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Tottenham Hotspur's Yang Min-hyeok will spend another season on loan, this time with Westerlo in Belgium's top division. The photo shows him during his stint at Queens Park Rangers (QPR), a second-division club, his first loan destination after joining Tottenham. / Courtesy of QPR

The era with zero Korean players in the English Premier League is fast becoming reality. The "Korean Premier Leaguer" lineage that began with Park Ji-sung's move to Manchester United in 2005 is now at risk of ending after 21 years. Following Hwang Hee-chan's departure from the EPL due to his club's relegation, Yang Min-hyeok has now also left Tottenham Hotspur on yet another loan.

Yang's destination is Belgium. Global sports outlet The Athletic reported on the 10th (local time) that Belgian first-division club Westerlo has agreed to a season-long loan for Yang with Tottenham. Yang has traveled to Belgium to finalize the arrangements; the deal reportedly does not include a permanent transfer option.

This marks Yang's fourth loan spell. After a standout 2024 season with Gangwon FC in K League 1, he signed with Tottenham but has yet to make his first-team competitive debut. Starting with Queens Park Rangers in January 2025, he moved on to Portsmouth and then Coventry City, and now heads to Belgium.

At his most recent loan spell with Coventry, Yang made just three league appearances and one FA Cup appearance. Coventry won the Championship title last season and earned promotion to the EPL, but Yang struggled to break into the starting lineup during that run. He returned to Tottenham hoping to turn things around during preseason, but ultimately ended up back out on loan.

With Yang's loan move, the complete absence of Korean players in the EPL has become reality. One spot had already disappeared after Hwang Hee-chan's Wolverhampton, who played in the EPL through last season, were relegated to the Championship. Son Heung-min, meanwhile, left Tottenham last year for LAFC in America's MLS. With Yang now also out of the league, the gap appears effectively confirmed.

What makes it more disappointing is that there's no obvious candidate to fill that gap anytime soon.

In the past, players competing at the top level of Europe's major leagues — like Lee Kang-in or Kim Min-jae — might have been floated as EPL prospects, but the situation has changed. Lee Kang-in left Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) to join Atlético Madrid, signing a five-year deal that returns him to Spain's La Liga, making a move to the EPL unlikely to come up anytime soon.

Kim Min-jae, too, has decided to stay at Bayern Munich, moving further from an EPL future. That leaves Park Seung-soo of Newcastle United as roughly the only Korean player currently seen as a hope for reentering the EPL.

But even Park is unlikely to break into Newcastle's first team anytime soon. Still developing as a prospect at the club, his priority for now is building a foundation to compete for a starting role. Reviving the lineage of Korean players in the EPL will take time.

Since Park Ji-sung joined Manchester United in 2005, Korean players including Lee Young-pyo, Seol Ki-hyeon, Ki Sung-yueng, and Son Heung-min followed in succession into the EPL. Son, in particular, elevated the standing of Korean football by becoming the first Asian player to win the EPL Golden Boot at Tottenham.

But the generation after Son has faced a different reality. Rather than promising K League talents stepping straight into an EPL first team, the trend has shifted toward players needing to prove themselves across multiple European leagues and loan spells first. Yang's repeated loans illustrate this reality clearly.

It would be welcome if Oh Hyeon-gyu (Beşiktaş) could dramatically break into the EPL, but that too looks unlikely, as he already appears set to be Beşiktaş's starting striker for the new season. Oh soared after scoring his first goal at the recent World Cup, but it's a painful irony that Korea's failure to advance past the group stage also took him off the radar of overseas scouts.

Barring a major surprise, this looks set to be the first season in 21 years, since Park Ji-sung's EPL debut, without a single Korean player in the league. The bigger concern is that there's no clear next-generation successor in sight to follow Son Heung-min and Hwang Hee-chan. It remains unclear how many years it could take before Park Seung-soo develops at Newcastle into a new source of hope.

                                                                                                        Cheon Hyun-bin