Korea was definitely bitten by the soccer bug after co-hosting World Cup 2002. Although baseball is still paramount (we'll get to that in a future post) the Red Devils are definitely the most popular (and successful) national sports team. Third place finish in 2002. Qualifying for the elimination rounds in 2010. Led up to now by Manchester United midfielder Park Ji-Sung, South Korea has emerged as consistently the best team in Asia, which is a big deal for the country known as the "Hermit Kingdom." Hey, if you were constantly swirlied by China and Japan, you'd have persecution issues as well.
Not everyone can be Park Ji-Sung or Ahn Jung-Hwan (he was the guy who taunted Apolo Anton Ohno after scoring against the U.S. in 2002 - like I said - persecution issues), however, so the rest of the player develop in the 16-team K-League. Surprisingly, despite having 1/4 of the population, Seoul itself has only one soccer team, which plays at the World Cup Stadium, although three other teams are in the suburbs.
And so with that backdrop, we went to the aforementioned World Cup Stadium to watch FC Seoul take on the Ulsan Hyundai. The fact that Ulsan was the opponent was sort of interesting for me, as that is where I spent my first year in Korea where my father worked for, you guessed it, Hyundai Heavy Industries. To say that Ulsan is a one company town would be an understatement.
It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and the FC Seoul fan side was reasonably full...
... but the rest of the stadium was pretty empty. Not bad for like 8 dollar tickets.
So, back to the fans that I showed at the top of the post. This is more important than you would think. Just like South Africa brought us the vuvuzela, Korea brought us the thundersticks. Yes, I know. I hate them also. Well, apparently these fans are the new thing. You use them folding them up until they are compacted, and then rapping them against your other hand to make a... fan-like sounds. Honestly, they aren't super loud and sort of sounds like ripping paper, but I guess it saves the vocal chords.
Andrew with his fan in action. He had actually never been to a soccer game in Korea before, so glad I could contribute something new for him as well. And yes, as you can see behind us, we were not the only non-Koreans at the game. In fact, there were quite a few in our section.
Eric and I with "proof" we were at the game.
The game itself was pretty boring. The highlights for me were the snacks. No hot dogs or fries here. Shrimp crackers. Fishcake soup. Ramen noodles. And my favorite - spicy ricecakes. No one else partook, but I was in Korean junk food heaven. And beer. Good old Cass and Hite. Think a cross between Michelob Ultra and PBR.
Something that probably was moderately exciting happening, but that I can't remember.
Anyway, the game ended in a tie...
... so we took off for our next destination... dinner!
Well, sort of. We headed over to the Hongdae neighborhood to meet up with Mary. Hongdae is probably the best bar/entertainment district in Seoul. Centered around Hongik University, which is the city's premier art school, it is a relatively new area to hang out, with it's rise coinciding with the ascent of hipsters everywhere. It's not uncommon to find Beatles tribute bands playing on random street corners here.
As we wandered deeper into Hongdae, this is where English being our first language made us recognize the absurdity of someone of the bar names. Above we have a very western bar shooters, clearly themed on the Wild West.
Next to it, however, is Cocks. It's a darts bar. Yeah, I don't get it either.
Here we have Swetty Bar. And it appears to lead to the basement. I don't see why this would be appealing.
Perhaps the most puzzling, however, was the Ho Bar. Not only was it's name strange, but it was a franchise. All over Seoul, I saw no less than 10 Ho Bars. Inside it's your fairly typical western style bar, albeit with a very red theme, and no clue as to what they mean by Greek Joy.
We finally found Mary and tried to get into one of their favorite Korean BBQ restaurants, roughly named Stone House BBQ. Shock of all shocks, they were pretty busy at 7:30PM on a Saturday night, so we left our phone number to call us when a table opened up. To kill some time and get started on evening, we went to the aforementioned Swetty Bar, and sat at a table underneath the 19. To be fair, it was dark, and the wall looked very abstract until you actually stared at it.
As you can see, Dave and John can't wait for dinner. Stay hungry for next week...
