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The story
At the Asian Games currently underway in Aichi/Nagoya, the stadium lights at Okazaki Chuo Sogo Park Baseball Stadium — the venue for Team Korea’s baseball games — malfunctioned on the night of the 20th during a pre-game practice, leaving only half the lights working. This came just a day after the organizing committee failed to tell Team Korea on the 19th where their official practice would be held, forcing the team to scramble and arrange an indoor practice facility on its own. South Korean outlet OSEN criticized the situation, saying, “Because problems keep piling up from the tournament’s shoddy management, even a minor, unexpected glitch puts everyone on edge.” On 5ch, opinions split: some pointed out that facility operations are outsourced to a foreign company and argued “Japan isn’t entirely to blame,” while others countered that whoever placed the order still bears responsibility for oversight.
At the trouble-plagued Aichi/Nagoya Asian Games, another incident occurred on the 20th: the stadium lights malfunctioned during Team Korea’s baseball pre-game practice at the game venue, leaving only half the lights lit. Team Korea had already run into trouble on the 19th, when the organizing committee failed to tell them where their official practice would be held, forcing the team to simultaneously scramble to arrange an indoor practice facility. South Korean outlet OSEN criticized the situation, saying, “Because problems keep happening day after day due to the tournament’s shoddy management, even a minor, unexpected glitch puts everyone on edge.”
Trouble has struck the Asian Games yet again. South Korean outlet OSEN reported that “the lights broke down during Team Korea’s final practice at the Asian Games baseball stadium, which has been drawing daily criticism over its shoddy management.” Team Korea, set to open their tournament against Taiwan today on the 21st, held their pre-game practice on the 20th at Okazaki Chuo Sogo Park Baseball Stadium, the venue for the actual games — only for the stadium lights to malfunction, leaving just half of them lit.
That day, the organizing committee had assigned Team Korea a 4 p.m. practice slot. Thailand and Hong Kong, in the same group as Korea, finished their practices in the morning, with Korea scheduled for 4 p.m. and Taiwan’s final practice set for 6 p.m. Team Korea used their full two hours, running through batting, fielding, and baserunning drills across the board. They prepared for the Taiwan game by carefully checking everything that could potentially cause problems — from how the ball bounces on the infield to the outfield fence, the mound, and the batter’s box. Around 4:50 p.m., as the sun set under cloudy skies, the stadium lights came on. But only the right-field and first-base-side lights lit up; the left-field and third-base-side lights stayed dark.
Source: ronspo.com / Original article here
What people said
Unlike the WBC, this is a tournament Korea actually takes seriously.
Taiwan's got military-service exemptions riding on this too, so they come at baseball dead serious.
Gold [medal] = exemption from military service (the system Korean athletes are chasing).
And what country is the person who handed operations off to a French company from? A country where it's normal to just dump everything on a subcontractor and then act like it's none of your business afterward is pretty scary too.
If the exact same thing happened in Korea instead of Japan, are you confident you wouldn't be bashing Korea for it?
Way too quick to blame someone else.
No, it's Omura's fault. (Hideaki Omura, Governor of Aichi Prefecture)
Governor Omura? PM Takaichi?
Greedy companies skimming their cut at every layer — that's the root of all this evil.
The photo in the source is wrong. That's the multipurpose field.
https://okazaki-kanko.jp/chuo-sogo-park/guide/166
There's not even a light tower there — you could only play backyard ball on that lol. The actual baseball stadium is here:
https://www.aichi-nagoya2026.org/ja/venue/okazaki-chuo-sogo-park-baseball-stadium/
Apparently it seats 20,000, so from a soccer fan's perspective that actually sounds pretty fancy.
The public isn't just getting their taxes skimmed — we're the ones left embarrassed too. It's genuinely a nuisance for us citizens.
Infrastructure's falling apart.
Background and Key Points of the Debate
Reports of trouble surrounding venue operations at the Aichi/Nagoya 2026 Asian Games have piled up ever since the opening, and this latest stadium-light malfunction is an extension of that pattern. On the thread, opinions clashed: some defended the situation by noting that facility management and operations were outsourced to a foreign (French) company, arguing “Japan isn’t entirely to blame,” while others held that the organizing committee, as the client that placed the order, bears the ultimate responsibility for oversight. The original article notes that Team Korea had to share limited practice time with Thailand, Hong Kong, and Taiwan — teams in the same group — and that just a day earlier, on the 19th, the organizing committee had failed to tell the team where their official practice would be held, forcing them to scramble and arrange an indoor facility themselves. Against that backdrop, Korean observers see this latest lighting failure not as an isolated equipment glitch, but as one more symptom of operational problems that have dogged the tournament’s management since it opened.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports Breaking News+) thread “Another Mishap at the Aichi/Nagoya Asian Games: Stadium Lights Fail During Team Korea’s Pre-Game Official Practice — ‘Shoddy Tournament Management. I Can’t Feel Safe’.”
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