[Anchor]

The professional volleyball season kicks off tomorrow (the 31st) for its 23rd season. Recently, Korean volleyball—especially women's volleyball—has faced criticism that its international competitiveness falls short compared to its domestic popularity. This season, new faces that raise expectations for change, such as overseas Korean player Audrey Park, are emerging, heightening anticipation.

Reporter Bae Jeonghun has the details.

[Reporter]

Women's volleyball, which established itself as a popular sport spearheaded by the prominent star Kim Yeon-koung, has struggled continuously in international competitions following Kim's retirement.

It suffered the humiliation of winning no medals at the past two Asian Games and being relegated in the VNL.

The stagnation of the V-League, which failed to keep pace with global changes, is cited as the cause.

Contrary to international trends where attacking tactics such as quick attacks and time-difference attacks are becoming faster and more diverse, 75.9% of all attacks in the V-League women's division last season consisted of monotonous open and quick-open attacks where setters lofted the ball high.

Even most of those were shouldered by foreign players.

Last season, foreign players, including those under the Asian quota, accounted for nearly half of all attacks, and the attack distribution rate of foreign main attackers, or "opposite spikers," alone reached 35.2%.

This is a world apart from the Japanese league, where the overall foreign player attack proportion stood at 36.5% and foreign opposite spiker attacks were limited to 9.3%.

This is also why Pornpun Guedpard, an active top Asian setter who led the Thai national team to victory at this year's Asian Championship, struggled to adapt to the V-League three seasons ago.

She struggled with the V-League's so-called "molppang volleyball" (over-reliance on a single player), where teams rely heavily on a single foreign player instead of leading fast and diverse attacks.

[Hwang Yeon-ju / SBS Sports Volleyball Commentator: The timing for players like Pornpun or Japanese setters is completely different. As a result, spikers fail to adapt to those tosses. There aren't many spikers who can handle the steps required for fast plays...]

Volleyball fans who lament the stagnation of Korean volleyball are turning their attention to IBK this season.

There are expectations that manager Masayoshi Manabe, who led the Japanese national team to the VNL finals two years ago, will breathe new life into the team by coordinating with Audrey Park, an overseas Korean setter selected as the number one pick in the rookie draft.

In 2024, when Audrey Park played, UCLA was a team that played fast and diverse volleyball, with middle blockers accounting for 29% of the team's total points.

If modern volleyball utilizing diverse attacking options emerges, the new season starting tomorrow could be recorded as the "year one of innovation" for Korean volleyball.

(Video Editing: Hwang Ji-young, Design: Hwang Se-yeon, Yang Gi-tae, Byun Dayoung, Screen Source: YouTube SV.LEAGUE Official Channel, Video Source: YouTube 'Big Ten Volleyball')