If you want to find the strongest kendo players in Korea, look no further than your local city hall. Most of Korea's elite adult kendo squads are what's known as "corporate teams" (실업팀) — rosters of athletes formally employed by a municipal or county government's athletic department, similar to Japan's corporate sports teams (実業団) in sports like ekiden or judo. Once a year, these teams meet on the mat at the Korea Business Kumdo Federation's (KBKF) National Business Kumdo Championship. ("Kumdo" is the term Korea's own kendo federations use for the sport internationally known as kendo — same discipline, Korea's own spelling.)

Beyond the flagship National Business Kumdo Championship, there are separate summer, autumn, and winter national business kendo tournaments, the Bongrim Cup, the Korea Kumdo Association President's Cup, plus assorted regional meets and national team selection matches. Add it all up and multiple business kendo tournaments take place across a single year. The problem is that hardly anyone outside the sport knows this. Without knowing which team is strong or what style a certain player brings, a match result is just a match result. Knowing even the basic trends, on the other hand, makes watching the sport genuinely more fun.

So this piece looks back at the one with the longest history and running edition count — the National Business Kumdo Championship — over its last five editions (the 26th through 30th, 2022–2026). Rather than simply listing who won and who lost, we pulled out the patterns underneath. Factoring in every other tournament would give a fuller picture of which teams are strong, but here we chose to focus on a single event for a simpler, clearer read.

The Fall of the Gumi Dynasty, and the Coming of the Warring States (Men's Team)

You can't talk about 2000s Korean business kendo without mentioning Gumi City Hall. According to the Korea Kumdo Association's own webzine, the team won the men's team title six times between 2003 and 2015 (the 7th, 10th, 12th, 13th, 17th, and 19th editions) — effectively ruling an era.

The dynasty ended with a runner-up finish at the 22nd edition in 2018. In recent years, Gumi has managed only a 3rd-place finish (26th) and a runner-up finish (27th) — unable to clear the final hurdle. No single team has filled the vacuum. The 26th through 30th champions were Inje County Office, Muan County Office, Yongin City Hall, Incheon City Hall, and Gwangju Buk-gu Office — five different champions in five years. Even counting runners-up, the only overlap is Yongin City Hall, which took runner-up at the 26th and the title itself at the 28th.

The era of one team ruling for years is over, replaced by a period where a new team reaches the summit every single year. Anyone who's followed the scene even a little knows that "who wins this time?" has become a genuinely interesting question again.

Hwaseong City Hall's Reign (Women's Team)

In sharp contrast to the chaos on the men's side, the women's team title has belonged to one name for the past three years: Hwaseong City Hall. Champions at the 28th, 29th, and 30th editions — and runner-up at the 26th, meaning the only year in the last five they weren't near the top was the 27th.

What's notable is that this dominance doesn't rest on one star player. As we'll see below, Hwaseong's individual standout changed once during this stretch, yet the team's results never wavered. That suggests genuine depth across the roster rather than reliance on a single name.

A Free-for-All (Men's Individual)

The men's individual event, and especially its top bracket (the "open" division), is even less predictable than the team competition. The 26th-through-30th champions were Jo Kwan-hyun (Gwangju Buk-gu), Shin Kyung-rok (Gwangmyeong), Jang Jae-sun (Cheongju), Kim Seung-gyeom (Bucheon), and Lee Ji-woong (Ulsan Metropolitan Sports Council) — ten different names across champions and runners-up over five years. Among the champions alone, all five come from different teams.

Drop down into the rank-specific individual brackets (3rd dan through 6th-dan-and-above), though, and the picture isn't quite so random. Inje County Office hasn't won the 4th-dan bracket once, but has put someone on the podium in three of the five years (the 26th, 28th, and 30th). Bucheon City Hall moves back and forth between the 5th-dan and 6th-dan-and-above brackets while consistently staying near the top. Champions keep changing, but the strong programs' depth shows up on the podium every year regardless.

In the Individual Event Too, It's Hwaseong (Women's Individual)

Hwaseong's presence is just as visible in the individual event. Hong Ji-hyun took the title at the 27th edition, and since the 29th, Kim Eun-bin has won back-to-back. It wasn't a flawless run throughout, though — at the 28th edition, Busan Metropolitan Sports Council's Yoon Ha-neul took the crown, with Hwaseong settling for runner-up. The title slipped away for one year and came right back — and the fact that the team title never wavered during that same stretch says even more about Hwaseong's overall strength. And at the 30th edition (2026), Hwaseong swept both the champion and runner-up spots in the women's individual event, reaffirming its claim to the throne.

The Repeat Champions in an Era of Chaos

If there's one sentence to summarize everything above, it's this: in most events, business kendo is a sport where nobody can say who wins next. But two names buck that trend entirely — two competitors where you can reasonably guess they'll be on the podium again next time.

The first is Jo Jin-yong of Yongin City Hall, in the 6th-dan-and-above individual bracket: 3rd place at the 26th, champion at the 27th, 3rd place at the 28th, and champion again at the 29th and 30th. He hasn't missed the podium once in five years. Having won the last two editions in a row, he'll be chasing a third straight title next time out.

The second is Kim Eun-bin in the women's individual event, currently riding the exact same trajectory — champion at both the 29th and 30th editions.

In a sport where almost nobody holds onto the throne for long, watching whether these two can keep holding onto theirs next time might be the most interesting storyline of all.