The Anti-Korea Bandwagon

I agree with you.
I’m afraid of bandwagon that is happening in now korea.

Posted from  Republic Of Korea

That’s the beauty of the world cup!

People complain about “offcial drinks”, “official tea”, “official toilet paper” — ha, in US you get that with every even and even every hit movie. Let’s be real, it’s big business too!

But to try to stop the fever is silly! Why take away a national pride? Why take the chance to show the world that a country has what it takes to be recognized in soccer (among many other things!).

I guess some just don’t get it….

Posted from  United States

I meant to say with every event, not “even”

Posted from  United States

Big business, yes. Unfortunately, in a country like Korea, not all of the products are ‘licensed’, they’re just using the WC hype to flog things that wouldn’t sell squat otherwise.

You have to be careful not to confuse patriotism with nationalism, something this country has too much of as it is.

In any event, I think those civic groups have a point, but who ever said that football was about common sense?

Posted from  Republic Of Korea

Stupid idiot like this “Greekfreak” would post this type of subtle, subconscious racist stupid ass comments. Why dont you talk about Brazil, Argentina, Mexico “anti bandwagon” asshole??? What do you think all these countries are focusing on right now idiot? World CUP!! I guarantee you there is a lot more hoopla in those Latin countries regarding the World Cup than Korea but yet you so conveniently only mention Korea. What a typical racist redneck!! LOL. And your comments about “licensing” issues in a country like “Korea.” What the hell is that supposed to mean, a country “like Korea?” Like korea is some third world country or something! LOL…you idiot what about all the shady ass things that go in Greek or France or the States? Every year more people are murdered in any major US City than all of Korea. You asshole. So is the US a shady state? And Americans are more nuts, fanatical about sports than just about any other nation!! Just because soccer isn’t a popular sport in the states, you conveniently mention soccer but what about during Super Bowl week asshole? The only thing i hear about is the super bowl and who is going to win it. And thats just an American sport. If a popular sport like football was an international event and the whole world was involved in competing, Americans to would be out there waving their flags proudly and in a frenzy. Stupid idiot!!

Perhaps if you learned a) how to type in coherent sentences, b) how to read a post and then interpret the actual facts therein, c) not to address people’s presumed ethnicity in order to prove a point, and d) to stick with one topic instead of a million at once…

…then perhaps people would understand what you’re getting at, son.

A few remedial lessons wouldn’t go amiss. I’m reporting what’s in the news, not writing it. Korea is indeed a 2nd world country that’s at times frustrating to understand, much less live in. Like many other countries, it’s rampant with corruption. No country is perfect, and if you wanted me to run a litany of errors involving the countries you mentioned (and a few more besides), I could kill your rant in 200 words or less.

BTW the Superbowl isn’t an international event, buddy. The World Cup is.

Posted from  Republic Of Korea

I do understand what greekfreak is saying but you did say “a country like korea” which leads to horrible generalisations of not one country but a large collection of them. Korea is making big progress with the corruption issue but that has nothing to do with the topic of your post. You should clarify what you mean by “a country like korea”. It’s obvious where Koreanseoul took offense: the statement can be taken as racist.

Having said all that, I’m afraid that after all this hype we’re not going to get past the group stages. The majority of korean fans are fickle and soon they will just forget about football in general.

Posted from  United Kingdom

-greekfreak wrote:
“Korea is indeed a 2nd world country that’s at times frustrating to understand, much less live in.”

You must be talking about North Korea. in the 3-world or 5-world categories, “second world” is reserved for ‘communist’ nations only. in any case, using this system is outdated. we now look at countries as “developed” or “developing”. not “first world” or “third world”. South Korea is considered a NDC (newly developed country), along with Taiwan and it has been for some years now. Japan is not the only “developed” country in East Asia anymore.

-greekfreak wrote:
“Unfortunately, in a country like Korea, not all of the products are ‘licensed’”

like koreanseoul and chickenwing, i don’t understand what you mean by “a country like..”. okay, so tell us what South Korea is like. you tell us that it’s a country where “not all of the products are ‘licensed’”. you mean, like this “Team England 2006″ wristband that i bought at a Portuguese-run store in Toronto, Canada that was made in Japan? (no, it wasn’t China).
Also, you’ve provided no sources for your “report” that not all of the products are licensed. That KTF commercial doesn’t prove anything. First of all, i don’t understand why you even brought up that commercial. Select corporations sponsor the EVENT. This doesn’t mean that KTF cannot sponsor Team South Korea. Sponsoring a national team does not mean they are sponsoring (or pretending to sponsor) the event. nowhere in that commercial did i see the WC2006 logo. KTF does not even have to be a financial sponsor of Team Korea to release that commercial (even though they officially are). They can also be Official Supporters or Official Providers. It’s much like how Tim Hortons (a Canadian coffee/donut shop franchise) and other firms, businesses, corps, etc. released commercials supporting Team Canada for Athens 2004. As far as i know, Tim Hortons was not an official sponsor for the 2004 Games. I guess Canada is like Korea, eh? For the past two weeks, everytime i’ve opened up the Toronto Sun, i’ve been bombarded with ads from car dealerships and electronic stores banking on the WC2006. They’re not official sponsors of FIFA WC and they’re not supporting Team Canada (because we don’t have one this year and probably won’t for a long time). i’ve seen a Buick ad in the paper with flags from all 32 countries that are participating at the WC2006. but, waitaminute.. isn’t Hyundai the official automotive sponsor? hmmm..

If you’re going to tell me that the point of posting that commercial is to show everyone the nationalism that’s displayed in it, i’ll have to say So What? Have you even watched any of the other commercials from other countries that support their national team? maybe your problem is with nationalism in general, but nationalism isn’t only exclusive to South Korea from the other 31 countries that are in the WC this year. This “Anti-Korea bandwagon” thread isn’t warranted, especially when nationalism is expected during international sporting events. Whether or not they are ‘more’ nationalistic than other nations is debatable (and doesn’t matter). in fact, nationalism through supporting the national team is encouraged in all nations. If your point, with that commercial and picture, was to just show how nationalistic Koreans are in general, your point was lost or didn’t carry much weight as we expect them to be nationalistic for their team, just like how we expect Germans to be nationalistic for their team and so on.

-pf wrote:
“Why take away a national pride? Why take the chance to show the world that a country has what it takes to be recognized in soccer (among many other things!).”

i agree

-chickenwing wrote:
“You should clarify what you mean by “a country like korea”. It’s obvious where Koreanseoul took offense: the statement can be taken as racist.”

not only that, but starting a thread titled “The Anti-Korea Bandwagon” can be taken as racist as well.

Anyway, GO PORTUGAL!!! (or ENGLAND!!!!)

Posted from  Canada

by the way, just so we’re clear, i’m not accusing you (greekfreak) of being racist. i understand that being an anti-(insert nation here) is different from racism [no sarcasm in this post]

Posted from  Canada

“Second world?” Do your homework.

Posted from  United States

So yea…..i think Korea will do ok……I just want korea and japan to do well enough to have a game verses eachother…….you know so i can watch yall get stomped out…

JAPAN #1 lol

as far as the riggin go’s thats old news…lets see what happens this world cup!…

good luck to korea….

i just dont get why they do the whole “corea” spelling thing…

Posted from  United States

Kicked:

Most people seeming read too much into this post; which is to say, they never read past the title, and chose to infer everything. Did anybody manage to find the links I posted? Or bother to read them?

I was merely pointing out that unlike ‘02, the ‘hype’ of the present tournament hasn’t been as widespread, and in fact is unwanted in the extreme by quite a few natives (and far too many foreigners), who a) don’t think much of Korea’s chances, and b) are just sick of the promotional aspects of it. I can attribute a lot of this to the fact that Korea was in fact hosting the games four years ago, and now that they’re out of sight, they’re a little further out of mind. The difference is palpable. This wasn’t a judgement call.

Are the commercials presently in rotation any worse than other countries’ promotional displays? I couldn’t (and didn’t) say. Neither did I intimate or outright claim that Korea held a monopoly on either patriotism or nationalism–some of you chose to assume that.

The commercial I wanted to post couldn’t be found online (at least not yet), and I merely thought that some people might want to take a look at the KTF one–it’s neither offensive or nationalistic. If you want proof, I’ll do my best to photograph them and post them onto the site.

re: second-world-nation–an outdated term by definition; perhaps I should have said ‘developing’. To presume that Korea is a first-world nation based on its economy alone would have been misguided. While they’ve made leaps and bounds in their export market (particularly with regard to technology), their infrastructure is still underdeveloped, not to mention their social services. Most of these can be classified as ‘works-in-progress.’

Re: ‘a country like Korea’–condescending–a little pompous, perhaps, but not racist; there’s a big difference. I would never cross that line, although a quite a few posters have. And I certainly wouldn’t call somebody an @$$hole just because I read something incorrectly.

In any event, I’ve got mixed feelings regarding Korea’s performance in the tournament. Go through my past blogs and you’ll get a sense of where I’m coming from. Particularly my ‘Turkey vs. Korea’ post from a month or so ago. I’d like them to get out of the group fair and square on their own merits, but I know that continued success means more re-runs on TV, which can be maddening if you’re living here.

Posted from  Republic Of Korea

Addendum: The title doesn’t say ‘JOIN the Anti-Korean Bandwagon.’

Posted from  Republic Of Korea

u wanka

Posted from  Australia

greekfreak

the funny thing is, you still chose to title this the ‘anti-korea bandwagon’, though the link you cite in support of it isn’t anti-korean…it’s anti-world cup fever–particularly the excessive marketing of it. The anti-korean bandwagon is, in fact, you and the ‘number of other foreigners’ you seem confident of speaking for.
Which is fair enough, frankly. Nationalism is tedious, no matter where you are. And Korea’s brand of nationalism is as odious as that of any other country.
Frankly, as someone who’s spent time in a number of different countries, I too find myself getting, well, sick of the locals. Don’t get me wrong: at the end of the day I, don’t lose sight of the large upside of whatever culture I happen to find myself in. And yes, people are people, one obviously can’t consign an entire people to a small set of stereotypes, blah blah and so on. All these remain articles of faith.
And yet, knowing all this, I continue to experience strong reactions where I’m particularly irked by something that’s just so damned(stereo)typical of the damned culture we find ourselves in: chalk it up to human nature if you like. That’s when I know I need to just take a break, go have a beer and sleep on it; reason’s usually restored by the following day.

Yeesh sorry for the verbiage. A question to all: IS there something particularly annoying about the Korean brand of gungho football fervour? I think there is, actually. (I’m Korean btw, for those of you who may wish to know). What I dislike about Koreans’ enthusiasm for the World Cup, is the fact that it’s not simply loving football, and loving our team, so there you have it…go team! Granted, that’s most of it, which is why for the most part I don’t have any problem with World Cup Fever, Korean-style. (And mercifully there really isn’t any hooliganism that comes with it.)
It’s the part of it that’s motivated by a an ongoing inferiority complex, a continuing need to demonstrate that Korea belongs on all world stages that irritates me. The Brazilians sound truly joyous when demonstrating love for their team, the game, their nation: there’s something shrill, insistent, and somewhat needling about the same expressions coming from Korean fans, however. I won’t bother refining this statement, as I don’t have the time, but you get my drift….discuss if you like

Posted from  Switzerland

luke drift - insightful post, and I feel it too…the need to prove. I’m not sure if many of them would actually tune in to watch soccer for itself if Korea weren’t in it (now or ever). I was the only one in my family (or among all my friends, Korean or not) to watch the World Cup in 1998 as a 15-year-old and now all of my relatives do.

This isn’t to say that the consequences are all negative. I’m kind of touched by the support that the Korean team sometimes gets from non-Koreans, and I hope its performance does encourage more Asian nations to improve on their game. I also hope it dispels some of the “inferiority complex” and boosts Korean confidence to something less fickle than one that seems to depend on Koreans’ performance in particular games or sports (e.g. short-track speedskating, archery, to name a few others.)

These musings aside, in all level-headed fairness, although I didn’t think there was anything sinister in Greekfreak’s original post, KoreanSeoul never said that the Super Bowl was an international event. He seemed to be saying (if I’m interpreting correctly) that as an example, Americans’ fervour for sporting events (like in American Football) are comparable, or possibly more obsessive, than the Koreans’ for their World Cup soccer. So I don’t know where you were going with the comment, “BTW the Superbowl isn’t an international event, buddy. The World Cup is.” So maybe we should all “learn…how to read a post”.

Posted from  Canada

Alternababe:

KoreanSeoul was bringing up a non-issue–people going nuts about the Superbowl has nothing to do with nationalism; its just two U.S. cities competing (in a game that nobody outside N. America watches). Hence, ‘not an international sport/competition’.

Nobody was denying Korea the right to root for their team–the original post had to do with internal dissent amongst residents who are a little fed up with the WC, not the Korean National team specifically.

And of course, if Korea was not in the WC this year, there wouldn’t be any excessive promotion.

Enough, I’m out! Knock yourselves out henceforth!

Posted from  Republic Of Korea

There are always more important issues at hand in every country at every given time, but the World Cup only comes around once every four years. It’s a time for people to stop worrying about their problems and problems going on around the world. Of course it’s going to be commercialized because nothing on earth is free. You really think all the problems in the world are going to be solved during a one month period??? I say the S. Korean Gov. throw them in jail lol

“re: second-world-nation–an outdated term by definition; perhaps I should have said ‘developing’. To presume that Korea is a first-world nation based on its economy alone would have been misguided.”

…It’s like you’re willfully refusing to understand what first/second/third world really means. It has never had anything to do with development.

Posted from  United States

The Korean fans are amazing.
They have so much spirit.
I absolutely love it.
The “anti-korean bandwagon” will simply have to deal with it =P

Posted from  United States

What a bunch of idiots!
So what, Korea is best of asia.
And Korea is far more advanced than Greek stupid.

Posted from  Australia

I hate Koreans, haha!

Posted from  Philippines

What do you expect from people (KOREAN) which even cannot handle fork and spoon when they eat. They are so proud of themself but they forget without american they are nothing. They the most bad-mannered and rude people which you ever can find all over the world. I hate them indeed.

Posted from  Islamic Republic Of Iran