The ceremony was held on November 11. The number Choi Dong-won wore in Lotte was 11. At the 13th BNK Busan Bank Choi Dong-won Award ceremony, held on November 11 at the BNK Busan Bank headquarters in Busan, this year’s honor went to Doosan’s Gwak Bin (27). He received 20 million won and a trophy sculpted in the shape of Choi Dong-won’s pitching motion.

A season with two crowns

Gwak’s season was clear in the numbers first: a 2.24 ERA and 197 strikeouts, both best in the KBO League. Six of the seven selection committee members put him first on their ballots.

The defining scene came at the Asian Games. Three years earlier, Gwak had taken home an Asian Games gold medal without throwing a single pitch. This year was different: in the final against Japan, he threw 111 pitches in a gutty complete effort. The pitcher who once never got to pitch had become the pitcher who carries the biggest game to the end.

“It reminded me of Dong-won pitching”

The words that lingered longest at the ceremony came from selection committee chair Kim Si-jin, who once shared a Lotte clubhouse with Choi Dong-won. Watching Gwak’s Asian Games outing, Kim said, he saw his old friend again — it genuinely reminded him of the way Dong-won used to pitch.

Kim also shared what the ceremony means to him. He comes every year, he said, but his friend is no longer there to see; what gladdens him is that he gets to see Choi’s mother. Choi’s father, too, used to buy him meals often while he was alive. Thinking of his friend still hurts, Kim said. Choi’s mother, Kim Jeong-ja, was in the hall that day.

The award winner’s own words were brief. Gwak said he was grateful to receive an award that recognizes him not as someone who simply throws, but as a true pitcher — and promised to prove next season, humbly, that the award was no accident.

A year when the legend’s name grew larger

This year, the award carried more weight than most. On November 4, Choi Dong-won became the first baseball player ever selected as a Korean Sports Hero, with the induction ceremony to follow in December. Cho Woo-hyun, chairman of the Choi Dong-won Memorial Foundation, said the goal is for Korea to have the Choi Dong-won Award the way America has the Cy Young and Japan has the Sawamura Award.

That name was passed on to the next generation as well. The high school honor, the Daesun High School Choi Dong-won Award, went to Kim Ji-yul of Chungam High School, who said he wants to become a player his team truly needs, devoted the way Choi was. On the same day, the best pitcher in the pros and a high school pitcher received awards bearing the same name. On November 11, the spirit of No. 11 passed, that way, to the next generation.

Source: MyDaily (South Korea), Ryu Han-jun, November 12, 2026 · Money Today (South Korea), November 12, 2026

Photo: Seohae1999, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons (taken in 2023)