South Korea's women athletes once again led the way at the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games. An Se-young became the first player in Asian Games history to win back-to-back women's singles badminton titles, Song Da-bin claimed the only gold won by a South Korean in taekwondo sparring, and Seo Chae-hyun delivered the country's first-ever gold in sport climbing. Together, the women produced a string of landmark results.
Since the Games closed, however, the spotlight has shifted to a controversy over military service exemptions for male athletes. Careless gold-medal celebrations by football team members Lee Ki-hyuk and Park Seung-su touched off a backlash, and public opinion is now running strongly in favor of scrapping the exemption.
A gold medal at the Asian Games allows male athletes to serve as art and sports personnel, removing the risk that military duty will interrupt their careers or delay a move abroad. On top of that, they receive prize money from their respective sports federations and 10 points toward the performance award system, commonly known as the "medal pension." Athletes who accumulate 20 points under the assessment criteria become eligible for a monthly payment or a lump sum.
Women athletes, by contrast, have no comparable institutional incentive. Beyond federation prize money and the performance award, they are offered nothing substantial enough to reshape an athletic career.
Even so, women accounted for 15 of the 39 gold medals South Korea won, counting team and doubles events as a single gold each. Many of the most meaningful records of the Games also came from women. That is why some are asking whether it is right for the institutional rewards attached to a gold medal to differ by gender, and why extra compensation goes only to male athletes when the medal is the same.
