Soccer, Seoul Style
June 14th, 2006
On Tuesday night we forgot about the military and turned our minds to what the rest of Korea was thinking about – World Cup Soccer. We decided to head out for dinner first. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that we caved and went for pizza. I usually pride myself on my willingness to eat like the locals when in another country, but after a series of bad menu choices (the choice pick being flavorless noodles in a bowl of ice cold soy milk, complete with ice cubes and a sole piece of floating tomato) I was happy to capitulate to my Western desires.
- Katie
(For more photos, click here.)
Four margerita pizzas and a bottle of chianti later, we set off for the center of the action, City Hall. The streets of Myeongdong were uncharacteristically silent. Most street vendors had closed up early, and the few capitalists that braved the empty streets were huddled around tiny TV sets, glued to the game.
The scene we were confronted with on our arrival at City Hall was breathtaking not for its madness but for its sense of order. We looked out on a symmetrical sea of red jerseys and brightly lit devil’s horns (the official cheerleading gear). Thousands upon thousands of captivated Korean soccer fans sat crosslegged, fixated on their boys on the big screen.
The City Hall crowd provided a startling contrast to the footage I had seen earlier that night – my drunken compatriots in Sydney and Melbourne reveling in our triumph over Japan the previous evening, slurring over Korean news cameras. Nary a drunken yobbo in sight, sports fans here appeared completely absorbed in the game. No fights, no aggression, just the acrid smell of firecrackers.
We weren’t big enough soccer fans to stay till the end but Korea beat Togo 2-1. It would be safe to assume that Seoul was a pretty happy place yesterday.
June 14th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Wow, wish I could have been there for the soccer madness - but I’m sure at half-time the Koreans were wishing they’d held onto Guus Hiddink!
Go Korea! (oh, and Australia too)
Davey P
March 4th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Our UFO has landed quietly last night in a densely populated coordinate at a region humans refer to as “Germany.” This particular congregation was generating so much noise we were compelled to study the anomaly.
As we approached the boiling source of haphazard frequencies, our superb training took over. We were well-trained to investigate any unusual source and level of human commotion and report immediately back to our ZX-879 headquarters. Turning on our invisibility shield helped us get really close to the subject of examination without being detected.
As we reached the egg shaped concrete container filled with 100,000 or so human subjects, the noise level rose to such unimaginable heights that we had to shut down our frequency analyzers for fear of damaging their sensitive circuitry.
When we cleared the top of the concrete structure we were blinded with thousands of light-emitting radiation sources.
Then we saw them — 22 voluntary humans darting back and forth in alternating sequences of random and seemingly-goal-oriented sprints. We have checked our central computer to decipher the modal characteristic of such kinetic outbursts and we were advised to locate the focal source of coordinated agitation.