Sports body to schedule appeal hearing for high school baseball team banned over trash talk

SEOUL, July 10 (Yonhap) -- The top national sports body will meet next week to schedule the hearing of an appeal by a Seoul high school baseball over its ban over trash talk, an official said Friday.

The official with the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee (KSOC) said a subcommittee for its disciplinary committee will meet next Tuesday over an appeal submitted by Pai Chai High School.

The Korea Baseball Softball Association recently imposed a six-month ban on Pai Chai's baseball team after its players derided their opponents from Gwangju Jeil High School during a late June tournament game in Seoul by yelling, "Let's go to Starbucks!" and "Tank Day!"

Their chants were linked to a controversial Starbucks Korea promotion on May 18, the anniversary of the 1980 Gwangju pro-democracy uprising, which drew strong criticism for allegedly mocking the movement.

The campaign offered discounted "Tank" tumbler sets under the slogan "Put it on the table with a sound of 'Tak!'", with "tank" evoking memories of the military crackdown during the uprising and "tak" drawing further criticism for its association with student activist Park Jong-cheol, whose 1987 death under police torture became a symbol of South Korea's democratization movement.

Pai Chai appealed the decision with the KSOC, which reviews all the appeals of decisions reached by national sports federations.

The KSOC's disciplinary committee is scheduled to meet on July 20, but it is not yet clear if it will handle Pai Chai's case that day or later, considering there is a backlog of other appeals still to be reviewed.

"The subcommittee will meet next Tuesday to determine whether the Pai Chai case will be handled on July 20 or not," the KSOC official said. "But since we have so many other pending cases, I cannot definitively say at this point that Pai Chai's appeal will be reviewed on July 20."

Unless overturned, the suspension will keep Pai Chai out of next month's Bonghwang High School Baseball Tournament, another major competition. The team's absence could be a big blow to Pai Chai seniors' chances of getting selected at the upcoming draft for the Korea Baseball Organization.

Pai Chai baseball players and their parents visited Gwangju Jeil in the southwestern city of Gwangju on Monday to apologize in person. Students from both schools visited the May 18th National Cemetery to pay respects to those killed during the pro-democracy uprising.

Pai Chai's alumni association pleaded for leniency for the baseball team last week, a call echoed by Gwangju Jeil's faculty and its alumni association on Tuesday.