School Sport in Divided Nations: Re-Legitimation and Educational Reconfiguration in South Korea and West Germany

This article offers a comparative-historical analysis of the transformation of school sport in South Korea and West Germany under the shared condition of national division. It approaches school sport as a historically contested field in which states and societies negotiated changing expectations regarding youth, education, and national legitimacy. Methodologically, the comparison proceeds across three interconnected levels: the historical and ideological background of school sport, the institutional consolidation of policy and curriculum, and their reception in school settings. It argues that school sport in both countries initially occupied marginal positions but was later re-legitimated through functionally equivalent turning points linked to international sporting rivalry and Olympic hosting, notably Munich 1972 and Seoul 1988. Yet the meaning and consequences of this re-legitimation diverged. In West Germany, the post-turning-point period was marked relatively early by pedagogical critique and curricular rebalancing. In South Korea, by contrast, school sport remained in an ambiguous position between elite sport and sport-for-all, and its pedagogical reconfiguration continued to be constrained by the broader academic hierarchy of schooling. The key divergence lies less in division itself than in how the political uses of sport and physical education were remembered, criticized, and institutionally reworked.