Modeling and Analyzing Sports Networks Revealed through

K-12 Physical Education Systems:

Case Studies of Korea, Japan, and the USA

Yong-wook Kim

and Jinyoung Han

Department of HCI, Hanyang University, Ansan, South Korea

Keywords: Sports Network, K-12 Physical Education, Network Analysis.

Abstract: This paper investigates the The K-12 Physical Education Systems for Korea, Japan, and the USA. To identify

the relations among sports that are covered in the school curriculums, we introduce the notion of sports

network where a vertex indicates a sports and an edge represents the relations between two sports. The

analysis results on the three sports networks are summarized as follows. The results are as follows. We find

that basic movement sports such as gymnastics and fitness are important across the three countries. Also,

Korea and the USA are found to focus more on a variety of sports than just covering basic sports. On the other

hand, Japan tends to focus on basic sports. Additional study is required to closely analyze the curriculum of

primary and secondary schools, which can guide how to balance the different experiences of various sports

and training in basic sports.

1 INTRODUCTION

In the modern society, people in different countries

tend to enjoy different sports. For example, people in

the USA are known to like American football while

people in Japan tend to watch baseball. Table 1 shows

the such difference in sports preferences across three

countries: Korea, Japan, and the USA. In 2018, the

most popular sports in Korea were walking (40.8%)

and mountain climbing (23.2%). So, in the Korean

apparel market, sportswear is sold after the casual

wear (Korea Federation of Textile Industries, 2018).

In Japan, walking (57.0%) is the most common,

followed by track and field (12.2%), swimming

(5.2%), and bowling (4.8%). In the USA, 66.0% of

Americans are enjoying the fitness. When we

compare Korea and Japan, track and field is 3.3% in

Korea, whereas that in Japan is 12.2%; mountain

climbing is 23.2% in Korea while that in Japan is only

3.9% (Table 1).

Such difference in sports preference is mainly due

to different curriculums of K-12 Physical Education.

That is, the sports that a person is likely to enjoy is

the one he/she learned before (Byoung-Wook, Ahn.,

and Eun-Young, Cho., 2015). The K-12 Physical

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1904-2019

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8911-2791

Education System in Korea is based on the body

movement, which consists of health management

ability, physical training ability, competition

performance ability, and body expression ability.

Through this process, it is expected to learn various

sports (Ministry of Education-Korea, 2015). Japan’s

K-12 Physical Education System aims to improve the

health and physical strength by understanding basic

movements of exercise and solving exercise tasks

(Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and

Technology-Japan, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c). The K-12

Physical Education System in the USA aims to

improve various skills, knowledge, social behaviour,

as well as recognition of the value of physical activity

for health, enjoyment, challenge, self-expression

and/or social interaction (Couturier, Lynn., et al.,

2014).

To understand differences in sports practice

across the three countries, this paper investigates the

K-12 Physical Education Systems for the three

countries. In particular, we seek to understand what

sports are popular in different countries. In addition,

this paper investigates how different sports are related

with each other. In the K-12 Physical Education

Systems, it is usually recommended to learn multiple

Kim, Y. and Han, J.

Modeling and Analyzing Spor ts Networks Revealed through K-12 Physical Education Systems: Case Studies of Korea, Japan, and the USA.

DOI: 10.5220/0008163201610166

In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Sport Sciences Research and Technology Support (icSPORTS 2019), pages 161-166

ISBN: 978-989-758-383-4

161

Table 1: Popularity of community sports in Korea, Japan

and the USA (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism-

Korea. 2018; Physical Activity Council, 2019; Japan Sports

Agency, 2017).

sports

Korea

Japan

sports

USA

aerobic

2.7%

.1%

fitness

sports

66.0%

badminton

7.8%

3.1%

baseball

2.3%

5.9%

basketball

5.3%

1.7%

individual

sports

45.3%

billiards

8.3%

0.1%

bowling

7.1%

4.7%

cycling

8.9%

10.9%

outdoor

sports

59.2%

dancing

1.4%

2.5%

fencing

.7%

.1%

fishing

4.1%

4.5%

racquet

sports

13.0%

fitness

11.9%

12.9%

football

8.9%

4.05%

golf

4.0%

11.0%

team

sports

22.6%

gymnastics

9.4%

12.4%

Martial arts

1.7%

.1%

mountain

climbing

23.2%

3.9%

water

sports

13.7%

ping pong

3.5%

3.2%

rope

skipping

7.7%

2.2%

swimming

8.3%

5.2%

winter

sports

7.1%

tennis

1.4%

3.8%

track and

field

3.3%

12.2%

volleyball

1.5%

1.9%

walking

40.8%

57.0%

yoga

6.3%

sports. Hence, understanding the relations among

sports can enhance the sports education as well as

help to spread community sports.

2 METHODS AND DATA

2.1 Network Model

To represent relations among sports revealed in the

K-12 Physical Education Systems, we introduce the

notion of the “sports network” as an undirected graph

G = (V, E), where a vertex indicates a sports and an

edge indicates the relation between two sports. Here,

we assume there exists a relation (i.e., edge) between

two sports if two sports are appeared together in the

K-12 Physical Education Systems. That is, for

instance, if tennis and swimming are mentioned

together in the K-12 Physical Education Systems, we

assume those two sports are related. Note that our

proposed network is similar to various backbone

networks defined in various areas such as a food

network (Yong-Yeol, Ahn., et al., 2011; Wäsche,

Hagen., 2015; Sohn, E., et al., 2018).

2.2 Data Collection and Analysis

To identify sports relations, we first selected the

target sports based on the survey for the K-12

Physical Education Systems, “A survey on the

participation of the public living sports”. Then, three

experts in physical education validated the selected

sports. Finally, 23 sports were selected: aerobic,

badminton, baseball, basketball, billiards, bowling,

cycling, dancing, fencing, fishing, fitness, football,

golf, gymnastics, Martial arts, mountain climbing,

ping pong, rope skipping, swimming, tennis, track

and field, volleyball, walking, yoga.

We collected education curriculum documents of the

K-12 Physical Education Systems for South Korea,

Japan, and the USA in Table 2. The document for

South Korea contains 124 pages and 10,303 words;

the document for the USA includes 136 pages and

50,174 words; the documents for Japan contain 913

pages 26,637 words. We extracted paragraphs from

each document, and abnormal data was removed

through the preprocessing process. Finally, 934

paragraphs for South Korea, 4,674 paragraphs for the

USA, and 2,134 paragraphs for Japan were used to

identify relations among sports. In each paragraph,

we check whether two target sports are appeared

together or not. That is, if two sports are included in

a paragraph, we assume those two sports are linked in

the given sports network.

Table 2: K–12 Physical Education Systems of three

countries: Korea, Japan and the USA. In particular, we

investigate: Ministry of Education (Korea), 2015; Ministry

of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology

(Japan), 2017a; Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,

Science and Technology (Japan), 2017b; Ministry of

Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology

(Japan), 2017c; Couturier, Lynn., et al., 2014).

Country

K-12 Physical Education Systems

Korea

2015 체육과 교육과정

Japan

小学,中学,

高等学校学習指導要領解説

保健体育編・体育編

USA

National Standards

& Grade-Level Outcomes

for K–12 Physical Education

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The statistical program ‘R version 3.6.0’ was used

to analyze the data, and ‘Gephi 0.9.2’ was used for

the graph visualization.

3 RESULTS

We build and analyze three sports networks for

Korea, the USA, and Japan.

3.1 Korea

Figure 1: The sports network revealed through the K-12

Physical Education System in South Korea.

Figure 2: Degree of sports in the Korean sports network is

illustrated.

The sports network for South Korea is visualized in

Figure 1, which shows connectivities among sports in

South Korea. To understand the role of each sports in

terms of connectivities, we illustrate amount of

shared sports, or degree, for each sports in Figure 2.

That is, a larger circle in Figure 2 indicates a higher

degree. As shown in Figure 2, gymnastics, martial

arts, football, and volleyball have high degree, which

can play roles in connecting other sports in the given

sports network in Korea. On the other hand, when we

Figure 3: Number of sports revealed in Korean K-12

Physical Education System.

look at number of sports appeared in the document of

the Korean K-12 Physical Education System in

Figure 3, we find that track and field and yoga are the

two most mentioned sports. Note that frequently

mentioned sports in the K-12 Physical Education

System can be regarded as popular sports in

education. This indicates that sports with high degree

(revealing importance in connectivities) may not be

necessary popular in South Korea. This can raise a

discussion that not only popularity of sports but also

its connectivity needs to be comprehensively

considered in physical education.

3.2 USA

We next illustrate the sports network for the USA in

Figure 4. We also illustrate the amount of shared

sports for each sports in Figure 5. As shown in

Figures 4 and 5, unlike Korea, fitness plays important

roles in the sports network of the USA. When we look

at the popularity of sports in the USA in Figure 6,

fitness also ranks at top, meaning that fitness plays

important role not only in popularity but also in

connectivity in the USA.

Figure 4: The sports network revealed through the K-12

Physical Education System in the USA.

Modeling and Analyzing Sports Networks Revealed through K-12 Physical Education Systems: Case Studies of Korea, Japan, and the USA

163

Figure 5: Degree of sports in the USA sports network is

illustrated.

Figure 6: Number of sports revealed in the K-12 Physical

Education System of the USA.

3.3 Japan

Figure 7: The sports network revealed through the K-12

Physical Education System in Japan.

The sports network for Japan is depicted and analyzed

in Figure 7. We also illustrate the amount of shared

sports for each sports in the Japan sports network in

Figure 8. The sports network of Japan also shows a

somewhat disparate pattern with those of Korea and

the USA. In terms of connectivities, gymnastics,

dancing, fitness, and martial arts play important roles

Figure 8: Degree of sports in Japan sports network is

illustrated.

Figure 9: Number of sports revealed in the K-12 Physical

Education System of Japan.

in the given sports network. When we look at the

popularity of sports in Japan in Figure 9, swimming,

fitness, dancing, track and field, and gymnastics are

reported as popular in Japan. Overall, we notice that

Japan focuses on basic sports training such as fitness,

track and field, and gymnastic.

3.4 A Collective Analysis on Korea, the

USA, and Japan Sports Networks

To analyze the three sports networks together, we

visualize the three networks as a multi-layer network

fashion in Figure 10. When we look at the diversity

of sports, 19 sports are connected in the sports

networks for Korea and the USA 19. On the other

hand, only 13 sports connectivities in Japan. This

implies that Japan tends to focus on smaller number

of sports than Korea or the USA. We find that there

is a strong relation between fitness and gymnastics in

Japan, but their connection is not significant in Korea

and the USA. This reveals that Japan tends to focus

on a small number of sports that deal with basic

training such as fitness or gymnastics. On the other

hand, Korea and the USA tend deal with diverse

advanced sports, compared to Japan.

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Figure 10: Three sports networks revealed through the K-12 Physical Education Systems are visualized.

4 CONCLUDING REMARKS

This study modeled and analyzed sports networks

revealed through the K-12 Physical Education

Systems in Korea, the USA, and Japan. We

summarize four key implications as follows.

First, all three countries primarily focus on basic

sports such as gymnastics and fitness. Korea and

Japan teach swimming because it is required for the

safety of students. Such effort on safety education is

resulting in several large-scale accidents such as the

‘Sinking of MV Sewol’ or ‘Shun Maru disaster’

(Wikipedia, 2019a; Wikipedia, 2019b).

Second, many students in Korea and Japan take

up Taekwondo and Judo, respectively, as traditional

sports. This leads martial arts to become an important

part of the physical education curriculums in these

countries.

Third, it was found that Japan focuses more on

basic movement sports, compared with Korea and the

USA. It may be due to the characteristics of living

areas in Japan.

Lastly, the study showed that physical education

courses have had a certain effect on the life-long

sports. Therefore, during school, the sports

curriculum provides various experiences from a

variety of sports. Also, education of basic movement

sports is essential. However, from the educational

perspective, it is not easy to educate students who are

not interested in those movement sports (Myeong-

Soo, Kim., 2017). To remedy this issue, there have

been a number of proposals offered to the academic

community on physical education (Song, Ji-

Hyun⋅Choi, Won-Seok., 2018; Jeong-Hyun, Lee., et

al., 2017; Ho-Cheol, Lee., 2016; Yang-Ok, Ahn.,

Min-Cheol, Cha., 2016; Jeong-Jun, Park., 2017).

Modeling and Analyzing Sports Networks Revealed through K-12 Physical Education Systems: Case Studies of Korea, Japan, and the USA

165

The development of new sports and the need of

more enjoyment (e.g., through extreme sports) are

one of the important trends of the modern sports

(Kyeun Woo, Park., and Seong Kyu, Ro., 2012). One

of the main reasons of learning sports is to know how

to have fun and how to increase our physical

condition. In order to achieve this goal, another study

is required to closely analyze the curriculum of

primary and secondary schools, which can guide how

to balance the different experiences of various sports

and training in basic sports.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for

their helpful comments on an earlier version of this

paper.

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