nanoomi

This weekend the Superbowl is being held in the USA and I, being an American, am supposed to care.. especially since, being from New England, I am expected to care for the Patriots. Well, I don’t care. I think I have seen two football games in my life… both were Seahawks games while I was in Seattle. I prefer the real football, aka soccer.  I find it exciting, the players interesting and I love the fact that the clock doesn’t stop everytime somebody falls down. (I hate that about basketball too.. the clock says there are ten minutes left and you wind up unable to change the channel for another 40 minutes…because someone else in the room wants to see the end of the game).  Anyway, I was skyping with family members who were talking about the upcoming game and my mind wandered to Korean movies (as always) and I wondered when the first sports film was made and which sport was highlighted.  When considering films I did not concern myself with movies that simply showed a sport, but ones where an athlete or game was the main focus of the story. I had three suspicions about what the first sport in Korean film might be.  I thought it would come down to Baseball, Soccer or Boxing.  While searching I came across a few suprises.  The earliest sport committed to film in Korea was Tennis in a documentary made in 1924 entitled The National Women’s Tennis Tournament that screened in July of that year.  But I was not planning to include non-fiction or news reels, just fiction with actors playing the roles of athletes. Here is what I found:

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A trip in the High1 Resort’s gondola from Mountain Hub to Mountain Cabin.

High1: http://www.high1.co.kr/eng/main/index.asp

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Koreans are know to be some of the most dedicated and hardest working people on the planet. One way many relax after a hard day at the office is by taking a trip to the Baseball Range.

How do you relax after work?

For more: http://wp.me/p1hnjj-1ce

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Korea has many professional sports: Baseball, Soccer, Basketball, and Ice Hockey. That’s right, I said it, Ice Hockey. Recently, I ventured to Anyang to see the Anyang Halla take on the Nikko Ice Bucks and interview their scouting coach.

To read more: http://wp.me/p1hnjj-17v

The Anyang Halla: http://www.anyanghalla.com/eng/
Asia League Ice Hockey: http://www.alhockey.com/

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The Vlog Channel: http://youtube.com/theqirangervlog
Podcast: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-qiranger-adventures/id451881376

As we can see from yesterday’s front page, the Maeil Gyeongje (Maeil Business Newspaper) has let its readers in on why the South Korean team won the U-17 Women’s World Cup:

Korean Women’s DNA is Different
Out of only 345 women, 21 were picked, and in the end they did the job.
The splendid achievements by golfers, figure skater Kim Yu-na, and the soccer Taegeuk Girls are connected.

Well now, I guess that may explain why Roboseyo “personally was told “foreign blood and Korean blood together has problems” [by] one of the nurses at a blood clinic[.]” It all makes sense now – Koreans’ DNA is different. What a simple, obvious explanation.

Actually, while the article tells us that “Questions arise each time Korean female athletes accomplish great things on the world stage,” it (sadly) does not follow up on the promise of the headline, instead dwelling on more mundane cultural and social influences. Mind you, the fact that “Korean women’s DNA is different” was a headline on the front page of a newspaper should go to show that the idea of genes and bloodlines was dominating the writer (or editor)’s thinking, and that they figured others would agree.

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They just won the Under 17 Women’s FIFA World Cup in a penalty kicks against Japan.

Plus, they totally dumped their coach when they tried to lift him over their heads after the team photo: Skip to about 4:30 of this video, which won’t give me the embed code.

From Roboseyo’s blog feed; Creative Commons license: Give me credit and a link, share it freely, and don’t try to make money from it. More here.

Looking around the FIFA website, I found the above photo of and an article about the fan fests around the world where people can gather at outdoor venues to watch the World Cup games in front of giant screens:

More than 400,000 fans celebrated together at the 16 official FIFA Fan Fest™ venues yesterday, as the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ got underway.

The Opening Match between South Africa and Mexico was followed by 300,000 enthusiasts at the official FIFA Fan Fests in the host nation, while, between them, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Sydney, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro had 100,000 supporters.

Another article adds that:

Official public viewings events were first launched by FIFA in 2006 as part of the official programme under the name of “Fan Fests”. During June/July 2006, more than 18 million fans gathered at the 12 official events and transformed Germany into one of the greatest fan parties of all time.

Photos of gatherings in front of outdoor screens in Berlin and Frankfurt attest to this, and it was these gatherings that helped Germans feel that it was okay to be patriotic and be proud of their flag again. Similarly, a friend of mine told me that the outdoor cheering in Sydney saw different minorities – who would often be cheering their own teams – come together to cheer for the Australian team in its first World Cup appearance in 32 years. The FIFA site adds that:

Enabling fans to experience the ‘FIFA World Cup feeling’ in their own country was certainly FIFA’s aim when it unveiled Fan Fests in Rome, Paris, Berlin, Sydney, Mexico City and Rio – and the results have been spectacular. Within the first two weeks alone, more than three million fans had packed out the 16 domestic and international venues, with those outside South Africa accounting for 50 per cent of this mammoth turnout.

Germany, whose wholehearted embrace of the Fan Fest concept in 2006 provided the spur for this expansion, have again led the way, with a record 305,000 coming together in Berlin’s Olympic Square for their group decider against Ghana. Even elsewhere, where the fluctuating fortunes of Australia, France, Italy and Bafana Bafana might have been expected to deflate the atmosphere, festivities have continued unabated.

I find it interesting that this history of the fan fests goes back only to 2006, to the first official fan fests, and that no mention is made of their obvious inspiration:

I can’t find it now, but in 2006 I read an interview where the mayor of one of the German cities hosting the World Cup described the outdoor screens and said that “of course” the idea came from South Korea. Now it seems Hyundai is taking the initiative in colonizing not only street cheering in Korea, but around the world:

Hyundai Motor Company, one of the official top partners of the FIFA 2010 World Cup, has officially kicked off the Hyundai Fan Park, a street cheering event, with the opening match between South Africa and Mexico today in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Hyundai will be offering soccer fans around the world the opportunity to enjoy the World Cup in a fun and safe environment by providing venues and large screens in 32 cities from 19 countries across the 31 days of the event. Giant screens will relay all the action from South Africa, while group cheering boosts the festive mood.

Actually, further reading at FIFA’s Hyundai site makes it clear I spoke too soon – it turns out the “Fan Fests” FIFA describes on its website as taking place in South Africa are actually Hyundai Fan Parks – so that’s what is seen at the top of this post.

At any rate, while such street cheering led to patriotic feeling in Korea, Australia, and Germany, that use of public space also influenced the organization of and specific spaces occupied by anti-American candlelight protests six months later. Of course, such dark sides of “patriotic” mobilization may only be found in Korea, due to the history of occupying urban space during protests here, something which of course informed how the street cheering was allowed to occur in Korea in the first place (as compared to Japan, where despite the plethora of large outdoor screens in urban areas, street cheering did not take place).

I went down to City Hall to see Korea vs. Uruguay. I missed the chance to see the other games in a public, mob-setting, so I’m glad I went out to catch that one: it’s an experience I recommend to anybody who visits Korea – whether a mass-protest (I lived in Jongno during the US Beef/Anti-LMB protests) or a mass-soccer game, the crowd experience in Korea is remarkable. I can’t think of ANYTHING that would cause a million Canadians to gather in one public area.

(Gwanghwamun: world cup history display. Did you know there was no color photography in 1986? Looks that way)

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According to the Korea Times,

Makgeolli has gained immense popularity over the past year, which is partially explained by the economic downturn that had drinkers looking for cheaper beverages.

This devastated the markets of whisky, wine and soju, Korea’s traditional distilled beverage, and also served a severe blow to the sales of beer. Plus the abnormally chilly spring this year appears to have prevented drinkers from switching predominately to beer until recently.

The beer market posted a meager 0.5 percent growth last year, while the market for makgeolli grew by more than 40 percent. Market watchers predict that the beer market will grow by a more-healthy 5 percent this year, thanks in large part to the World Cup jolt.

That’s pretty impressive growth, but I wonder what the makgeolli market has been like over the last decade.

The JoongAng Ilbo has an article about the street cheering that accompanied Korea’s first World Cup game against Greece that includes this photo:

The last time I remember seeing a Korean flag that big in front of City Hall, the crowds were also tearing to shreds American flags (as related here). Oh, wait, there’s no City Hall in the above photo, is there?

I’ve looked at the 2002 World Cup before here (this photo taken at the Korea-U.S. game is rather interesting), and at the street cheering during the 2006 World Cup here. For Korea’s first game of the 2010 World Cup, I was in Sinchon, which was rather festive after Korea’s victory:

That truck then blocked the street at the big crosswalk in Sinchon, and if we hadn’t found a little side street, might have trapped us in our taxi trying to escape the crowds for who knows how long. Apparently the revelry has been a boon for retailers, with a surge in sales of certain items:

GS25 chain stores also reported brisk sales on Saturday, with the 10 branches near large-scale cheering spots registering three times the revenue as the week before. After the game, sales of condoms jumped five times more than during the 2006 World Cup.

More on that here. Oh, and once again, another World Cup, another World Cup girl (after Shin Mina in 2002, and the “elf girl” in 2006). Mind you, one is never enough for the photographers of the Chosun Ilbo. And my word for the day: vuvuzela.

Here’s a fact I didn’t know about North Korea’s sports teams:

Previously, South Korea had sponsored all expenses needed for North Korean teams when they participated in international sport events. But the North’s provocative act caused South Korea to stop subsidizing North Korean teams in international sports events.

Speaking of whom, the first half of their game against Brazil just finished. Though Brazil has been in control of the ball 2/3 of the time, and has had more shots on net, the score is 0-0. It seems North Korea’s defense, defense and more defense (and hope that Jong Tae-se gets the ball in Brazil’s end) has been serving them well enough.

Ehhh. 27 minutes into the second half Brazil is now up two goals. Time to go back to sleep.

[Update] They actually scored and managed to prevent a third goal… surprising stuff.