ratio has increased, so the diversity is guaranteed much more compared to before. As we have diverse members, we can learn from each other and know how to collaborate with others who you can’t agree with. Every module, students get mixed, so we get to meet different members each week. During that process, we might face some cultures that do not fit one’s values well, but we work to meet the goal we share, so we get to understand each other much better.

(3) Can you tell us more about the “Dream Together Forum”?

The Dream Together Forum is an annual event that is hosted by DTM. Since we are funded by various institutions in Korea, it’s an official occasion where all the institutions get to share their visions together. The basic aim is to maximize the power of sport as a peace-making tool. Thus the topic changes each year based on what is most relevant to international society, and the most recent one was about the Sport and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the New Globe.

Cooperation with undergraduate students - L&K sports management group

Since DTM is a graduate program unavailable at the undergraduate level, how can we be certain we want to pursue a profession in this field? For those concerned about these issues, there actually is a program for undergraduates who are interested in the sports industry. This program is called the “L&K sports management group.” Incidentally, Prof. Kang Joon-ho is also in charge of this program. This group also has a “DTM Project” which encourages cooperative teamwork with DTM members. In order to get more information about the L&K Sports Management group and their cooperative projects with DTM members, I have interviewed the president of the L&K sports management group, SungJib Lim (L&K eighth batch president).

(1) What kind of organization is L&K and what similarities does it share with the DTM program (in terms of members and goals of the society)?

L&K and DTM are groups of people who love sports in common. The similarity lies in the fact that both organizations share a vision to discover and expand the value of the sports market. However, I think DTM students have outstanding professionalism compared to L&K, as they are former athletes or those who are currently active as sports administrators. In contrast, L&K students provide creative ideas through a younger sense and broader thinking, and a virtuous cycle structure is established in which DTMs provide advice on the feasibility and direction of development. In addition, whenever we have difficulties in finding materials in non-English speaking countries, one of the difficulties mentioned above, DTM students from each country directly obtain the materials we need or contact local people to provide materials.

(2) What is the background that led you to interact with DTM students and to carry out the DTM project?

L&K’s advisor is Professor Kang Joon-ho of the Department of Physical Education, and one of the projects he is working on is the DTM Graduate School. One of his students, a senior who created this group and was the president of the first batch of L&K, has been working for the DTM group. He thought it would be such a good chance for both undergraduates and graduate students to have a cooperative project, so he offered the group a chance to get consultations from the DTM members about our project. This positive relationship has been maintained until now, the 9th batch, and L&K and DTM students continue to exchange help.

(3) Interaction between undergraduate and graduate students is not common. Are there any difficulties or special moments you felt through this experience?

It is true that the experience of interacting with graduate students is very rare, especially from the perspective of an undergraduate student. However, there are also some challenges. First of all, language is such a big barrier. The members of our group and I can speak English, but as the accents are different according to each DTM member’s motherland, it’s sometimes difficult to communicate. However, at the same time, it offers us opportunities to come into contact with various forms of English, allowing us to bring about development in personal English skills.

Also, it is difficult to find data from Asian countries. Since the DTM project is about designing ODA programs for developing countries, we need background data about the target country. We always have a concern that the actual local situation may be different from what we investigated. There always lies the difficulty of finding out the local situation in non-English-speaking countries in detail only with Korean or English data.

However, the interest that DTM students send us is special. Being able to make direct contact with foreign students and being able to see sports practitioners, especially those with foreign nationality, up close and ask for advice seems to be a special feature of L&K. In addition, there was an experience that the project we carried out rather led to discussions among the DTM students. On the final presentation day last semester, we presented our final project in front of DTM students and offered them time to ask questions about our projects. I remember being deeply impressed by the fact that the curiosity that started with one question was derived and continued to second and third questions. I think that being able to continue active discussions with various people about one field is also a special feature of L&K and DTM.

(4) Are there any people within the L&K group who have careers related to the DTM project? Would you say there is a strong connection between L&K society activities and DTM?

As I mentioned earlier, the research assistant of DTM is L&K's first batch senior. Also, among the L&K seventh batch students who graduated last year, there is a student who is preparing to go to DTM graduate school.

Also, even if you do not enter DTM itself, L&K students also receive a lot of help in their careers through the advantages of the DTM project. There are many students in L&K who want to enter sports-related international organizations, and through the DTM project, they can experience communicating with foreign sports administrators and forming relationships which enables us to give mutual help. In addition, since DTM is composed of students of very diverse nationalities and disciplines, members who had knowledge only in their field of interest prior to L&K society activities will be able to build knowledge on other subjects while conducting the project. It also lets students study the way to look at the sports market in Korea through the activities of analyzing the sports market of other countries from a business management point of view. As far as I know, there is no organization on campus that focuses as much on the 'sports' market as our society, so if you are dreaming of a career in sports, it would be good to continue collaborating with various organizations within our society.

Last words from the writer

My experience in L&K and collaboration with the DTM members allowed me to have a broader understanding of the world as I got to communicate with various people from all over the world. For undergraduates, opportunities to engage in field-related activities are rare. L&K offers projects with various professional sports clubs on field such as KBO and the Korea Ski Association. Through L&K activities and interacting with DTM members, I learned a lot about the various sports circumstances in different countries and Korea’s status in the sports industry. It allowed me to realize that as much as following precedent is important, promoting cooperation with developing countries is even more crucial. Even to those who are not interested in sports itself, L&K will enable you to have a wider perspective when considering international issues. No other SNU undergraduate experience will enable you to have consistent communication with the professionals who treat you as their equivalents in discussion.