Thank blabl for the reply.
My local colleague told me most of the groups are only opened to their members and language is the main obstable for me to join them.
I'm only here for a month and looking for weekend games to maintain my frequency of playing. Do you know any?
I know it's been a long time but there is already a
thread open on finding courts in Changwon. I don't know if the moderators can/will move 5 posts from one thread to another.
Some of the information there is still current, including the existence of a badminton facility at the Masan Sports Complex, as mentioned by blabl above. In fact, you can still find reference to the Olbbaemi Club (#10 on the
Masan Hoewon-gu list). The badminton facility is called the Olympic Memorial Gymnasium and details are at the 3rd tab above the photo
here. One thing that is of interest there is the 2,500 won entry fee for badminton. That suggests that it is a subsidized, public facility that anyone can pay and use. As I've written elsewhere in this forum, that means you never have to feel you're breaking a rule or being parasitic by showing up to play. I find that you can still show up at a club that plays in a school but if you try to play at such a place more than 2 or 3 times, you'll be asked to join the club or stay away since the club typically pays to rent the gym for use by its members. Rarer still are clubs in schools that ask you to pay a guest fee. Neither of the last two cases applies to a public gym. There are still clubs that operate within public gyms but all members pay their individual admission fee just like non-members so those clubs are more like cliques. Some are friendly and welcoming and club members will play with any person who pays admission. Others are more close-knit and some players will only play with an outsider if they are unable to find 4 players for a game from among the people they know.
By the way, to clarify, the links that blabl included above are to 5
lists of clubs. There is a separate list for each of the 5 municipal wards (
gu / 구) in Changwon. The city of Changwon is larger in area than Seoul so if you find that the Masan Sports Complex is too far away from you, you can take blabl's suggestion of asking someone like a hotel employee to look at the lists of clubs and suggest a gym closer to where you are staying or working. I wouldn't recommend asking for advice from someone who doesn't play badminton without referring them to the club lists on badmintontimes.com If you just ask a non-player where you can play badminton, you're liable to get suggestions involving outdoor courts, parking lots, or sports facilities that aren't open to recreational players. Good luck.