Trail of the Lion King

At the weekend Jen and I went down to Busan for the Korean FA Cup Final. We’d had a bit of a choice to make as the first Korean Formula 1 Grand Prix was also taking place on the same day. In a way, I felt I should go and watch the motor racing. It’s a global event and with it being the first time that it had been staged in Korea, I suppose it’s a fairly historical occasion too.

Having said that, I went to Silverstone last year for the British Grand Prix and I wasn’t too impressed with it. Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time. I picked my son Tom up at a nearby railway station and then we spent the weekend camping about half an hours walk from the circuit. But it was the social side that I liked best. The race itself wasn’t particularly easy to follow live and I don’t think the weekend would have been any less enjoyable if we had just gone camping and watched the race on the telly.

The tents weren't too sturdy and the BBQ wouldn't light, but apart from that...

I think the main problem was that you don’t really get enough information when you are watching the race at the track. I was never really sure which car was leading and you miss most of the action by being limited to a single viewpoint. The cars are so loud that I needed to wear earplugs and that meant that I couldn’t hear any tannoy announcements or even have a conversation with Tom. The people in the know had hired little five-inch tellies so that they could stay up to-date with what was going on. I just thought that if you are going to watch it on a screen, you might as well choose a large one in a bar somewhere and avoid paying two hundred and fifty pounds for the privilege of being deafened.

That's Jensen Button. Probably. Although it could be his team mate.

So in the end we plumped for the football. There was a firework display in Busan on the Saturday night and that helped swing it too. It was probably a wise choice. Despite the tempting prospect early in the week of free tickets to the Grand Prix being dished out to foreigners, it seemed like a lot of people struggled to get into the circuit. I read that seats were just allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, which must be a little annoying if you were one of the early bookers who had shelled out a few hundred quid for a prime spot.

We set off for Busan on the Saturday morning on the KTX and less than three hours later we were there. We’d decided to try to stay somewhere near Gwangalli beach, so that we would be handy for the firework display that evening and so after a half hour taxi ride we wandered along the seafront looking for a room. The hotels in Busan seemed fairly dull compared to some of the others that I’ve seen over here. I’ve stayed at one which had four full size plastic horses above the door and  another that had fake palm trees on the roof. There was nothing like that in Busan though, or if there was we didn’t see it.

The first hotel we called into had a notice on the wall confirming that it was full. It had a restaurant though and so we stayed for lunch and something called dak galbi. Jen speaks very good Korean and so it usually means that when I’m with her I know what I’m going to get on my plate before it arrives. When I’m by myself it’s much more of a lottery as to what I’ll get given to eat. That’s not unique to Korea, by the way. When I was working in Spain I was once given a saucer of almonds instead of the anticipated steak and chips and on another occasion the cod I thought I had ordered turned out to be a pig’s foot.

None of those problems this time though and the dak galbi was even better than  normal as in addition to the usual chicken and cabbage in a spicy pepper sauce it also had prawns, mussels and bits of octopus in it. You cook it yourself in a big dish heated by a gas flame set into the table. It’s easy enough, all you have to do is move the stuff about now and then to stop it sticking to the pan. A bit like most things I eat apart from weetabix really.

This is a photo of dak galbi that I found on the internet.

We had a window seat in the restaurant and were able to watch the preparations for the fireworks which consisted mainly of someone filling as much of the narrow beach as possible with plastic chairs. Families were already staking their claims to spots on the pavements five hours before it started by putting down picnic blankets and making themselves at home. A group of monks wandered past our window at one point, some of them no more than young children. It seemed somewhat early in life to be making that sort of career choice, whilst a shaven head struck me as too much of  a commitment if you just did a bit of monking on a weekend as an alternative to joining the scouts.

Anyway, after the dak galbi we gave up on the prospect of a room with a sea view and moved one street back from the beach. There were plenty of hotels to pick from there and we tried one where we could see people stood on a rooftop terrace. It didn’t have any palm trees or plastic horses up there but we thought that it might come in handy for watching the display later on.

The hotel with the roof top viewing point had a room for us but by Korean standards it wasn’t too impressive. It had a circular bed, but when you’ve stayed in rooms that boast a dance floor with flashing lights, an overhead remote-controlled skylight or a coin operated condom vending machine on the wall, a bed without corners doesn’t really strike me as much to write home about. It was rock hard too, possibly because most Koreans usually prefer to sleep on the floor. I doubt the floor would have been any firmer than that mattress.

A little later we headed back out for the fireworks. Our plan was to meet some friends of Jen somewhere. It was all a little vague and in the end they didn’t make it. They were stuck at a different beach and by now the traffic was heavy enough to make moving around a pain in the arse. We were fine though, as we’d bagged a table at a beachside bar. There was a set fee for a table as the bar sought to make the most of one of the last busy nights of the season. For a hundred and fifty thousand won (eighty quid!!) we got a plate with four burgers on it, chips and a bit of salad. We also got two four pint pitchers of beer, three bottles of soju and a couple of soft drinks. It was the same standard deal whether you were sat at the table alone or if there were half a dozen of you.

One pitcher down, one to go.

The burgers were rubbish. I think they came out of a tin. They reminded me of the ones I used to eat in Stockton High Street after a night out around town twenty-five years ago. The burgers in those days had so little meat in them that you could eat them without chewing. Quite handy I suppose if the evening had ended up with you having a few teeth knocked out.

Three and a half of the four burgers remained on the plate at the end of the night, although we made a decent effort with the chips and the beer. The fireworks were excellent and sitting outside a bar watching them was a whole lot more relaxing than being stuck in the crowd of people trying to find a place to stand on the beach or the road. I suppose we would probably have had a pretty good view from our hotel roof, but we’d have had to have sorted out our own beer and chips.

Quite a good finale.

After a night’s sleep that might as well have been spent on floor we woke up to Cup Final Morning. As you may have suspected it didn’t quite have the same sense of excitement that I remembered as a kid in the days when the whole morning was spent building up to the main event in the afternoon. I flicked through the television channels just in case there was a Korean version of It’s a Cup Final Knockout or Cup Final Mastermind, but if they have programmes like that over here I couldn’t find any of them.

We had a few hours to spare before the 4pm kick off and as it was raining we went along to the Busan Museum. The really old stuff like rocks made in to axeheads or chopping blocks was a bit dull, as were the slightly later bits of broken crockery, but I quite liked the more modern exhibits from the various Japanese occupations and the relatively recent Korean War.

After lunch we wandered around the nearby UN Cemetery. There was some event going on and the place had a few Korean veterans stood around and also a party of modern-day soldiers. Twenty two countries answered the UN call for military or medical assistance and most of them were represented in the cemetery. The Americans have a policy of repatriating their fallen and so had very few graves here despite having lost around forty thousand servicemen. In those days the British tended to bury people in the country where they died and so we were the largest contingent, with 885 of the 1,100 or so personnel who had died during the Korean War being buried within these grounds.

As you would expect, the cemetery was impeccably maintained and it was sobering to read the details on the headstones. Very often you would see a cluster of graves that all showed the same date of death. I wondered whether they died alongside each other. Some of them were still teenagers and possibly conscripts as it was at a time when we still had National Service.

With an hour to go to kick-off we left the cemetery and took at taxi to the Asiad Stadium. The traffic was fairly heavy and we arrived with about ten minutes to spare. There was a long queue at the entrance into the west stand and we still had tickets to buy before we could even join the line. In a stroke of luck we were offered tickets for free as we approached the ticket office by a couple of blokes who had a big wad of them to give away. We gratefully accepted two of them and ignoring the queue to our right, we turned left and fifty yards further along were able to walk straight through an entrance to the south stand.

Ten minutes before kick-off.

We were supposed to be meeting some Suwon supporters in that end of the stadium but one of them had suffered a bit of a mishap, falling three stories from an unguarded stairway and suffering serious multiple injuries. Thankfully he survived and is expected to make a full recovery. It’s incredible to think of the steps that people will take to avoid us.

The stadium was impressive. It was built for the Asian Games in 2002 and also hosted three World Cup matches that year. It’s too big, of course, for the attendances that Korean football matches get, even Cup Finals, so someone had come up with the clever idea of building temporary stands on the running track down one side of the pitch and behind one of the goals. Half a stadium within a stadium, if you like. It allowed the fans in those seats to get much closer to the action, although it did mean that the roof on the stadium offered them no protection from the elements. Whilst the temporary stands were just about full, there was plenty of space in the rest of the stadium and despite the attendance being announced as 31,000, I’d have estimated a less impressive 12,000 or so.

How clever is that?

Equally less impressive was the lack of beer on sale. I’d walked halfway around the entire concourse just before kickoff in search of a pint as visiting museums and cemeteries is thirsty work. Unfortunately I couldn’t find anywhere selling alcohol. Luckily I had an emergency stash of whisky that I had lugged up and down Jirisan a month earlier and had brought to Busan in case we had ended up watching the fireworks from the beach. I don’t really want to be carrying it around for the rest of my life, so I had a few nips of that instead.

Random photo of stuff happening.

I like watching cup finals. The games aren’t always classics but you know that the players will be up for it and its likely that tempers will fray a bit later on, particularly if one team is behind. I’ve seen the German and Spanish versions in the last couple of years and was at Wembley supporting the Boro against Chelsea in 97. We went behind after thirty seconds in that one, so we hadn’t even managed to sit down before our tempers frayed.

The Suwon fans around us were pretty good, keeping up the chanting for most of the game. They were rewarded with a goal midway through the first half, as Yeom Ki Hun scored from a well placed shot from outside of the box.

Suwon fans after the goal.

They celebrated the goal with a chorus of a song to the tune of Ob la di, ob la da. Despite it being something that sounds like McCartney had knocked up in about ten minutes, the lyrics were obviously a little difficult to remember for the Suwon fans and they had been replaced with the even simpler “Ohhh, ohhh, oh,  ohhh, ohhh oh.“

Another random action shot.

At half time it was still 1-0 and we were treated to a girl band miming one of their songs on the pitch. They appeared to forget that the microphones were just for show and made the error of trying to use them for addressing the crowd after the song. Perhaps, to avoid any confusion, they should have been given hairbrushes to mine with instead. Fortunately someone ran on to the pitch from the sidelines with a real microphone for them and after being warned not to try to brush their hair with it, the budding popstars were able to thank the crowd for supporting their album sales and delaying the inevitable day when they would have to look for jobs in room salons.

The second half was quite scrappy with both teams getting stuck in a bit more and Suwon in particular taking any opportunity to timewaste by exaggerating their injuries. The players squared up to each other a couple of times but it never really boiled over in the way that I’d hoped it would.

Suwon fans unveil their surfer.

There weren’t a great deal of chances and despite it being a fairly even game, Suwon’s solitary goal turned out to be enough to claim the trophy. We got the usual presentation ceremony with paper fired into the air and the now obligatory rendition of We Are The Champions.

Party time.

The win gave Suwon a place in the Champions League and we filed out before the lap of honour to catch our train back to Seoul. When I went into work the next day, no-one even knew that the Cup Final had taken place and the talk was all about the Grand Prix. The combination of crashes and cars sliding off the track in the rain seemed to have captured their imagination in a way that a domestic football game could never hope to. Next year I suspect a fair few of them will be heading down to the track and then wondering where to get hold of earplugs and little tellies.

If the name Al Shahab is unfamiliar, it’s because they are from Saudi Arabia. Last night I was at Tancheon Stadium watching Seongnam take them on in the second leg of their Asian Champions League semi-final. Al Shahab held a 4-3 lead from the first leg and so barring a goalfest, a win by a single goal would be enough to take the Korean team through on away goals.

Jen had managed to get us free tickets through some Facebook group she was in, although I doubt too many people actually ever pay to get into Seongnam. They regularly give away tickets to schools and colleges to boost their crowds which on the occasions I’ve been there so far have still been well under a thousand.

View from the river

I was late getting to the stadium and as I got nearer it sounded as if the attendance was way above the usual turnout. I’d missed the kick-off and I could hear the roar of the crowd from the other side of the river. I met Jen outside and we made our way into the north stand, which is the section behind the goal where the home fans congregate.

Last time I was here, there were about thirty fans in the stand. They made a decent effort to get behind their team but with so few of them it wasnt much of an atmosphere. This time though, the stand was just about full as was the east stand to our left.

East Stand

With us being fifteen minutes late, we had to just take seats a couple of rows from the front which wasn’t a great view. The running track meant that we were a long way from the pitch and the advertising boards obscured our view of the players legs from their knees downwards.

I've had better views.

It was a fairly even first half, the Saudi’s looked a decent team, but Seongnam were creating plenty of chances. They managed to take one after half an hour when Jo Dong Keun finished after a flick on from Dzenan Radoncic. That put them level at four each on aggregate but ahead on away goals. The fans around us celebrated as a trip toTokyo for the final beckoned.

One Nil.

At half time I got a couple of beers and we moved further back for a slightly better view. The area that we moved to was a bit livelier too, with more kids in it than a goat orphanage. Most of the crowd had those bits of cardboard that you can either hold up as a sign or fold into something that makes a noise when you strike something with it. Initially they were hitting them against the backs of chairs or themselves. However, as most of the supporters around us appeared to be teenage lads, it wasnt long before they were all hitting each other. None of it was particularly aggressive and a lot of it seemed subconcious, it’s just the way fourteen year old boys behave with each other. At times, it was more entertaining than the match as they would wait until one of them looked the other way, or glanced at the match before catching him unawares.

I'm glad I'm not a teacher.

We spent about ten minutes watching them whacking each other on the head until I couldn’t resist it any longer and after picking up and folding my own bit of cardboard, I gave a couple of them in front of me what is traditionally known as ’a clip’. Their mates seemed to appreciate it even if the recipients didn’t.

Actual bodily harm? Possibly. But worth it.

The second half was pretty open, with both teams having opportunities on the break. Neither side managed to take its chances though and eventually the ref blew to send Seongnam into the final.  As we left it seemed as if half the crowd were cracking each other on their skulls with the bits of cardboard. I hope it catches on elsewhere.

This one was only a friendly, but with the history between the two countries, it’s a friendly that matters. I’d learnt how to get the tickets from the Hana Bank before the last game and so a couple of weeks ago I popped into my local branch during my lunch break to get tickets for fellow Boro supporting exile Alan and myself.

Of course, these things never run smoothly and despite it being only the second day of the tickets being on sale the first woman that I spoke to in the bank gave me the dreaded crossed arm gesture and advised me that the tickets were sold out. I suspected that at best she was mistaken and at worst she thought that the easiest option to reduce her workload on a lunchtime was to just send me away. I very nearly responded to her crossed arms with a gesture or two of my own, but thought better of it.

Still, I must have looked so incredulous that one of her colleagues made a comment to her before asking me to wait a moment. Ten minutes later I had two tickets for the north west corner at 30,000 won apiece. Perhaps the confusion arose from the north stand being sold out. That’s the section where the more vocal of the home fans go and there’s obviously a bit more demand for that bit.

On the evening of the game the subway was especially busy and so it looked like there would be a decent sized crowd. I made the mistake though of not switching to Line 6 until Hapjeong, three stops before the World Cup Stadium subway station. It took me fifteen minutes to inch my way from the platform entrance to the doors of the train, by which time two packed trains had already been and gone as I watched from a few yards back in the queues.

That's my thumb in the corner.

Despite the delay I was still at the stadium by 7.30pm and I met Alan outside of the subway exit.There were far more people milling around than at last months game against Iran, which boded well for the atmosphere inside the ground.

Subway exit.

We made our way in and took our seats in the northwest corner. We were in the lower tier but twenty eight rows up, so we had a decent view. At that stage the ground was about half full, although as the game went on the crowd probably got to about eighty per cent of the stadium’s capacity, so there must have been about fifty thousand people there in total.

The Korean fans certainly didn’t show any respect to the Japanese, booing their anthem before the start and their players whenever they got the ball. It’s not surprising I suppose, when you’ve been invaded and occupied by your neighbours as  frequently as Korea has been by Japan then there’s bound to be a bit of residual resentment.

The anthems and presentations.

In additional to the oppression of the Korean people, most historical sites in Korea have also suffered at the hands of the Japanese one way or another. Just in case anyone might be unaware of this there are usually notice boards nearby telling you of the skullduggery. It might be that a particular building has had to be restored because the Japanese burnt it down in a temper, or that the original manuscripts that were once inside are missing because the Japanese wiped their arses with them. Usually any paintings that are on display are only copies due to the Japanese having using the larger of the originals as wallpaper pasting tables or something and the smaller ones to line their cat’s litter trays.

I’m fairly sure that the next time I come to the World Cup stadium there will be a sign blaming this Japanese visit for everything from the divots on the pitch to the queues in the toilets.

Non-stop support from the Koreans.

The Koreans did, however, get behind their own team and there were gasps of anguish every time one of their attacks broke down or when Japan looked threatening. The fans in the north stand next to us kept up constant chanting and drumming throughout the game, waving the large flags at the front every few minutes and setting off flares early on. I’d like to try to get into that section for an international match. Particularly one with a sizeable crowd.

They like their flares.

Park Ji Sung wasn’t playing as apparently his knee was swollen with fluid after a training session. I doubt that Fergie will have been too happy about that. The absence of the Korean captain probably reduced the noise levels by a few decibels mind, and saved the medical staff from having to treat the numerous cases of hysteria that tend to break out whenever he touches the ball. The broadcaster still brought their dedicated Park Ji Sung camera crew with them though and every now and then a shot of him watching the game from the sidelines would be flashed up onto the big screen, no doubt with a caption that his knee injury wouldn’t have happened if the Japanese hadn’t agreed to the fixture.

It’s fascinating to watch a Manchester United game on telly over here. Park Ji Sung is such  a star in his home country that the half time highlights consist almost entirely of his efforts. Every one of his touches of the ball tend to be shown with little regard for anything else that went on. If he wasn’t involved in a build up to a goal, it probably wouldn’t qualify as a highlight and therefore would struggle to make the cut. If he was having a quiet game whilst Man Utd ran riot, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was still 0-0 if you were relying on the television half-time highlights for your information.

Keeping up with the latest on Park Ji Sung whilst watching the game.

This game was genuinely scoreless at half time, Japan having looked the better side but without really creating anything of note. The second half was a bit better with both teams getting forward a little more but again without looking as if they could create something to break the deadlock. If a goal was going to come it looked likely to be as a consequence of a Korean defensive mistake, but they rode their luck and the game finished 0-0.

They didn't score from this corner.

The subway was just as busy on the way out and I resorted to heading in the wrong direction and looping around to beat the queues. That’s it now for the national team until the Asian Cup in Qatar in January. There isn’t much of a buzz about them under their new coach Cho Kwang Rae, who whilst  he seems to know exactly the sort of football he wants to play, doesn’t appear to have yet managed to make it work.