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As football, baseball, and basketball are all relatively modern things, I might have expected their Korean terms to be transliterations of foreign terms (in the same way that the words 'taxi', 'computer', 'coffee', and so on have come into Korean). I find it intriguing that the common terms for these sports are the Hanja-rooted words '축구','야구', and '농구'.
How did these terms enter the Korean language?
They're Wasei-Kango words imported from Japan during the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea:
野球 - Literally field-ball, from Japanese 野球/やきゅう
籠球 - Literally basket-ball, from Japanese 籠球/ろうきゅう
Interestingly, Japanese only retains the Kanji word 野球 out of the three; the other two have become English transliterations of soccer and basketball.
football: foot is 축 in Hanja.
and ball is 구in hanja.
baseball:baseball is a ball played in field. and field is 야 in hanja.
and ball is 구in hanja.
basketball:basket is similar to box and box is 농 in hanja.
and ball is 구in hanja.
Many Japanese, Korean, Chinese(especially Japanese) changed foreign words to Hanja words at 18th~19th century.
