Korean Job Discussion Forums

[SMKOREA]

I'm sure many people have seen this "Victory" stuff around Korea in regards to the World Cup...

I love fan support and I think the Korean people are excellent supporters of the Korean national football team, it's nice to see.

However I'm in class today talking with my 12-13 year old students about the World Cup, and one of my 'better' students says "Korea win World Cup 2002" Of course I said yes they won some games they did an excellent job finishing 4th. But this student argues and refuses to believe Korea didn't win every game they played.....argument went nowhere.

So during a break I'm kinda laughing about it talking with some Korean staff, when one of them (a woman) says, "yes Korean did win World Cup in 2002". This completely blew my mind and left me speechless. After she said that, another Korean spoke to her from across the room and she replied "Tzin Zha?" (really?) He told her the difference.

This left me wondering....if 2 people I'd talked to in one day thought they won the World Cup, how many other people in the Country believe this as well??

[itaewonguy]

I just dont see the spirit being that crazy due to the time difference
I was hoping for big gatherings at city hall or stadiums..
but I figure when games are playing at 9pm the spirit will be alive
it will be lunch time here.. but the 3pm games means it will be 6am here
korean games are in the week days too..

anyway be good to see what kind of morning turnouts there will be
maybe the mayor of seoul or ROH will make the korean games holidays or atleast let the people watch them.. emm actually the 6am games means you can still be at work at 9am..
and the lunch time games means you take an extra one for lunch hahahaha
anyway cant believe 4 years have past already!!

[ajuma]

Yeah...some of the matches start at 4 am! I'm really looking forward to my students coming to class drunk at 9 am!

[Holyjoe]

I remember in the summer of 2004 being at a Suwon Bluewings game at 7pm with around 20,000 folk in attendance, and we stuck around near the stadium after the game because they said they'd be showing the Korean Olympic team quarter-final match against Paraguay on the big telly at the stadium later that night. Well over 30,000 people turned up to watch it on the screens at 3:30am, and I heard that there were similar events at other stadiums too.
(that says more about the interest in the K-League really, as only 20k turned up for the live evening football but 30k turned up to watch it on telly in the wee hours of the morning )

The first two Korean games aren't really at ideal times:

Togo: Tuesday 13th June (10pm)
France: Monday 19th June (4am)
Switzerland: Saturday 24th (4am)

Though of course it won't be a problem watching re-runs at more sensible hours.

[matthews_world]

Hopefully Korean sports channels will be showing matches from other pools as well.

I wonder if their will be any pay sites to watch games via the internet.

[rothkowitz]

I hope they get knocked out in the first round.Go Togo!!

I was here for the world cup in 2002 and it was simply a gay,lame experience.Koreans aren't even that into the football.The first game against Poland I asked my class lets go to the pub and watch it!!It was like pulling teeth to get them to leave the classroom.Second game against the US was with a bunch of "kimchi patriots" in the school TOEIC lecture hall.Their impotent glaring at me (the white guy)on account of their teams pisspoor performance was lamentable....I'm not even from there....dumbasses...

The game against Portugal,ok,fair enough.Portugal played abysmally and without cohesion or discipline.That was a good result.

The subsequent games against Italy and Spain werer farcical.Alessandro del Piero scored for italy only to be disallowed and Spain scored twice to be disallowed for the same reason.Even in the penalty shoot out,how freaking far off his line is the Korean goalie before the spaniard takes his kick??

And in the tediously jingoistic world cup replay docos that have been on high rotate through the year none of these details can be seen.

You know,I might respect Korean soccer if they could have come up with a decent world cup song...already at school PE classes they're being drilled to chant"Oh Pilsung Korea"...christ how depressingly gay...and if a student dares to do that silly daehanminkuk handclap I instantly send them to the back of the room to hold a copy of the encyclopedia of korean history in front of them for the rest of the class.

They're not friendly about whatever result they get,its just an opportunity to get giddy with their little flags.

I pray they get knocked out in the first round.I can't deal with this inane,insipid crap a second time.

[rothkowitz]

neglected to say,reasons for disallowed goals were for offside.Acknowledged by Korean commentators at the time,then swiftly forgotten.

[VanIslander]

when i teach ordinals i ask my students who came first? second? third? and fourth? in world cup 2002

half the class always say Korea came first but there ALWAYS is at least one student who comes up with "Brazil", at least they do after I say "no, not korea".

many students come up with 'Turkey was third' but few ever come up with 'Germany was second'. The Korea-Germany semifinal doesn't exist in Korean consciousness. The Turkey-Korea consolation final, however, for some reason is known.

[the saint]

[alinkorea]

I must confess I don't want Korea to do well at the World Cup. They'll all go crazy once it starts, yet, as a rule know very little about the game. "Bandwagon" supporters as they are known back home. Highly annoying to real footy supporters. This is obviously far from being restricted to only Korean supporters, but when it is coupled with their fervent nationalism it becomes a joke.

[Demophobe]

I don't care how they do, as long as it's clean and fair. Too many question marks in 2002 to be called legit.

[jaganath69]

I'd much rather be somewhere in SE Asia where people love the global game rather than focussing on the involvement of a couple of players made to look better than they are by the clubs they play for. Saturday night in Jakarta is a cracker with games from the EPL, Erdedivisie, La Liga, Seria A and Bundesliga being shown on various channels. Here you are lucky to see any team outside Man Utd and Tottenham. Just another reason why I will be hoping to see them go out in the first round.

[harryh]

It's an interesting draw.

If S.Korea qualify from their group in second place (France and Switzerland will be toughies), it's possible that S.Korea will play Spain (as winners of their group) in Round two.


Once they've dumped Spain out of the cup, it'll be on to the quarter-final, where Brazil could very well be waiting.

One worry for South Korea must be their indifferent form, when playing outside of the country.

[rothkowitz]

Did anyone see the first Man U. Spurs game?

Any time either of the 2 koreans were involved the camera would zoom in on the crowd that had gathered outside Dondaemun stadium...there was something just painfully dysfunctional about it.

[Homer]

My lord....the bitterness in here is pretty ugly.

Let them cheer for their team....you cheer for your own team. Isn't that better than going ape over what others are doing and how they support their World Cup team?