(This part of the post is from a few days ago – sorry, been busy.)
Sorry to piss in the Cheerios, but I guess that's what I like to do.
Just read a piece from the Korea Times that chastised the apparently rude behavior of some Korean soccer fans during the Korea-Ghana game, comparing this to the "world-class standards of order, manners and sporting etiquette" allegedly displayed by Korean soccer fans during the glory days of 2002.
Whaaat?!
I conducted many pre-interviews, as well as some that were recorded on tape, in which I interviewed lots of Fulbright grantees in 2003, who had been placed all over the country and working for 1-2 years in middle and high schools in small towns throughout Korea. This was originally for a documentary I was conducting on the Korean education system, but one of the warm-up questions was actually "What was it like being an American living in Korea?" and "What were you doing during the (2002) World Cup?"
The answers surprised me.
Many respondents, without me prodding them or even expecting this answer, were quite negative about the World Cup and their experiences during 2002. Many people expressed great frustration and even anger at the way many Korean soccer fans behaved during the matches, especially whenever the US was playing.
One person who attended the US-Poland game (I hope memory serves correctly) talked about how people threw trash and even cans at obviously foreign types rooting for the US, with people breaking into inpromptu choruses of "Fucking U.S.A." and beating traditional gaenggari (a small gong) while yelling curses in English.
The banner in front reads "(I) hate America." The kids are shooting at targets such as President Bush's face. While I have nothing but harsh words for Bush, activities such as these – many schools, led by rabidly xenophobic organizations such as the Korean Teachers' Unions – offered such "educational activities" for kids.
Another guy – a very thoughtful guy who had been on his third year in Korea and in Pohang, to boot – expressed a great deal of sadness at being made to feel like it might be better to stay in during one of the US games. Intrigued, I started asking people who would know the street best and are excellent objective guides to what's going on out there – taxi drivers.
They relayed to me the fact that a lot of drivers – he included himself in this – were trying to make an extra effort to pick up foreigners because many drivers were refusing to, on top of the fact that he had heard across his radio and from other drivers that there were incidents of Koreans assaulting foreigners. When deliberately asking other taxi drivers whether they had heard something similar, many drivers reported that they had.
Anecdotally, I also heard of several incidents myself with foreigners being attacked. Naturally, such stories would never be reported in a Korean newspaper, so they essentially "didn't happen." Given my experience with being constantly verbally and sometimes physically harassed on subways – especially during late 2002 and early 2003 – I am not surprised. Of course, several Korean American fellow researchers I knew at the time did the standard "liberal" left-wing knee-jerk thing and said I was "exaggerating" or "imagining things."
Ooook. Yeah, the guys yelling obscenities in my face were all figments of my imagination. And I guess it's a coincidence that almost all of the several times in recent memory that I've been called "nigger" happened in late 2002 and 2003. Oh, and there was the time when we were walking through Shinchon with some ETA's in 2003 and about to walk into a building when one member of our party was attacked by a Korean university student with a metal folding chair and sent to the hospital. And then there was one extremely nice guy – another Fulbright ETA who I could never imagine in my wildest dreams picking a fight – who got jumped outside a Korean night club by several thuggish guys and got two front teeth knocked out. Luckily, the Fulbright grant's health insurance covered assault and battery.
Whew. Come on. Korean fans are not very much of a good sport when it comes to losing, especially to everyone's favorite-country-to-hate. Again, I don't care if certain Korean folks hate on the US. I just don't want my ass whipped for the sins of not-my-Great-White-Father in the White House. I voted for the other guy and then when the rest of the country elected his stupid ass, I did my patriotic duty – I can't look at that man on TV without wanting to commit acts of violence – and got the fuck outta dodge. So why do I have to live in fear of being beat up for my passport?
I guess the only fair thing to do would be for the families of people with spinal-cord injuries to beat up any Koreans they see, since everyone is morally responsible for everything their country and/or countrymen do.
OK – I'm in a bad mood and I'm being bitchy. Sue me. But I do think it's a stretch to call Koreans "world-class" examples of the "good sport."
And Korean sports announcers have the gall to brag and playa-hate on Germans for not being as "fervent" in 2006 as Koreans were back in 2002? (Thanks, Pass and Cross.) She passed along this little gem:
"Well, the Germans have learned a lot from us in terms of collective cheering, but we could see people getting drunk on the streets as they were cheering. Clearly shows that WE are ahead of the game when it comes to cheering."
Jigga-WHAT!?!
Ummm, although it's a dubious point of distinction, Germans are the agreed-upon masters of "collective cheering" in world history. "Sieg, Heil!" anyone? Throngs of teeming humanity moving in undulating waves across huge plazas in the 1936 Nuremberg NSDAP party rally and the Berlin Olympics? Das Volk, nigga! Ya'll betta recognize!
Dude. Dude. Here's a point in which "Korean pride" mixes with pure, insensitive stupidity that makes me actually embarrassed for Korean folks sometimes. And when I read another report expressing apparent disappointment with Germans' apparently lukewarm reactions to Koreans' overwrought and sometimes actually frightening expressions of sports nationalism, I guess no one gave much thought to why most Germans might feel...well...uncomfortable with actual, deep-felt, fervent nationalism expressed in people screaming and crying and veritably humming with emotion.
As Chris Rock once said in a recent comedy concert, that kind of nationalist behavior, as in the cases of certain people acting a fool in the United States after the WTC bombings, has "got a little German on it!" Perhaps that's what causes some Germans to be a little more reserved than Koreans seem to want? Who knows. At least something like that might have occurred to somebody before Korean television announcers start bragging about how they got them Krauts beat at they own game.
Grrrr. Actually, this whole World Cup bullshit, the commercialism, the superficial sports nationalism, and the whole heaping helpings of hypocrisies they cover up all put me in a pissy mood.
Aw, what the hell. Maybe I should just give in and go along.
"Dae ~~ han min guk!"
Clap-clap clap-clap clap!
Go Red Devils!
