South Korea’s World Cup team is in a tough spot after losing to Ghana:
Korea’s Kim Young-gwon during the World Cup Group H soccer match between Korea and Ghana, at the Education City Stadium in Al Rayyan, Qatar, Nov. 28. AP-Yonhap
Korea’s World Cup hopes are hanging by a slender thread after a 3-2 defeat against Ghana in Qatar on Monday. With just one point from the first two games in Group H, Paulo Bento’s men are going to need a convincing win over Portugal on Friday and hope that other results are favorable.
While the game had excitement for the neutral, there was, ultimately, disappointment for the Taeguk Warriors who will be left to regret defensive mistakes and missed chances. Ghana took a two goal lead in the first half, but the Taeguk Warriors came roaring back with two goals in the space of three second half minutes from Cho Gue-sung who became the first Korean to score more than once in a World Cup game. More defensive issues helped the Africans retake the lead and, this time, they held onto it despite plenty of pressure from the Reds.
Considering how Koreans tend to keep embarrassing things like this quiet, I am not surprised how sexual abuse like this was allowed to go on for so long:
Former tennis player Kim Eun-hee speaks during an interview in Seoul on May 29. Kim waived anonymity to reveal how many athletes in South Korea have silently suffered sexual abuse by their coaches.
When Kim Eun-hee was 10 years old, a primary school child with dreams of tennis stardom, her coach raped her for the first time. Then he did it again. And again. And again.
The South Korean was too young to even know what sex was. But she knew she dreaded the repeated orders to come to his room at their training camp, and the pain and humiliation.
“It took me years to realize that it was rape,” Kim said. “He kept raping me for two years. … He told me it was a secret to be kept between him and me.”
Now 27, Kim has spoken to international media about her experiences for the first time, and revealed how female athletes in South Korea have silently suffered sexual abuse by their coaches. (……..)
In a highly competitive society where winning is everything, many young athletes forgo schooling or live away from families to train with their peers and coaches full time, living in a dorm-like environment for years.
The training camp system — akin to models used by communist sporting machines such as China — is credited with helping the South punch well above its weight on the global sporting stage.
But it has proven to be the setting for abuse in several sports — especially of underage athletes whose existence is controlled by their trainers.
“The coach was the king of my world, dictating everything about my daily life from how to exercise to when to sleep and what to eat,” said Kim, adding that he beat her repeatedly as part of “training.”
The coach was eventually dismissed after some parents complained of his “suspicious behavior,” but he was simply moved to another school with no criminal inquiry. Many victims are forced into silence in a world where going public often means the end of any aspirations to stardom.
“This is a community where those who speak out are ostracized and bullied as ‘traitors’ who brought shame to the sport,” said Chung Yong-chul, a sports psychology professor at Sogang University in Seoul.
A 2014 survey commissioned by the Korean Sports & Olympic Committee showed that around 1 in 7 female athletes had experienced sexual abuse in the previous year, but 70 percent of them did not seek help of any kind. [Japan Times]
Soccer legend Diego Maradona is being accused of making a racist gesture towards some Korean fans at the World Cup:
Argentinean football legend Diego Maradona, left, in a stand before the FIFA World Cup 2018 group D preliminary round game between Argentina and Iceland in Moscow on Saturday. EPA
Football legend Diego Maradona’s racist gesture toward young Korean fans is drawing a strong backlash in Korea.
Maradona, 57, has been accused of making a “clearly racist gesture” at the Spartak Stadium on Saturday, after Korean fans shouted and waved at him in joy.
ITV presenter Jacqui Oatley, who was there as part of the broadcaster’s coverage of the game between Argentina and Iceland, claimed on Twitter that Maradona “pulled his eyes to the side in a clearly racist gesture. All of us who saw it are stunned.” [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but interestingly no one caught this on film. However, here is what Maradona said happened:
Responding to the accusation in a Facebook post on Sunday morning, Maradona said: “Today, in the stadium, among so many demonstrations of affection from the people, I was struck by a group of people around a fan who filmed us. “I saw an Asian boy wearing an Argentina T-shirt. I, from afar, tried to tell them how nice it seemed to me that even the Asians cheer for us. And that’s all, guys, come on.” [iNews]
I will let everyone make up their own minds if Maradona had racist intentions or not.
It looks like the North Korean women’s soccer team does not need to be concerned with being sent to a reeducation labor camp after beating South Korea:
North Korea women’s national football team players (in red) celebrate after scoring a goal against South Korea at the East Asian Football Federation (EAFF) E-1 Football Championship at Soga Sports Park in Chiba, Japan, on Dec. 11, 2017. (Yonhap)
North Korea beat South Korea 1-0 in a women’s inter-Korean football match in Chiba on Monday.
Kim Yun-mi scored the only goal of the match as North Korea collected their second straight victory at the East Asian Football Federation (EAFF) E-1 Football Championship at Soga Sports Park in Chiba, Japan.
North Korea, two-time defending champions of the regional women’s competition, beat China 2-0 to open their tournament last Friday. South Korea, however, suffered their second straight loss, having lost their first match to hosts Japan by 3-2.
The two losses mean South Korea can’t win the four-nation tournament. Yoon Duk-yeo’s side was looking to win the regional crown for the first time since 2005. They will try to close out the tournament on a high note against China on Friday, also in Chiba.
There were more than 300 North Korea fans gathered at the stadium on Monday, compared to about 10 people in the South Korean supporters section. [Yonhap]
That last sentence is probably the most amazing thing to me about this game, that South Korea only had 10 fans show up to the game.
With all the news around how 8 Kansas City players could start on the American League All-Star team due to a surge in online fan voting this got me wondering if South Korean netizens were behind this? I ask because the Kansas City Royals are a popular team in Korea now due to their SuperFan Lee Sung-woo. If anyone knows how to get out the vote online it is South Koreans netizens. So is this online voting surge just a coincidence or has anyone seen anything in regards to South Koreans getting out the vote for the Kansas City Royals?:
– In every corner of the Kansas City Royals‘ clubhouse, they revel in the chaos, each player’s face contorted into something that resembles a Guy Fawkes mask. Somehow, the American League All-Star team’s lineup as of today consists of eight Royals and the best player in the world, and this, to them, is the most glorious kind of anarchy, one everybody involved wants to believe is built on the back of pure passion.
It may well be that the 25th-sized market of Major League Baseball’s 26 mobilized, rocked the vote and did so without the help of a sneaky Python script or an undetectable Perl script or any of the ways around the system that for the first time has gone online only and seen itself turned completely on its head. Because right now, the single worst offensive player in baseball is the AL starter at second base and the single best offensive player in the AL is not starting and the entire thing is like a coastal fever dream in which the Midwest rises up and fights back for all those years of flyover jokes. [Yahoo Sports]
According to this quite detailed post over at the Marmot’s Hole the Incheon Asian Games has moved well passed just being a fiasco:
1.Stadiums getting blackouts
2. Athlete’s lunch boxes found with salmonella
3. Volunteers asking for athletes signatures and making them late to their events – because they got 1 hour of training 1 week before the Games started.
4. 20% of interpreters quitting (because they had to pay for their own transport to and from the Games),
5. Athletes’ rooms not having fans or A/C,
6. Athletes’ rooms crammed with three beds and cramming athletes in them because they don’t have enough rooms
7. No mosquito screens for the rooms, subpar quality food for the athletes – partially caused by the fact that the majority of the cooks are college kids majoring in food science
8. Beach volleyball site doesn’t have changing rooms
9. Badminton stadium has A/C with strong wind that got the complaints of all athletes including Korean ones
10. Thailand baseball team had to practice in the dark because the lights weren’t on
You can read more about the issues the Asian Games are having at the link, but it appears the fiasco will continue all the way through the closing ceremony:
Organizers of the Incheon Asian Games face a daunting challenge ― bringing Asia’s biggest sporting event to a close in a way that makes people forget the opening ceremony many believe was the worst ever.
“We have noted the criticism we received after the opening ceremony and applied it to the direction of the closing ceremony,” Jang Jin, artistic director of the ceremony, said during a news conference at the Main Press Center in Incheon, Tuesday.
But he seems to have few options available due to his limited budget and other problems.
Jang said because of the athletic events at the Incheon Asiad Main Stadium that will run until the end of the Games, “We will not be able to push through with the final rehearsal that had been scheduled for Friday. We ask for your understanding.”
According to Jang and chief organizer Im Kwon-taek, the closing ceremony will include performances by the National Dance Company of Korea and the National Gugak Center, a countdown using filmed shots of athletes’ shirt numbers and AD cards, a taekwondo performance and a concert by boy band Big Bang.
But most people remain unconvinced that the closing ceremony will be an improvement from the opening ceremony, which was likened by the public and foreign media to a hallyu (Korean wave) concert or film festival, featuring more celebrities than sports stars. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but according to the article the opening ceremony had famed Korean actress Lee Young-ae light the cauldron which is really odd considering usually famous athletes usually light it. Now for those who attend the closing ceremony they will be subject to a Big Bang concert.
The Incheon Asian Games cost only $2 billion to put on compared to $20 billion the Chinese paid in 2010 to host them in Guangzou. So obviously the Koreans are getting what they paid for. I would think for the upcoming Pyeongchang Winter Olympics that the Koreans will be reaching much deeper into their pockets to put on a better event since the whole world will be watching.
