A fan blows at the Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Songpa District, southern Seoul on Aug. 4.YONHAP
Korean professional baseball is taking a break through Sunday as extreme heat continues across the country.
The KBO called off all 15 KBO League games scheduled between Friday and Sunday at five stadiums. The general managers of all 10 clubs and the secretary general of the Korea Professional Baseball Players Association made the decision at an emergency meeting on Thursday at the sport's headquarters in Gangnam District, southern Seoul.
That brings the number of games lost to heat this season to 30. The KBO had already scrapped every game on Wednesday and Thursday over concerns for the safety of spectators and players. Counting rainouts and other causes, 55 games have now been called off.
The KBO and the clubs will spend the weekend working out detailed heat measures and installing equipment before the league resumes on Tuesday with adjusted start times. First pitch, currently 6:30 p.m. on weekdays and 6 p.m. on weekends, moves to 7 p.m. across the board for the time being. Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, the league's only indoor venue, is the exception: 7 p.m. on weekdays, 6 p.m. on Saturdays and, depending on broadcast arrangements, as early as 2 p.m. on Sundays.
The league also laid out when games can go ahead. A game is called off at once if a heat wave emergency warning, the top tier of the three-level alert system, is in force at the stadium's location before 1 p.m. on the day.
Under a heat wave advisory or warning, an operations officer measures the apparent temperature at the ground from 1 p.m. onward. If the "feels like" reading at first pitch reaches 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), or the officer judges the risk to be high, the game can be called off up to three hours before the start or pushed back to as late as 7:30 p.m. Once a game is underway, the decision to suspend or continue rests on the "feels like" reading together with the condition of players and spectators.
A Jeju High School baseball player stands next to an portable air conditioning unit at the Mokdong Baseball Stadium in western Seoul on Aug. 7.YONHAP
Every stadium will also introduce a cooling break. The changeover after the third and seventh innings stretches to four minutes to guarantee rest, and the cleaning time after the fifth can run up to six minutes where needed. Games that go to extra innings get another four minutes after the ninth.
Measures for spectators were expanded as well. Gates will open on a flexible schedule to cut the time fans spend waiting outside, and clubs will add canopies, misting fans, drinking water points and extra emergency medical staff. A hotline between the KBO and club safety officers will track heat-related illness at the grounds in real time.
The KBO had issued a tiered set of operating rules on Tuesday, under which games would go ahead as normal during a heat wave advisory and, under a heat wave warning, first pitch could be pushed back by up to an hour at the home club's request. Under those rules, a heat wave emergency warning before 1 p.m. required cancellation. The first games called off under the new system were at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul and in Gwangju on Tuesday.
The same day, a man in his 20s collapsed in the stands at Incheon SSG Landers Field ahead of the ninth inning of the SSG Landers' game against the LG Twins and was carried out on a stretcher. Incheon was under a heat wave warning, which did not require cancellation. The KBO then paused play across the league and reviewed its heat measures in full.
BY BAE YOUNG-EUN [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
