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The sphere of lifestyle sports has shown a remarkable growth in participation, institution, and industry in South Korea since the 1990s. While snowboarding has been one of the long-established lifestyle sports in the country, little research has been conducted to understand ways in which the field of snowboarding has been formed and developed within the broader social, cultural, political, and economic contexts. It should be highlighted that the cultural formation of lifestyle sports has been closely associated with a series of historical progression of youth (sub)cultures and identities. The 1990s witnessed the rapid introduction and popularization of snowboarding and its combined commercialized aspects with fashion and music, which showed strong manifestations of cultural struggle between the emerging unprecedented youth culture and the existing dominant culture. This paper intends to examine ways in which complex sociocultural, political and economic relations are negotiated through various historical conjunctures and trajectories within the generational politics of lifestyle sports – snowboarding in particular. While the two distinctive generational divisions have consistently maintained, the early homogeneous features no longer hold their significance within each division. It is noted that snowboarding is also no longer characterized as a symbolic manifestation of youth culture and lifestyle. The paper concludes with discussions on the sportification process of snowboarding and the broader cultural process of individualization.
