As an avid snowboarder I am very excited for the upcoming snowboarding season.  I love the whole experience of waking up at 5am to drive to the local mountain, taking that first frigid lift ride up and feeling the brisk chill hit the small patch of exposed skin between your nose and your upper lip, and riding down the trail with the “whoosh” of powder beneath your feet.

And I’ve noticed that in recent years more and more Koreans have taken to the slopes.  It seems like every time I go there’s at least a half-dozen Korean church vans in the parking lot.  Granted, the overall rising popularity of snowboarding has helped bring people of all races and ethnicities out to the mountain, but why does it seem that the large majority of Koreans I meet snowboard or have at least tried snowboarding?  Is there something about the synergy of Koreans and snowboarding that just seems right?

• “I wish I was a little bit taller, I wish a were a baller”

Unlike most other mainstream sports, snowboarding doesn’t require the genetic good fortune of being 6’4”, 240 lbs, and able to run a 4.4sec 40 yard dash.  The large majority of Koreans don’t fit that prototype, and in snowboarding you don’t have to.  In fact, having a lower center of gravity is quite advantageous.  In this way, snowboarding’s actually pretty accessible to us.

• “I said a hip, hop, the hippie the hippie dibby hip hop hop and you don’t stop”

Koreans love hip hop. We all think we can sing and we all think we can get up to get down to a fresh beat.  There’s definitely a freedom of expression that’s shared in both hip hop culture and snowboarding culture that is endearing to most Koreans who typically come from a rigid social upbringing.  Snowboarding ultimately comes down to you and the mountain, what you do from there is art.

• “Blame it on the a-a-a-alcohol”

I like my booze and nothing says abuse your liver like a weekend at the slopes.  Or as a friend of mine put it, “It’s like taking the best part of camping (the drinking part I mean) and not compromising on all that crap about being one with nature and hiking until you’re exhausted.”

• “So fresh and so clean clean”

There’s definitely a fashion factor when it comes to snowboarding and Koreans don’t muck about when it comes to being stylish.

• “I’m gon’ go call my crew, You go call your crew, We can rendezvous at the bar around two”

The most common theme I found amongst my informal poll of friends, is that snowboarding trips allow you to meet up with people in a group setting, particularly in the winter.

We Koreans are a fanatical people.  We love diving head-first into things with great passion.  But we usually reserve full-fledge pandemonium and the pledging our first-born until there’s a Korean or Asian star to represent our hopes and dreams.  So until there are a few Korean Shaun Whites, we might not come out in full force to the next Winter X-Games just quite yet.  But get out there and keep shreddin’.  Just don’t double-park the church van!

- Juncakes

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