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jurassic5
Joined: 02 Apr 2003
Location: PA
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 Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 8:19 am Post subject: |
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The Long Way Home (from the latest Sports Illustrated)
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Hines ward sits in a first-row aisle seat in first class on Korean Air Flight 36 from Atlanta to Seoul, a 7,000-mile journey that he hopes can close the distance between shame and pride. He tries to concentrate on what's playing on the video screen in front of him, the noisy Jim Carrey and T�a Leoni farce Fun with Dick & Jane, but he keeps thinking of that gap. His 574 catches in the NFL have not closed it. Nor have 7,030 receiving yards, 53 touchdowns or four Pro Bowls. Not even a Super Bowl ring and a Super Bowl MVP award. That all brought him closer, but not all the way there.
He looks over at his mother, Kim Young He, asleep in the seat beside him. This is for her, he has said. Long ago he pledged that if he ever made it to the NFL, he would return with his mother to South Korea, where he was born 30 years ago. He had waited until now, though -- two months after the Super Bowl -- until he was sure the people who had shunned her for marrying a black American GI, the people who had called her a *beep* and refused to acknowledge the child she was carrying, would have to show her respect instead of scorn. He had waited until a nation that is notoriously cruel to children of mixed marriages would bow to her and treat her in a manner befitting the mother of a homecoming hero.
Pondering his arrival in Seoul as the plane limns the curve of the earth -- rivers and mountains and then an ocean all passing beneath him, he admits that he doesn't know what to expect. Off the football field Ward is a taciturn man, and it is easy to mistake his stolidity for meekness. His quiet is actually a sign of determination, a single-mindedness about the matter at hand, whether it's studying videotape of the Pittsburgh Steelers' next opponent, laying a crushing block on a free safety or contemplating his ancestry. And when he speaks, his voice is soft and soothing, an even-toned Southern drawl that tends to lose t's and e's as in, "I'm jus' real 'motional about it," which he says of this trip home. "I'm jus' curious about my people."
He uses the word shame repeatedly when he talks about being half-Korean and growing up in an African-American community with a mother who didn't look or act like the other mothers. About feeling like an outcast in any community -- black, white or Asian-American. About being a boy whose eyes permanently marked him as the one thing you never want to be as a kid: different.
As a child Hines never liked to talk about his birthplace. What was Korea, anyway? In Atlanta and Monroe, La., during the 1970s, it was known only as a place where there had been a war, where a few brothers who had enlisted went to serve Uncle Sam. Korea wasn't yet an economic dynamo; no one had heard of Hyundai or Samsung or Kia. It was just a far-off place with too many vowels. Besides, his upbringing had been too confusing -- born in Korea, brought by his parents to Atlanta when he was a year old; his father, Hines Sr., leaving his wife in East Point, Ga., to take off for a tour of duty in Germany. When Hines Sr. returned to the U.S., he and Kim divorced, and he convinced a family court that Kim couldn't raise their two-year-old son on her own because she didn't speak English. Hines Jr. was taken to Monroe, La., by his father, where he ended up living with Martha Ward, his paternal grandmother, until he was seven.
During those intervening years Kim would teach herself to speak passable English, work three jobs to pay the rent on a three-room apartment and buy a 12-year-old brown Camaro, and then she would get her boy back. Martha Ward let him go, later telling Hines Sr., "I'm not going to be part of taking a child away from his mama." And little Hines, who had known his mother only as this Asian lady who brought him toys on holidays, went to live with her in Atlanta. Seven years old, a black child in the South, he would duck down in his seat when his mom drove him to school so the other kids wouldn't see him, "because I didn't want them to know she was my mom." When he looked back at the car, he saw that she was crying.
Later came a shame about feeling that shame, setting in motion a cycle of self-loathing and doubt. "I was lost. I didn't really know who I was," says Ward of his childhood. "I didn't have guidance. I was so angry with my father for not being there when I needed him the most. And I was so ashamed of my mother -- and for not understanding my culture."
Now Ward glances at his mother, sitting beside him. He turns off the in-flight movie and sits up higher in his seat. This flight began 10 hours ago. This journey began a long, long time before that.
His mother prepared in-flight meals for Eastern Airlines, an eight-hour shift of slapping cooked-to-death roast beef into rectangular plastic serving trays. She would finish at 2 a.m. and be home by 3 to find Hines Jr. asleep in the living room of their apartment in Forest Park, a suburb of Atlanta. All the lights in the tiny apartment would still be on, the white fluorescence reflecting off the tile floor, the china cabinet, the silver Korean ornaments hanging on the walls. Hines hated those Korean decorations, just as he resented having to take off his shoes in the house. At his friends' houses, his American friends' houses, the kids wore shoes indoors and had pictures of cowboys and farmhouses on the walls. Other kids would tease him, pull the corners of their eyes back, call him Blackie Chan or Bruce Leroy, even taunt him during pickup basketball games. "Being teased by his peers because his mother is Asian -- coming up wasn't easy for him," says Corey Allen, a longtime friend.
"He used to talk about [being biracial]," says his wife, Simone, who has known Hines since they were in 10th grade. "My mother is white, and my father is black. I went to an all-black high school, and we had a lot of conversations about that stuff."
After returning from a shift at the airport, Kim would lay a blanket over her boy, turn off the lights and put on a pot of green tea, which she would sip at a folding table in the kitchen before heading back out at 4 a.m. to start her second job, as a cashier at a Supervalu convenience store across the street. It was up to Hines to rouse himself at 6:30 and get to school. He never missed a day, and he graduated from Forest Park High with perfect attendance.
Still, Kim worried about her boy. She knew that academics were the route to a better life. She stressed the importance of mathematics, the sciences and, of course, English but was disappointed that she couldn't help Hines when he struggled with his homework. Whenever he showed her his classwork, Kim could offer only encouragement to work hard, to be a good boy. "It was frustrating," Ward recalls. "It was kind of me on my own as far as my mom not being able to help me as a child. I remember calling my mom stupid." It was up to Hines to call the phone company or the gas company when they threatened to shut off the service, not because his mother didn't have the money -- Kim was, after all, working as many as three jobs -- but because she couldn't read the bills.
Kim never took a penny in government aid, welfare or food stamps, and she says she never received a dollar in child support from Ward Sr. (Ward Sr. didn't return SI's phone calls; Ward Jr. says he talks to his father, a correctional officer at Green Oaks Juvenile Detention Center in Monroe, about once every two years.) "I've got pride," says Kim. "Really strong, more than anybody. I don't want to take any government money. Even though I live hard, I got pride. That's why I have to work hard. That's a mama's job" -- she smiles -- "to work hard for your baby."
She worked hard enough to buy a three-bedroom house nearby, when Hines was a teenager. (Think about that: a single mother saving for a $35,000 down payment from three low-wage jobs.) Hines decorated his new room with posters of Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson and Jerry Rice. As far as anything Korean on his walls, "it wasn't even a factor," Ward says, laughing.
Hines became best friends with a classmate, Donnie Evers, whose stepfather, Tom Reyneke, paid Hines's registration fee so he could play on Donnie's Little League team. It was immediately apparent that the stocky centerfielder with the rocket arm was a terrific athlete. When football season started, Reyneke signed him up for that as well, and Hines quickly established himself as the best player on the team. Likewise at Babb Middle School, Hines was voted best athlete in the eighth grade and then played varsity football as a freshman at Forest Park High. He describes his various playing fields as safe havens. "If you were the best player, people were going to love you regardless. People didn't look at race," he explains. "I loved getting voted best athlete in school because as the best athlete there was less teasing."
Kim hardly noticed her son's success as an athlete. When she lived in Korea the country was not the sporting power it would become. Sports were a distraction, she felt, nothing more than child's play. When middle-aged white men began turning up in the living room of that new home, Hines was ashamed of his mother again, embarrassed at having to explain to her in front of Nebraska's Tom Osborne and Florida State's Bobby Bowden and Georgia's Ray Goff that this was about football, not baseball -- he would be selected in the 73rd round by the Florida Marlins in the 1994 draft -- and that these men wanted him to attend their colleges.
"College?" Kim said. "We can't afford college."
No, this would be free, Hines told his mother. A scholarship.
"Free?" she asked him incredulously. "College for free?"
He nodded. "O.K., go," she laughed. "Play. Go play all you want."
As you see him standing there, in his FUBU jacket, Sean Jean jeans, Nikes, diamond-encrusted Breitling on his wrist, he looks the embodiment of the superstar athlete. There is the 10,000-square-foot, six-bedroom house in Smyrna, Ga., the five-bedroom town house in Pittsburgh, the Bentley, the Ferrari and, even more important, the beautiful wife, Simone, and their two-year-old son, Jaden. This is the American success story writ XL, what you would expect of a Super Bowl hero and All-Pro wide receiver. And as much as Ward takes pride in those achievements -- and enjoys the fruits of the $27.5-million contract extension he signed last fall after holding out -- he dwells on how he has been disrespected, has never been handed anything, has always had to work twice as hard as the next player. "I get no love," he says.
He is tireless in recounting what he perceives as his mistreatment at the hands of coaches, fans and media. He says he should have been a full-time, four-year starter at Georgia, not merely a star wide receiver as a junior and senior; should have been a first-round NFL pick, not a third rounder; should have had more playing time on offense his rookie year in Pittsburgh, instead of being a special-teamer; should have had more magazine covers, more endorsements, a bigger salary. That's a 1,000-gigabyte chip on his shoulder.
That shame -- and sorrow -- from feeling different as a child contributes, he believes, to a lingering sense that no matter how well his life is going, he is still an object of scorn. His experience as an outsider has made him wary. "There is a dark side to [American] culture," he says. "I saw that, felt that, firsthand."
When Ward started out at Georgia, he got practice time at quarterback, wide receiver and running back but never enough reps at any position to feel comfortable. "He was getting angry, about how he was being misused, about how he wasn't getting in games because he was a backup at all those positions," says fellow Bulldogs wide receiver Corey Allen (his childhood friend). "He was probably the best athlete on the team, and [the coaches] were so worried he would get hurt -- because he was backing up every position -- that they wouldn't play him." Ward started to sulk about his situation and considered transferring. Desperate, he asked his mom for advice.
She looked at him and shook her head. "Nothing is ever going to be given to you," she told him. "Nothing was ever given to me. You have to work."
Ward recalls that conversation as the first of many inspirational talks with Kim, for whom he finally started to develop respect while in high school. "I would be like, 'F--- these coaches!' and my mom would tell me, 'You have to believe in yourself, you can't be mad all the time. You have to take that energy and do something with it.'"
He did. After Goff was fired in 1995, Ward recommitted himself and thrived as a receiver and team leader for the next two seasons under new coach Jim Donnan. He caught 52 passes in his junior year and then 55 as a senior. The 6-foot, 195-pound Ward drew the attention of NFL scouts, and because of his 4.5 speed, there was speculation that he might go late in the first round of the '98 draft, certainly in the second. Instead, he was on the board until the Steelers took him with the 92nd pick, the 14th wide receiver selected. So, already, before he played a down in the NFL, before he even arrived in Pittsburgh, for his first minicamp, he felt he wasn't wanted.
He didn't start his rookie year but excelled as a special-teamer. "I didn't look like a typical wide receiver so they doubted me," Ward says. "Every step of the way." He caught only 15 passes for the 7-9 Steelers, but that was enough for him to believe that he was positioned to be the Steelers' receiver of the future. Still, Pittsburgh felt it needed more talent at wideout; it chose Louisiana Tech receiver Troy Edwards in the first round of the 1999 draft. In his second season Ward was a starter and tied for the team lead in receptions. Instead of rejoicing at the emergence of their young receiver, the Steelers, citing the need for a "dominant receiver," selected Michigan State's Plaxico Burress in the first round of the 2000 draft. Upon reporting to camp that year, Ward was second on the depth chart at flanker, behind Edwards.
He went through his usual cycle of anger, then despondency and finally turned again to his mother. "I've got to make a name for myself," he told her. She replied, "If the other guys work hard, then you work even harder." And he did, by transforming himself into the most lethal blocking receiver in football, quickly earning a reputation as an end who never takes plays off. "You don't get that from too many wide receivers," says Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. "And Hines is not just blocking -- he's knocking people's heads off, and he's making the defender look around, and that opens up the run game."
Ward took a terrible beating playing this way, but it was nothing, he kept telling himself, compared with what his mother had gone through. By the second game of the 2000 season he had retaken the starting job, catching 48 passes while alternating with Edwards. It was also the second year -- in what would become a run of seven straight, and counting -- that he led Pittsburgh in catches; the longest streak for active players. And Ward's reward? "The next year," he says, "I'm playing every other series with Troy, again."
In 2001 Ward had the most prolific receiving season in Steelers history to that point, 94 catches, helping lead the team to a 13-3 record and making his first Pro Bowl. His response to being elected to go to Hawaii? "Pro Bowls don't mean that much when it comes to contract negotiations," he says, shrugging. "All everybody was saying was, 'Without Plax, he's nothing.'" He broke his own team marks in 2002, catching 112 passes for 1,329 yards, and then had 95 for 1,163 the following year and 80 for 1,004 in '04. It's noteworthy that he was putting up those numbers despite taking throws from four quarterbacks; in order, Kordell Stewart, Mike Tomczak, Tommy Maddox and Roethlisberger. Last year Ward made his 538th reception to pass John Stallworth as Pittsburgh's alltime leading receiver.
Winning the Super Bowl and the game's MVP award should have been the crowning achievements of his career, successes that would allow him to forgive and forget any perceived slights by coaches or the organization. And while it would seem that the hard-nosed Ward would be the ideal Bill Cowher guy -- tough, physical, intense -- the wideout says he's never had a warm relationship with him. "I don't have anything to say to him," he says. "After what he did to me, after how he treated me, no. The numbers I put up? The seasons I had, for them to keep on bringing in guys...?"
Cowher denies having anything but respect for Ward. "Our decision to draft other wide receivers was not a reflection on Hines Ward," he says. "We had lost a couple of our top veterans, and we were just trying to strengthen that position."
It is a rite of passage for Asian-Americans to visit their ancestral homes. These pilgrimages can be cathartic or, in some cases, leave the returnees confused because they are unable to make a spiritual connection with a place that has loomed so large in their minds for so long. They can come back to the U.S. with the disconcerting sense of not fitting in with either culture.
For Ward, this journey is even more complex. He did not go to Korea merely out of curiosity or a sense of family obligation but to rid himself of all that hurt and anger -- and shame. And he arrives at the peak of his celebrity, as that nation's greatest sporting figure, in the spotlight from the second he steps off the plane. He meets with South Korean president Rho Moo Hyun, has honorary Korean citizenship bestowed upon him by the mayor of Seoul and travels in a motorcade that rivals that of a visiting head of state. His Q rating here is off the charts, and he knows he has a chance to have a great influence on this society. For just as Ward is struggling to come to terms with his Korean heritage, so has Korea never been willing to accept children of mixed race as anything like equal members of society. Mixed-race children have been systematically discriminated against in Korea since the Korean War, when American GIs began fathering children with Korean women. Those children were considered reminders of that dark time, which is part of the reason why mixed-race Koreans were not allowed to serve in the Korean military from the 1960s until this year. The Hermit Kingdom, as Korea is known, has never been particularly welcoming to outsiders -- the country remains 99.5% ethnically homogenous -- perhaps because of its brutal treatment at the hands of Chinese, Mongol and Japanese conquerors over the centuries. "A lot of it goes back to that history," says Janet Mintzer, president and CEO of Pearl S. Buck International, an organization which works on behalf of mixed-race children in Korea. "In terms of being invaded, it all resulted in this promotion of being pure-blooded." That lingering resentment has meant that Amerasian children have been treated as second-class citizens; as a result, they have dropout rates of 27% before high school and a 45% unemployment rate as adults. Mixed-race kids regularly complain that classmates, and even some teachers, bully and harass them.
"Korean people treat these kids terrible," says Kim. "That's why, even when Hines's daddy left me, I couldn't come back to Korea. I knew it would be easier for me, but for Hines it would be terrible."
In the wake of Ward's visit to their country, South Korean lawmakers are likely to pass legislation to protect the rights of mixed-race Koreans, after having just repealed the laws that had prevented mixed-race men from serving in the military. "I really want to raise some awareness about this issue," says Ward, who plans to return in the next few weeks and set up a foundation for mixed-race kids. "I'm not here to change laws. But I want to shed light on [the treatment of] biracial kids, or maybe change a person's mind who is borderline, make people look differently at a mixed-race kid because of what they've seen me accomplish."
He walks in a slow gait, hand in hand with his mother as they tour Changgyeonggung Palace in Seoul. Kim wears rubber-soled brown loafers, faded jeans and a white sweater. Her hair is cut short and piled up like the graying pompadour of an aging rocker, a curling lock out of place over her gold wire-frame glasses. Her stride is ambling, her back and rear moving in a circular motion. She is tiny. Three of her could fit in her son.
Wherever they go, they are surrounded by bands of yellow security tape held by eight security guards. Inside the little patch of earth demarcated by the tape are Ward, his mother, his two security managers and several Korean lawyers hired by Ward's management team to coordinate the visit. Outside the tape are hundreds of Korean schoolchildren, sightseers, photographers and reporters. Ward and his mother are picking their way over the courtyard stones, between red-lacquered walls and beneath ornately painted tile roofs, and listening while a guide explains how palaces were designed: "There are three gates for a king, and five for an emperor, sometimes even seven."
"And how many does Hines get?" someone shouts.
"Nine," answers one of the lawyers.
Everywhere, Ward is peppered with the same questions by Korean reporters. They ask him every half hour, it seems, what he is feeling, what he thinks of South Korea, whether he has a message for young Koreans. They ask him what he thinks of the palace, does he like the garden, did he know Korean people slept on the floor? What's his favorite part of the country, does he like Korean food, what does he think of Korean people? And they keep shouting, holding their digital voice recorders aloft and pointing their cameras at him. He stands there in his jeans and sweatshirt, nods and smiles, saying, "It's exciting for me to come and see this great heritage, all this history."
Hines! Hines! Hines!
At every stop over this 10-day trip -- at each palace, museum and hospital, at the Blue House of President Rho, at City Hall, at the Namsan Tower, and during a guest spot on a popular TV talk show, Ward holds his mother's hand and takes those questions and utters platitudes about how he's just happy to be learning about Korea. "I didn't know all this before I got here," he says. "It's wonderful to see what this country is about and what Korea's been doing." And when he's asked to sign a visitor's card, at a palace or hospital or city hall, he writes, "THANKS FOR HELPING ME LEARN ABOUT KOREAN TRADITION. GO STEELERS."
While riding in one of the three Kia Opiruses provided by the car company for Ward's traveling party -- later, the vehicle he rode in would be auctioned off -- Ward and his mother recline in the plush seats as the motorcade swerves through Seoul's rush-hour traffic. He expresses nothing but gratitude for how he has been treated on this trip. "This completes me," he says. "I never really got into my Korean heritage, as far as what being Korean means. It seems like I've been living with it the whole time, and I've never really gotten in touch with it.... There are some things my mom has hidden from me, like I never met my grandmother [because] my mom was disowned by her family. There was so much animosity toward her because she had an African-American child. It's like it took me winning the Super Bowl MVP to be accepted."
As for the Koreans' response to his visit, what he was most apprehensive about on the flight over: "It has been great," Ward says. "That's what this whole thing was about -- repaying my mom. This is the way that I can show her that I appreciate everything that she's done, show her how proud I am of her. We're meeting the president, we're meeting the mayor of Seoul, we're on all the talk shows. What better way to show my mom the appreciation?"
Kim listens for a while before interrupting. "They treat Hines well because of the MVP, but they don't treat other mixed-race children better," she says. "Whoever marries an American, they are still going to be looked down [upon]. They look down on me. The kids can't even go to school. They spit on mixed-race kids...."
Now Ward interrupts. "My mom is suspicious of all this," he says. "She is a realist. Talk is cheap."
The next day Ward is stretching out on an intricately patterned olive-colored sofa in his Lotte Hotel suite. There are floral arrangements on coffee tables that have cloven-hoof legs. There is a huge mirror over the marble fireplace, and through the double, gold-trimmed doors is the dining room of this six-room suite with a table set for a dozen. He says he is going to hire a Korean language tutor when he returns to the States. He actually had signed up for Korean while he was at Georgia but dropped it after the first class when he realized how intensive and demanding the course would be -- he was worried that it would knock down his GPA. "This time," he says, "I'm going to learn."
When Kim walks into the room to sit beside him, Ward looks at her and says yet again that he came to Korea to repay her, to show how proud he is of her. "I'm not ashamed any -- "
"I know." She cuts him off. "Of course, a mama always knows." |
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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 8:22 am Post subject: |
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| I wonder if anybody asked him if he can use chopsticks. |
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Satori
Joined: 09 Dec 2005
Location: Above it all
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| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 9:07 am Post subject: |
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| Anne0 wrote: |
| Well, I know all of you here seem to really want to believe change is not going to happen |
Why do you say that? I can't see anything that anyone has written here that supports this suggestion.
Side note: About america being the "first" to push for all these wonderful rights for people, New Zealand was actually the first country to give women the vote. Just a little history lesson for ya'll...  |
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Hollywoodaction
Joined: 02 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 7:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Satori wrote: |
| Anne0 wrote: |
| Well, I know all of you here seem to really want to believe change is not going to happen |
Why do you say that? I can't see anything that anyone has written here that supports this suggestion.
Side note: About america being the "first" to push for all these wonderful rights for people, New Zealand was actually the first country to give women the vote. Just a little history lesson for ya'll... |
Right. When it comes to ethnic nationalism, I can't wait for change to happen. I've even emailed Hines Ward a few weeks before he came to Korea telling him how excited I was at the news of his visit because my son is also mixed-race Korean.
A bit of history on Korean nationalism: Although modern Korean nationalism is a product of the Japanese policies in Korea in the 1930's, it was strongly shaped by the writings of Yi Pom Sok. He served as the German and Italian liaison to the Chinese Nationalists after having studied in Germany in the 1930's and became a general in Chiang Kai-Shek's army, working with Chang's fascist-style Blue Shirts--which he brought back to birth in Korea while he was head of the KNY (Korean National Youth). He has written that he was a great admirer of the German and Italians for their 'youth groups' and was known for his use of Nazi-inspired Chinese Nationalist slogans. This man would become the first Prime Minister of South Korea (his wife was a follower of Kim Baek moon--the predecessor of Sung Myung Moon--who preached that Korea was to be the new Israel (ironic, isn't it?)). |
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rothkowitz
Joined: 27 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 10:53 pm Post subject: |
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Who made the comment that the korean half of Hines accepted his award,entitling him to free bus passage-whilst the black half was made to sit it out in the car outside?
Bandwagonism.
Whats this months flavour? |
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patchy
Joined: 26 Apr 2005
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| Posted: Thu May 18, 2006 11:10 pm Post subject: |
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| rothkowitz wrote: |
Who made the comment that the korean half of Hines accepted his award,entitling him to free bus passage-whilst the black half was made to sit it out in the car outside?
Bandwagonism.
Whats this months flavour? |
And Koreans were responsible for black slavery, for the Holocaust, for ... lynchings of blacks, ..., for the genocide of Native Americans, ... etc ... etc ...
It's not the first time a group jumped on the bandwagon of another race's oppression and made political capital out of it (or made it out to be parallel with the history of their own race's oppression).
Last edited by patchy on Thu May 18, 2006 11:40 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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rothkowitz
Joined: 27 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Thu May 18, 2006 11:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Hi Patchy. |
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jurassic5
Joined: 02 Apr 2003
Location: PA
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| Posted: Fri May 26, 2006 9:57 am Post subject: |
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Forty-five days after he left, Korean-American NFL star Hines Ward (30) has returned to the land where he was born, announcing that he will continue to help mixed-race children here.
The man named �most valuable player� at this year�s Super Bowl landed at Incheon in a shirt that read "Taeguk Warriors Fighting" to support the national squad in another kind of football in the colors of the Red Devils, their official support club. He is joined by his mother Kim Young-hee (59), his wife Simone (29) and his two-year-old son Jayden on this five-day trip. Ward told reporters he was happy to be back and had missed Korean food. He returns to establish a foundation in aid of biracial children who face discrimination here. Simone Ward said after her husband boasted to her about his mother's homeland, she had been looking forward to the trip.
Asked about his enthusiasm for what Americans call soccer to distinguish it from Ward�s brand of football, Ward said he believed Korea has a fine team and promised to root for it with a passion.
A crowd of some 300 fans gave a warm welcome to the athlete and his family at the airport. To prepare a program that will air before the Super Bowl in February next year on U.S. broadcaster CBS, a group of journalists will dog the athlete�s every step over the next few days.
Korean-American NFL star Hines Ward arrives at Incheon Airport with his family on Friday afternoon.
True to his word, Ward and party proceeded straight to Seoul Plaza and joined fans gathered there in their "Dae-han-min-gook" chants of support for the national football team and then headed over to the World Cup Stadium to watch an appraisal match between Korea and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
On Monday he will hold a press conference to announce concrete plans for his foundation and meet with Prime Minister Han Myung-sook.
Ward will also sign contracts to appear in ads for the Korea Post and Korea Exchange Bank. The combined modeling fees are rumored to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of which will go to the new foundation. |
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Satori
Joined: 09 Dec 2005
Location: Above it all
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| Posted: Fri May 26, 2006 10:39 am Post subject: |
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| patchy wrote: |
And Koreans were responsible for black slavery, for the Holocaust, for ... lynchings of blacks, ..., for the genocide of Native Americans, ... etc ... etc ...
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Hold up, the holocaust never happened, remember? You've spent ten pages telling us all about that... |
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Wishmaster
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Sat May 27, 2006 7:26 am Post subject: |
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Yeah, Cabbage Patch is like a disease...you just can't get rid of him sometimes. I laugh at the whole Ward thing..the guy has been playing in the NFL for years and the Koreans didn't say boo about him. Then, he wins in the MVP, and in true Korean fashion, he is now "one of them". Yeah  And then freak boy/girl Patchy comes out and says that Hines loves Korea. Hines doesn't even know Korea. His whole trip was coordinated to make Korea look the best in his and the foreign public's eyes. Completely scripted...much like everything in Korea. Then, beneath it all, you often see the truth. I speak more Korean than Hines and have lived here longer than him. If he spent a week here, sans his star status, he would have quite a different opinion of the place. Everyone knows Korea is a farce except for the myopic Koreans and that racist poster Cabbage Patch. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Sat May 27, 2006 3:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Wishmaster wrote: |
| Everyone knows Korea is a farce except for the myopic Koreans and that racist poster Cabbage Patch. |
It is? He is?? |
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