Traveling the world was nothing new for Hank Aaron. By 1982, when Aaron was working in the Braves' front office and had been inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the home run champ was used to seeing his batting legacy spread across the globe. Eight years prior, in 1974, he and the future world-record holder in career home runs, Sadaharu Oh, faced off in a home run derby before a Yomiuri Giants-New York Mets exhibition game that was watched by a capacity crowd of 50,000.

But in 1982, just weeks after Aaron had been formally inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., and when the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) was in the middle of its very first professional season, Aaron took his first tour of South Korea.

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This first trip saw Aaron in a customary role as a sports ambassador, promoting good will at each stop. (In 1990, Aaron and Oh would found the World Children's Baseball Fair, an annual event that has run every year except during Covid.)

Aaron toured the country, took in baseball games, handed out autographs and met with military leaders from both the USA and Korea. They were -- as Lt. Col. Richard A. Pack, the United Nations Command support group-JSA commander and former Braves batboy said -- "tickled to death," about Aaron's trip to the countries.

"These guys see a lot of VIPs, but to them Hank Aaron was among the greatest," Pack told The Stars and Stripes in 1982. "He's a little bit of America to them."

Perhaps most importantly, the slugger also held batting clinics with members of the Samsung Lions, who would go on to lose in the KBO Finals, 4 games to 1, to the OB (now Doosan) Bears. Seeing the outpouring of support and considering the KBO's desire to improve, they quickly asked if Aaron could return with some Braves players for two weeks of exhibitions.

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So, in October -- just after the KBO's inaugural season finished and after the Braves had been swept by the Cardinals in the NLCS -- Aaron led a contingent of 21 Braves Minor Leaguers from Triple-A, Double-A and Single-A into the country for the fortnight of exhibition contests against the Bears, Lions, MBC Blue Dragons (now LG Twins), and a KBO All-Star team.

Among those ballplayers on the Braves' roster were Aaron's son, Lary, who had just finished his second season in the Braves' Minor League system.

"The travel was 18 hours," Lary Aaron joked in a recent phone call with MLB.com. "It was a long time because we went to sleep and woke back up and it was still daylight."

Though an outfielder and first baseman by trade, Lary was forced to don the catcher's equipment -- something he hadn't done since high school -- after another backstop was hurt.

"I was in the bullpen and we had a pitcher named Ike Pettaway," Lary remembered. "He was from Mobile and he probably should have made it to the Major Leagues with the Braves, but he didn't end up getting to the Major Leagues. I think the second pitch he threw me, he broke a blood vessel in my hand. That's how hard he threw."

While there was a little bit of culture shock for the young players -- Lary remembers the group eschewing dinner one evening for a nearby McDonald's and getting stopped by rifle-toting military troops before crossing the border into North Korea -- the overall experience was as gratifying for the ballplayers as it was for the fans who interacted with them in the country.

"The stands were always packed every night when we played over there," Lary said. "They were excited. The fans came out."

Unfortunately for Hank Aaron and the Braves front office, the performance on the field wasn't always up to snuff. Even though it was just after the KBO's first year, with Lary noting that the level of play was similar to Double-A, the Braves Minor League team went just 3-4 with a tie in the tour.

"To be very honest with you, I was very disappointed in the performance," Hank told The Atlanta Journal's Glenn Sheeley, believing that some of the players treated the trip more like a vacation. "And I really can't understand why. I know if I was a 19-year-old player going to Korea with my farm director, my scouting director and my Triple-A manager watching, I'd make damn sure I would try my best to show them what I could do."

Of course, there were still plenty of highlights. Though Hank Aaron usually manned the first-base coaches box -- "I didn't want them to see me struggling out there," he joked -- he did take part in a home run derby with Ernie Banks, who also came on the trip. The then-51-year-old Banks, who did play in the games, even managed to hit a grand slam against the Samsung Lions in the first inning of the very first game on the trip.

When Banks' son Joey and Hank's son Lary later took the field that first night, SABR researcher and writer Patrick Bourgo theorized that "this game also holds the distinction of being the first (and possibly only) time the sons of the two Hall of Famers played together."

When the Dodgers and Padres make MLB history this week when they play MLB's first regular-season game in Korea, it will also showcase the sport's astonishing worldwide growth since Aaron's trip there over 40 years ago.

"Going to Japan [and Korea] really was something that he wanted to help to spread baseball around the world," Emily Haydel, Hank's granddaughter, said in a recent phone call. "And at the time, of course, Korean and Japanese players weren't necessarily in MLB when he was playing, but it was just allowing that to be an opportunity."

(In an odd twist of fate, Haydel's career has followed in her grandfather's footsteps, as she has worked in baseball and in entertainment in South Korea. "[My grandmother] and my granddad before he passed regretted [taking me to Korea] because they didn't realize I would end up moving," she joked.)

"I do know that it was about spreading the game of baseball around the world. That's something he liked," Haydel said. "And bringing the Braves over to Korea for the inaugural KBO season was also allowing the Braves players to be exposed to foreign cultures."

As Aaron himself said during that first trip in 1982, "I think sports have done a tremendous job in defusing tension around the world."