South Korea's pickleball boom strains courts as demand surges

Pickleball has pushed past novelty in South Korea and straight into an access problem. In Seoul, the sport now reaches office workers, foreign residents and former tennis players, while public courts are filling fast enough to expose a simple mismatch: more players are arriving than facilities can handle.

The clearest marker is Gwangnaru Hangang Park, where Seoul opened a 14-court pickleball complex on April 16, 2026. The city has described it as one of its largest dedicated pickleball facilities, built to give residents a new recreational sports option along the Han River. Reservations run through the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s public service reservation website on a first-come, first-served basis, a setup that says as much about demand as the court count itself.

What is driving the surge is not just novelty. A former Korea Tennis Association board member, Cho Min-jung, converted her indoor tennis center into a pickleball venue called the Pickle Box, saying worsening economic conditions are steering more people toward sports that ask less of their time, money and bodies than tennis does. The appeal is obvious for beginners: tennis can take a long runway before players can rally and play matches, while pickleball gets people into points almost immediately. That lower barrier is exactly why the sport is spreading beyond the senior crowd that first embraced it.

The numbers back that up. Google Trends data shows Korean search interest in pickleball-related terms rising in 2024 and then surging sharply toward the end of 2025. Celebrity visibility has helped push it further into the mainstream, with Jun Hyun-moo and Choo Sung-hoon linked to the sport, and BTS members Jin, V and RM discussing pickleball on a livestream while on tour. V said he first discovered the game in Hawaii, Jin later posted videos of himself playing against V, and clips of all seven BTS members on courts in San Jose circulated widely.

The growth has already outpaced supply in places such as Seoul Forest, where multiple clubs are competing for limited space and some players are renting private gymnasiums just to get court time. Seoul’s new public complex expands the city’s inventory in a meaningful way, but the shortage remains real enough that the Korea Youth Pickleball Association says public play at Seoul courts is planned at 8,000 won for two hours. That price keeps the sport within reach for everyday players, but it also confirms the bigger story: pickleball is no longer just finding an audience in South Korea, it is testing the country’s court capacity.