The World Cup and Erin Visits Korea!

My friend Erin from college is teaching English in China and decided to come visit Korea for 4 days! It was really cool to have a friend come see what it’s like here, although she does live in Asia too. I had fun showing her around Seoul for the first few nights she was here and then going out as well.

The world cup kicked off for South Korea on June 12^th. Their opening game was against Greece, and luckily for us it started at 8:30pm on a Saturday night. Unluckily for us it was pouring rain, but we made the most of it. We went down to Seoul City Hall pretty early and got awesome seats right up in the front section. Koreans are EXTREMELY patriotic and the world cup is a huge deal to them. The game was awesome, with fireworks, kpop singers, etc. After Korea won we danced around in conga lines with Koreans for around an hour. There were THOUSANDS of people downtown all decked in red. Video of Seoul City Hall during the Greece game. We were photographed hundreds of times so the next week at school we were looking everywhere for our pictures… apparently we were also featured in the Korea Times: Chicago. Here are some of the ones we found in Korean magazines/newspapers: link 1, link 2, link 3.

We were also on KBS primetime news in Seoul, which you can watch here. I am on camera at the 1:40 mark.

After the Korean game we headed to “little America” for the American/English game. It was super fun to be in Korea, yet surrounded by English and Americans.The next game was on Thursday versus Argentina and my city set up a huge TV screen in the local park. It was really cool to see even everyone in my rural-ish city come together and get excited for the game. I sat next to some of my students and they bought me ice cream. The perks of being a teacher are good.Korea’s next game was unfortunately at 3:30AM and I had to work the next day. I knew things were going well, however, when I was awoken from my sleep by an old lady screaming and yelling at 4AM. South Korea qualified for the Round of 16.

A lot of people have been asking me about North Korea being in the world cup and how SK feels about it. Most South Koreans cheered for North Korea and actually wanted them to do well. They think of the people and players as their sort of cousins and no matter the government and how they feel about them they still have family and huge cultural ties to the people there. Most of my coworkers just pretty much felt sad for them after they got stomped on by Portugal, as did I. A lot of people think its funny to joke about the players needing to win in order to not end up in a labor camp or punished in some way, but it is actually is a reality to some of them and it’s incredibly sad.

Overall watching the world cup in the foreign country you’re living in is an awesome thing. I wouldn’t trade that experience for very much. Unfortunately at this point Korea is knocked out of the running, but it was fun while it lasted.