Reds, Go Together!
In 2002, at the FIFA World Cup co-hosted by Korea and Japan, the South Korean underdog team placed fourth in the tournament, much to the surprise and ecstatic delight of millions of Korean fans. At this year’s tournament, the most common slogans on T-shirts in Korea is “Again 2002!”; they don’t hope to win, necessarily, they just want the giddy madness of competing in the tournament.
Four days after arriving in Seoul, we had the chance to watch a World Cup match between South Korea and Switzerland. We couldn’t have missed it as it was advertised everywhere- billboards, subway stations, TV, posters – and even though we are new tourists in this country and can barely speak a word of the language, there was no doubt as to when they were playing, who the enemy was and what was expected of the team: “Dae Ham Min Guk!” (“Go, Republic of Korea!”)
We had met a Canadian couple while we were in Taiwan and we had kept in touch since then. Sara had returned to Korea for her job teaching English and we callled when we arrived to arrange to meet up with her to watch the match. The catch was that the kick-off was at 4:00am. Our guesthouse is in the suburbs of the city, at least a one-hour metro ride from City Hall, where they had set up a stage and a big-screen TV and where nearly a million people were expected to gather that Friday night. (The city has a population that is nearly equal to half the population of Canada.) Because the metro would stop running at 2:00am, we had the option of trying to catch a taxi at 3:00am in order to make it down there in time for the start, or to meet just after midnight and stay out all night before watching the match. We’re lightweights when it comes to staying up late but how could we pass up this opportunity to join the hooligans in their hooliganery and actually participate in World Cup madness?
We bought two Korea football jerseys (though I wish we had bought the ones that, in English, said: “Reds, Go Together!”) and had a few drinks with our guesthouse-mates before it was time to leave. Marc didn’t make it.
I met Sara and her friend Krista at the party/bar zone near Hongik University downtown at 12:45. They were decked out not only with jerseys, but with bandanas, tattoos and glowing red horns, as was everyone else in the area. People in red swarmed out of the subways and were mashed into the streets; cars stopped driving – except the trucks and jeeps filled with fans that were cruising the neighbourhood and chanting; the bars were full and people were drinking in the streets. This marked my first occasiom to drink soju, a powerful Korean vodka. Actually, we were drinking Coke and soju, which the Koreans we met referred to as “Coso”. Anyway, we weren’t the only ones partying all night, hopping from bar to bar and cheering with strangers, waiting for the game to start. The chanting got louder and more frequent the closer we got to game time. When the Korean national anthem played at the beginning of the broadcast, it could’ve been four in the afternoon for the tireless enthusiasm of everyone within viewing distance.
In the end, we watched Korea lose on a big-screen set up in the street (we never made it to city hall) with a thousand disappointed fans and a thousand tired people who had thought World Cup fever was fun but were ready to stagger home after the sunrise. They may be out of the tournament, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped people for cheering for their team.