Sand-Trap Diplomacy.(South Koreans play golf in Japan)

Byline: Hideko Takayama

A couple of my South Korean friends called me recently, a few weeks apart, from obscure towns in Japan. Neither was attending a business conference or scholarly seminar. They were playing golf. Both had flown directly from Inchon Airport to Japanese regional airports and proceeded directly to the course. I called a golfer friend in Seoul to ask what was going on. He told me that in recent months thousands of South Koreans had been flying to Japan to play. Why? "We don't have enough golf courses in South Korea," he answered, "And besides, fees are cheaper in Japan."

What? Was he talking about the same golf-crazy nation where during the boom years a round typically cost more than $200? Apparently the golf scene in North Asia has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. The game's popularity has fallen in Japan, and risen--along with the country's fortunes--in South Korea. According to Sadao Furuhata, director of Tokyo's Golf Digest Management Research, the industry's version of a think tank, there are 10 million golfers in Japan now, down from nearly 15 million in 1992. That's left Japanese golf-course owners in the lurch; after a building boom in the early 1990s, the country is carpeted with 2,400 sparklingly green courses but not enough golfers to play them.

According to Furuhata, many retired Japanese businessmen simply don't play anymore. Some are on tight budgets and can't afford the greens fees. But more important, Japan's salarymen were apparently never quite as crazy about golf as they seemed. Many took to the links during their careers because they saw it as their duty: they were cogs in their corporations' business-entertainment machines. To these loyal employees, in other words, golf was work, not fun. And a ...