Football Madness 회이팅 코리아! (Fighting Korea!)

Being a proud South African but not the biggest soccer fan I was extremely excited when we were given the Soccer World Cup bid for 2010 but I was not really prepared to put my travel plans on hold in order to wait around for the anticipated event, so I headed off to Korea in February of 2010 as planned not thinking that I would really mind missing out on the soccer. But as the event drew closer and closer I began to have pangs of regret. All of my friends at home were telling me how great the vibe was, South Africa was coming together as a nation and the whole world was preparing to flock to my beautiful country and I was stuck in the Korean countryside.

What I did not anticipate was the amazing response, excitement and anticipation to the soccer world cup that would be felt in Korea. When I arrived and people inquired where I was from I was met with rather blank looks when I said South Africa or ‘Nama gong’, but the closer it got to the world cup the responses began to change. As soon as I told people I was from South Africa they would inevitably respond: “ah world cup… I love you”. They were getting geared up for the world cup just like the other 31 competing nations were. Korea is a pretty soccer crazy nation itself. They have a competitive football league in Korea and 2010 is their eighth world cup appearance (more then any other Asian country). After they co-hosted the World Cup in 2002 with Japan and managed to gain themselves the fourth place title, their best result in the world cup to date, they have been hungry to prove that they are capable of such greatness again. After a disappointing world cup in 2006 where they didn’t make it past the group stages they are really hoping to make it through to the top 16 and beyond, as the slogans all over Korea proclaim: “Korea Dream Again!”

So in great anticipation of the world cup opening my fellow South African friends and I made our way to Seoul to watch the opening ceremony and opening match between South Africa and Mexico with some friends. We watched the game with delight as Bafana Bafana played their hearts out. I was very pleasantly surprised by our boys’ performance as well as the support for South Africa from the Korean spectators around us.

The following day was Korea’s turn when they took on the much higher ranked Greece in what proved to be a very exciting and riveting game. We were planning to watch the game at the COEX in the Samseong area of Seoul, they had closed off a big street and had big screen TV’s set up for fans. Unfortunately it had been pouring with rain all day and not being as brave as all of the Korean fans in their red ponchos we opted to watch the match in a nearby pub, and what a game it was, with defender Lee Jung Soo scoring his first world cup goal in the seventh minute. At half time we went up to the street party because the rain had eased and were lucky to see the second goal of the game off the boot of captain Park Ji Sung up with the crowds, as you can imagine the crowd went wild!! Park Ji Sung is Korea's most famous and best soccer player, and the highest paid football player in Asia, he usually plays for Manchester United so everyone knows him and he is literally Korean hero no.1 at the moment, even more then the incredibly popular figure skating gold medalist Kim Yu Na.

After the game, which was a 2 – 0 victory for Korea the streets were lined with ecstatic Korean fans, commonly known as the ‘red devils’ all dressed in red with variously supporters shirts, all with pretty terrible English slogans on them. The most common war cry that is repeated over and over and that all Korean’s know is the cry of 대한민국! This in Romanized letters is: Daehanmin-guk, which is the formal name for Korea in the Korean native language Hangeul (Korean). This along with the term “Fighting” Which is used for: ‘Go Korea’, as a way to pump up Korean fans or to show your support for Korea, i.e. “Fighting Korea.” In Korean it is written as: ‘회이팅’, which actually should be pronounced to ‘Hwaiting’ (because there is no Korean character for F) and should really be written as 파이팅 which would be pronounced “Paiting”. So ‘Fighting’ along with slogans like “Shout the Reds”, “Shouting Korea” and the slogan on my own supporters jersey: “Korea Legend: begin to 2010” which does not make sense in English at all but which I continue to wear, are all evidence of the strong influence of Konglish on Korea. (Konglish is the use of English words in Korean with slight variation i.e. the Korean word for Coffee is ‘Kopi’).

We walked along the crowded streets to delighted chants of ‘Daehanmin-guk’ and fireworks being set off on all sides and because we were all wearing red all of the Koreans we encountered were very excited that even us foreigners were supporting them and people kept asking for photos with us. We literally took about 20 photos with random groups of Koreans and felt like celebrities. Then we actually became celebrities. A television camera crew approached and asked to interview us. A microphone was promptly placed in my friend Jax’s face and we were suddenly surrounded by about a hundred chanting, cheering Koreans. Somehow they were quiet enough to allow Jax to have her short interview which we later found out was for MBC News, one of the biggest Korean national news channels and so on the 9’oclock news the following night in a package about the festivities in Seoul there is a clip of Jax saying "we are very proud of Korea" and she really is famous in Korea. Check out the clip at http://imnews.imbc.com/replay/nwdesk/article/2640540_5780.html
Then after the interview we were pulled into a Korean marsh pit of screaming jumping happy fans and I was terrified, I thought I was going to get squished and I couldn’t get out. It was all rather a strange but hilarious and exciting evening. I stopped for a moment and looked around at the mayhem and pure joy around me. People were setting off fireworks in the middle of the street, people who didn’t know each other were arm in arm jumping and cheering, on my left a guy was holding up a cut out life sized cardboard Park Ji Sung and cheering his name and on my right another guy had a fake world cup trophy and the crowd was lifting him up like he had just won the whole thing, it was truly a night of happiness in Korea and I was very lucky to be a part of it.
Until next time
From football crazy Korea 또 만나요 (tto mannayo: see you again)
p.s. Go Bafana Bafana!!!

Bloggers Block

It has been a long time since my last blog so I just wanted to appologise for my silence, somehow the past few months have just gotten away from me very quickly but I will be making a concerted effort to blog more frequently, so my appologies for the Bloggers Block.

A new blog will follow shortly...