Volleyball Star Kim Yeon-koung Signs Deal to Return to Korean League

June 08, 2020 11:05

Kim Yeon-koung

Volleyball star Kim Yeon-koung has inked a deal to return to the Korean league after playing overseas for 11 years.

Kim on Saturday signed a one-year deal with her former club Heungkuk Life Pink Spiders for a salary of W350 million — a significant pay cut for reportedly the world’s highest-paid volleyball player (US$1=W1,209).

Heungkuk Life initially offered the club’s highest salary of W650 million, but Kim came back with a lower offer so that her return would not affect other players’ pay.

The Korean league applies a salary cap, which has been set at W2.3 billion this season for a women’s team. The Pink Spiders have already spent W1 billion on twin sisters Lee Jae-yeong and Da-yeong. Two-time league MVP Jae-yeong is paid W600 million and this year’s MVP runner-up Da-yeong W400 million.

When Kim had a meeting with team officials last week, they presented her their best offer of an annual salary of W650 million for two years. The amount was way less than half of what she earned in Turkey — estimated at around W1.6 to 1.7 billion — yet this would still have required the team to trade or waive as many as four players. Not wanting to harm her juniors’ prospects, Kim took a voluntary pay cut so that her return would minimize the disruption to the club’s roster.

Kim conquered the Korean league as soon as she made her professional debut with the Pink Spiders in 2005, and was put on the “voluntary retired list” when she left the team in 2009 to play overseas. She played for JT Marvelous in Japan from 2009 to 2011, Fenerbahçe in Turkey from 2011 to 2017, Shanghai Guohua Life in China from 2017 to 2018 and another Turkish club, Eczacıbaşı VitrA, from 2018 to 2020.

After Kim’s contract with Eczacıbaşı VitrA expired this spring, Kim was offered big paychecks by many clubs around the world. However, with the world’s major leagues facing indefinite delays due to the COVID-19 outbreak, she seems to have decided to return home so that she can prepare for the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo in a more stable environment. She will become a free agent after playing at Heungkuk Life for two more seasons.