Intae Hwang was a referee in the NBA G League but was recently promoted to a full-time referee in the NBA. He was reportedly only interested in basketball in middle school in Masan, South Korea. He was born in the early 1980s to small businessmen Jungik Hwang and Jaeryeun Jung. But he was still not particularly interested in being a referee.
Things changed for Hwang only after a chance meeting with Kirok Shin, a senior at the Busan University of Foreign Studies. In 2004, Shin, a local official, encouraged Hwang to pursue that career. The NBA was interested in Hwang after seeing him at the Olympics.
The league does this to find potential referees, just like scouts travel the world to find the best foreign talent. Hwang’s path toward becoming a full-time staff referee started when he accepted an invitation from the NBA for the 2017 Summer League.
Intae Hwang moved his family 7,000 miles from South Korea to New Jersey in 2020 to pursue a career in officiating basketball.
Today, Hwang was named as a full-time NBA referee for the 2023-24 season 👏❤️
(h/t @BenGolliver) pic.twitter.com/A9dlbrQnER
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) October 10, 2023
Hwang received a salary from the RDP. But they did not promise him a full-time position when he chose to relocate 7,000 miles away. In January 2020, Hwang took the risk of moving his entire family to the United States despite not receiving a full-time job offer. He participated in the program’s regular training sessions and video review sessions. While officiating pro-am matches in a Secaucus YMCA gym during the pandemic.
But soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and things went south for many. Nobody could have foreseen what would happen, but Hwang saw the absence from work as an opportunity for him rather than a catastrophe. He studied NBA and G League games while practicing his English. To obtain a position in the G League, Hwang completed the three-year program in just 18 months.
Where was Intae Hwang before the NBA?
Hwang, a South Korean native, relocated to New Jersey in 2020 to work as a referee in the United States. Hwang completed the three-year RDP in 18 months, thanks to his dedication to his profession. Which also led to him being hired to officiate G League games for the previous two seasons.
Hwang and seven other officials from the 61 in the G League were designated as nonstaff. Allowing him to work a few preseason and regular season NBA games. Now NBA has announced Intae Hwang as a full-time referee in the NBA. Despite being promoted, they will still assign him to G League games because all referees with fewer than four years of working for NBA games must do so.