SAN DIEGO — Growing up in Gongju, South Korea, a small city 75 miles south of Seoul, Chan Ho Park received occasional exposure to some of the biggest musical artists in the world. Elvis Presley still reigned after his death. Michael Jackson became an international phenomenon and would later befriend presidential candidate Kim Dae-jung. The cultural influence of the United States transcended an ocean.
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Since then, Park has seen how the world has changed. He has heard it, too.
“In America right now, they listen to BTS or Blackpink,” he said. “This is a great thing.”
It was almost three decades ago that Park took the mound at Dodger Stadium as the first Korean-born player in the major leagues. He allowed two runs in an inning of relief. He soon went down to Double A, where he would spend the rest of the season. There, strangers would ask if he was Chinese. The smell of kimchi would wrinkle his teammates’ noses.
“Now,” Park said, “everybody loves Korean food, Korean barbecue.” South Korean music, movies and television shows are popular around the globe. The Oxford English Dictionary recently added the word “hallyu,” or Korean wave.
And in this new world, a slick-fielding 27-year-old from Bucheon, South Korea, is thriving.
It was just three months ago that Ha-Seong Kim, the San Diego Padres’ starting second baseman, stepped into the batter’s box and Park felt his heart swell with pride. Now an advisor in the Padres’ baseball operations department, Park had brought to the stadium that day a few friends from Korea. They watched as Kim settled into his stance. They listened as a sellout crowd chanted Kim’s name. They exulted as he raced into second on a double. At Petco Park, it has been this way all summer.
On a star-studded team finishing out a bitterly disappointing season, Kim has been one of the most valuable performers in the majors. According to FanGraphs, he has supplied more wins above replacement than all but 13 players. He has 17 home runs and 31 stolen bases, the most ever by a big leaguer from South Korea, and he is hitting .290 since June 22. That was the day Kim moved into the Padres’ leadoff spot. He has yet to relinquish it.
Oh, and there is his defense. Kim excels at second base but also at third base and shortstop, his natural position. This season, he could become the first Korean-born player to win a Gold Glove Award; he was a National League finalist a year ago.
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The stress of an underwhelming Padres debut in 2021 tested Kim’s resolve. He has since bounced back to establish himself as perhaps the best major-league middle infielder to come out of Asia, a fan favorite who hears his name chanted even in road ballparks.
Playing on the West Coast means that his exploits often elude national attention. But back home on the other side of the Pacific, every Padres game is carried live on TV, every Kim home run narrated with full-throated gusto, every highlight added to a growing reel of inspiration.
“Ha-Seong makes us start thinking about it,” Park said. “‘Yes, we can do that, too.’”
If Ha-Seong Kim's #walkoff wasn't electric enough, take a listen to the Korean call. 🔥
(Via SpoTV Now) pic.twitter.com/3jTeZOmup6
— Cut4 (@Cut4) April 4, 2023
In 2017, on the night he debuted in the Korea Baseball Organization, Jake Brigham watched from the mound as the Nexen Heroes’ shortstop made a diving play in the six-hole. Man, this guy is good, Brigham thought to himself. How old is he?
Brigham guessed that his rangy new teammate was in his mid-20s. Later, in the dugout, he learned Kim was only 21.
“He always carried himself older than he was, which in Asia is a big deal,” said Brigham, a former Atlanta Braves pitcher who played a season in Japan before spending the next five in Korea with the Kiwoom Heroes. “You’re not necessarily allowed to do that in Asia; there’s a respect level there. But he was always such an excellent player and always such a respectful guy that it didn’t matter what age he was.”
In a culture defined by hierarchy, Kim had worked from childhood to earn a place in South Korea’s version of the big leagues. He gravitated toward the sport early, drawn by the idea of wearing a crisp baseball uniform. He quickly proved to have the instincts and athleticism to stand out regardless of his attire. Kim’s mother nurtured a developing passion in her son; she enjoyed watching Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw, in part because of the pitcher’s Christian faith. In time, another kind of belief took root in a household in Bucheon, a city on the outskirts of Seoul.
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“That dream just naturally came to mind,” Kim said through his interpreter, Leo Bae. “You know, OK, I might set my goal to become a major leaguer one day.”
His vision at first seemed distant. Kim was considered a good but not great prospect coming out of Yatap High School, where he mostly played second base while Hoy Park, another future major leaguer, played shortstop. The Heroes, a resourceful franchise sometimes likened to the Tampa Bay Rays, selected Kim in the third round of the 2014 draft. He spent his first season in the KBO as a teenager backing up star shortstop Jung Ho Kang.
Then Kang signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates and left for the U.S. Kim took over as the Heroes’ primary shortstop in 2015 and ran with the job, hitting .290 with 19 home runs and 22 stolen bases, playing in the KBO All-Star Game and exceeding all expectations.
“I think the word that comes to mind when it comes to Ha-Seong Kim throughout his career is ‘surprise.’ He’s surprising,” said Daniel Kim (no relation), a KBO analyst based in Seoul. “He has surprised us in many facets of his career.”
By 2017, Kim was a promising infielder but no surefire superstar, a distinction made more clear with the arrival of a top prospect who would become his best friend. Outfielder Jung-hoo Lee joined the Heroes as the No. 1 draft pick, following in the footsteps of his father, Jong-beom Lee, a former KBO MVP who himself had once been drafted first overall. Kim was two years older and did not have the same pedigree. But he did have a healthy work ethic and plenty of motivation.
“He didn’t have the name coming into it like Jung-hoo did,” Brigham said. “So, not in a bad way, but he wore it like a badge of honor, like a chip on his shoulder. He was like, ‘You’re going to know who I am, this is who I am. And be ready.’ It was really cool to watch him just grow.”
From 2018 to 2020, Kim and Lee both won three KBO Golden Glove awards, which are given annually to the league’s best overall player at each position. They drew on the experience of veteran teammate and two-time KBO MVP Byung-ho Park, who’d earned a brief stint with the Minnesota Twins; after home games at Gocheok Sky Dome, Brigham says, the three hitters often worked late into the night inside the batting cages.
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The players’ lounge was another regular gathering place. There, Brigham, Park, former Chicago Cubs pitcher Eric Jokisch and others on the team began meeting for lunch to discuss a variety of things. One frequent topic: What, Kim wanted to know, was life like in the U.S.? What about professional baseball and the majors?
Brigham, a sixth-round draft pick by the Texas Rangers in 2006, was happy to share whatever insight he could. He had long ago befriended Kim and Leo Bae, who started working for the Heroes in 2018 as an English interpreter. Brigham found that Kim was a bit reserved but always welcoming. Confident but not arrogant. Serious about baseball but unafraid to have fun. When he and Brigham first met, Kim, who wore No. 7, introduced himself as “Lucky.”
And as curious as Kim was about his American teammate’s background, he wanted to know about current matters, too.
Said Brigham: “He would ask me as the years went on, ‘Jake, how do you adjust here?’”
More than a year before Kim was born, a future mentor was just beginning to adapt to a foreign land.
It was April 1994, and Chan Ho Park had just been sent down to the minor leagues for the first time. Two men he did not recognize picked him up at San Antonio International Airport. Park, then 20, did not know much English. Later, he saw his chauffeurs at the ballpark. They were, he learned, Double-A pitching coach Burt Hooton and Dodgers pitching coordinator David Wallace.
Park had impressed Dodgers executives less than three years earlier while pitching in a tournament in Los Angeles that included national teams from Korea, Japan and the U.S. Afterward, he attended a game at Dodger Stadium, marveled at the size of the crowd and wondered what it would be like to pitch in such an environment. The Dodgers turned his dream into a reality, signing him out of Hanyang University for $1.2 million, placing him on their opening-day roster after his first spring training, then putting him on the Dodger Stadium mound in the fourth game of the season. One more relief appearance came before the front office deemed Park in need of more development. So the first Korean-born player in the majors temporarily left behind Southern California and its sizable Korean-American community.
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In Texas, he would grapple with more culture shock. In Hooton, he would also find a lasting friendship. The airport pickup had made an impression.
“Because in my culture, coaches, the manager is a very, very, high, high person,” Park said. “We don’t talk easily with the coach. We’re always scared, like in the army.”
For the rest of that season, Park says, a mild-mannered San Antonio native was a singular source of comfort. Hooton, who played 15 seasons in the big leagues, taught Park how to pitch like a professional, encouraged him to learn English and served as a constant advisor. At times, something as simple as Hooton’s hand on his shoulder was enough to soothe the uncertainty racing through Park’s mind.
Another team official provided support from afar. Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley, who had flown to Korea in 1993 to personally recruit Park, wrote a letter to the young right-hander once a week. He telephoned Park’s interpreter every day to ask how Park was faring. (Park, at O’Malley’s request, did not find out about the calls until after the season.)
Park would not forget these gestures. In 1995, he felt relief knowing he was not going to Triple-A Albuquerque by himself; Hooton had moved up, too. In 1996, after his first major-league win, Park called Hooton before he called his own parents. (“He’s like my uncle,” Park said.) In 2017, several years after retiring from pitching, Park joined the Padres’ front office because O’Malley’s nephew, Peter Seidler, owned the team. (O’Malley, Park said, “is like my godfather.”) It did not hurt that Hooton was already San Diego’s Low-A pitching coach.
In late 2020, when the Padres were attempting to woo a versatile infielder from overseas, the winningest Asian-born pitcher in major-league history got on the phone. Park had met Kim a couple of years earlier when the Heroes held part of their spring training in Arizona. He had heard enough to be intrigued; his best friend since elementary school, Won-ki Hong, was the Heroes’ fielding coach. Now, as he spoke with Hong’s protege, Park mentioned an expanding fan base, World Series ambitions and the natural beauty of San Diego. He also talked about something else.
“Living in a new culture, you got to make sure you make new friends, friends who are like family,” said Park, who pitched for the Padres from 2005 to 2006. “So I told Ha-Seong, ‘Padres ownership is like that.’”
On New Year’s Eve 2020, Kim signed a four-year, $28 million deal, making him the first player to leave the KBO via the major-league posting system since Heroes teammate Byung-ho Park five years prior. He appeared to heed what Chan Ho Park described as his most important recommendation: With the help of his interpreter Leo Bae, whom Kim had brought with him to San Diego, the infielder made fast friendships throughout the clubhouse.
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Despite the language and cultural barriers, he clicked with the likes of Manny Machado, Jurickson Profar and Fernando Tatis Jr. His new teammates noted his openness and enthusiasm. His coaches offered similar praise.
“He made it really easy on me,” said Phillies infield coach Bobby Dickerson, who filled the same role for the Padres in 2021. “He was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. He was always listening.”
Kim’s attentiveness paid off almost immediately in one area. He settled during his first big-league spring training into a new tempo on defense. Dickerson, who had seen well-above-average quickness and all-out hustle on video, spent time each morning turning Kim into a more deliberate, more precise defender. At the same time, the coach says, he tried to picture himself in Kim’s shoes. “I can’t imagine at the end of the night not having his favorite restaurant to go to, or not having someone cook for him that he’s used to having cook for him,” Dickerson said.
Rather than nitpick, he endeavored to emphasize and hone the infielder’s existing strengths.
“He definitely helped me play defense a different way … at the big-league level,” Kim said. “I think I kind of built a special relationship with him, and he definitely helped me grow up as a player.”
That growth did not come easy. Not long after his first season in the majors, when he hit .202 and started in just 63 games, Kim discovered evidence of the stress he had been under. Beneath his flowing black hair was a bald spot that had previously gone unnoticed. It was about the size of a quarter.
“There were moments where I was really mentally at the lowest point of my career,” Kim said. “I thought maybe I don’t belong here, so maybe I should go back to Korea.
“But on the other hand,” Kim added, “it was only my first year. So let’s challenge myself and see what happens.”
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It proved to be a year of immersive education. For the first time in his baseball career, Kim experienced regular travel across multiple time zones. For the first time since he was a KBO rookie, he spent most games on the bench. He lost noticeable weight as he acclimated to strange new foods and the rigors of a 162-game schedule. He struggled to adjust to major-league velocity. Some scouts wondered if he ever would.
In regular conversations throughout that tumultuous season, Park stressed patience and sought to buoy Kim’s spirits. The pitcher himself had faced immense pressure as the first person from his country to reach the big leagues. He recalls losing clumps of hair amid the worst stretch of his career, in the early aughts with the Rangers, who had signed him to a $65 million contract. Even when Park was breaking out as a Dodgers starting pitcher in the late ’90s, it came against the sobering backdrop of the Asian financial crisis, a period remembered in South Korea on the scale of the Great Depression.
“I became a messenger to the people for a lot of positive,” Park said. “And they were cheering me up, but I had to pitch well to cheer them up, the whole country.”
On many nights, Kim toiled in private. Other Padres players said that, with the possible exception of outfielder Tommy Pham, no one logged more time inside a batting cage than Kim, who got into the daily habit of taking hundreds of swings against a high-velocity machine. His effort did not go unnoticed.
A mid-June game that summer continues to stand out. Maybe it was the fact that Kim had already shown himself to be a strong defender across three infield positions. Maybe, despite his poor offensive numbers, it was his tendency to play hard at all times. Maybe it was an organic response to a recent highlight: The night before, in the bottom of the eighth, Kim had electrified Petco Park with a game-winning home run.
Now, as he settled into the batter’s box against the Cincinnati Reds, portions of the crowd broke into a coordinated chant. HA-SEONG KIM! HA-SEONG KIM! HA-SEONG KIM! A wave of surprise washed over Kim. Then came a sense of renewed purpose.
“Obviously, it was overwhelming because I wasn’t really a good player. I was a bench player and a pinch hitter,” Kim said. “Still, the amount of love that I got, I just was thankful to the fans. And that motivates me to pay back our fans by giving 100 percent, by being a hustle player.”
These days, the evaluators who predicted that Kim simply needed a season or two to hone his swing are looking vindicated. He emerged as a key contributor last season, batting .251 with 11 home runs and 12 stolen bases and contending for a Gold Glove Award at shortstop. This year, he has accommodated the signing of Xander Bogaerts by seamlessly shifting to second base. He has evolved into an adept fastball hitter to go along with his typical plate discipline, though even that has taken a step forward. Earlier this summer, Kim reached base at least twice in 15 consecutive games, the longest such streak in the majors since Joey Votto put together a 20-game run in 2017.
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Inside the Padres clubhouse, Kim is as popular as ever, in part because he is increasingly trilingual. “I think he’s more Dominican than some of the players in here,” Machado joked. The compliments, though, inevitably turn to Kim’s performance. “The guy has turned this year into one of the best players in the game,” Tatis said. “He plays his heart out and he plays the right way,” Blake Snell said. “All the love he gets, he deserves.”
Meanwhile, in South Korea, a national icon is beaming. “He’s become, like, a super, superstar right now,” Park said by phone during a recent visit to his native country. Park added that, in terms of overall visibility, he believes the Padres have overtaken the Dodgers.
Kim’s popularity back home is enhanced by the fact that he spent several formative seasons playing in the KBO before jumping to the majors. Certain other notable Korean position players, including former Rangers outfielder Shin-Soo Choo and Padres teammate Ji Man Choi, went straight from high school to the American minor leagues. Kim and Jung-hoo Lee, who is expected to be posted by the Heroes this offseason, belong to a different group of players.
“Korean fans feel a lot closer to them, because you saw their growth and developmental years,” Daniel Kim, the KBO analyst, said.
Tracking an everyday position player adds another dimension. Toronto Blue Jays lefty and former KBO star Hyun-Jin Ryu remains the most popular active Korean-born major leaguer, but he pitches roughly once a week, and the excitement sparked by a strikeout cannot match the thrill of a home run or a quick-twitch defensive play. Ha-Seong Kim, this season, has delivered plenty of both.
Which makes him something of a pioneer. In major-league history, only four Japanese-born position players have compiled at least 10 career WAR, according to Baseball Reference. Just two Korean-born position players — Choo and Kim — have done so. No middle infielder hailing from either country had topped Tadahito Iguchi’s 6.4 WAR.
Until Kim, who is deliberately writing his own unique path. This spring, he added a pair of initials to the back of his jersey. It now reads, “H.S. Kim.” “I want other players in the league to remember me as Ha-Seong Kim,” said Kim, who has the most common surname in Korea. Still, he recognizes his opportunity to bring others with him.
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“There’s a lot of good players in Korea, a lot of young talent,” Kim said. “That’s what motivates me even more to play harder, so that they get more attention from major-league scouts. And then they can start dreaming more about coming over here to play. So that gives me big motivation to play even harder so that you can see a lot of Korean players in the future.”
It remains to be seen whether Kim stays an outlier or represents the beginning of a new pipeline. Lee, his close friend and the 2022 KBO MVP, could be next, and Kim has spoken openly about his interest in a reunion. San Diego, not coincidentally, is viewed as a strong candidate to sign the outfielder.
Wherever Lee lands, he can lean on the wisdom Kim has acquired since 2021. It goes beyond hitting a big-league fastball or practicing a second language. Kim, acting on the advice of the countrymen who preceded him, has found comfort by diving into an unfamiliar culture and building new relationships. He has seen it work back home, too.
“It can be very isolating being in a foreign country,” said Brigham, who would know. The 35-year-old is now in his second full season with the Wei Chuan Dragons of Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League, the third Asian league in which he has played. Though it has been nearly three years since he was teammates with Kim, he describes that time as one of the distinct pleasures of his nomadic career.
“It’s just different when you’re playing with a guy that you can connect with and you care about,” Brigham said. “And he always made me feel that. If he made an error or if he felt like he should have made a play that he didn’t, he was in my face, like, ‘Jake, I got you next time. That will not happen again.’ And he just always took responsibility, but he always cared. And that meant a lot to me and my family, and I truly believe that leads to guys having success in other countries, if they can feel that connection.”
(Top photo of Ha-Seong Kim: Eric Espada / Getty Images)
