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South Korea v Ecuador, 16th May

June 3, 2010

This was looking as if it was going to be an even busier weekend than normal as different events kept cropping up as it got closer and I tried my best to fit them all in. Friday night was a ‘teambuilding’ dinner after work where about fifty of us went to a local Korean barbecue restaurant. I’d been here a few times before and the food is always pretty good. A charcoal barbecue is set into a hole in the middle of your table and you cook your own beef and pork, cutting it into small pieces with scissors and then eating it with spicy paste and wrapped in a lettuce leaf. You wash it down with beer and frequent shots of soju. This time we were in the room upstairs where you sit on cushions on the floor beside low tables. As a foreigner, and a not particularly supple foreigner at that, I was given about eight of the thin cushions to sit on. It was quite a precarious seat, especially as the empty soju bottles stated to mount up. I made my excuses at about ten o’clock, pretty much the worse for wear and leaving most of them still at it. There is quite a big after work drinking culture in Korea. As I’m not looking to build a career, just dropping in for a single project, there’s no need for me to adopt any of the customs that I’m not keen on and if I had a young family as a lot of them do, I would probably resent the time spent drinking with the same people that I’d just spent all day with. However, as I don’t have too many other commitments and I find my colleagues to be good company, I quite enjoy ‘teambuilding’ events like these. Although I doubt my liver would agree.

Saturdays have developed into hiking days, with a regular group of walkers. This week’s walk was due to start from Hoeryong and was a fair distance by subway from my apartment. Fortunately we weren’t due to meet up until 12.30pm which allowed my hangover to settle a little. I set off just before eleven and after some poor choices of subway line and some unusually long waits for trains, at noon I was still a change of line and seventeen stops away from the meeting place. They would no doubt have waited for me if I’d asked, but I didn’t want to be selfish and so phoned ahead to let them know that I wouldn’t be able to join them this week. As I had my hiking boots on I thought I might as well have a bit of a walk anyway and got off the train at the next station. It was Eungbong, over to the east of the city and just north of the Han River that runs through Seoul. As there was a path alongside the river I decided just to follow it until I got bored. It was quite an interesting walk. There wasn’t much happening on the river itself, a little bit of dragon boat training and the odd jet ski, a few fishermen, generally with four or five rods each, but every few hundred yards there would be permanent outdoor gym equipment, basketball courts, five a side pitches and badminton nets. I even passed a croquet pitch where a few pensioners were having a quite fiercely contested game. It was all free to use and seemed well taken care of and very popular. A cycle path ran alongside the path I was walking along and was also very popular with a mix of cyclists ranging from those on top of the range bikes and kitted out as if they were setting off to the Tour de France, to students on hired tandems and families with small children on bikes with stabilizers.

I walked for about three and a half hours, covering about ten miles and ending up on the other side of the city. It wasn’t the hike I’d planned for, but I saw parts of Seoul that up until now I’d only glimpsed from train windows, so it was a worthwhile day.

My plan for Sunday had initially revolved around the South Korea v Ecuador match in the evening. It was the only home ‘warm-up’ game for South Korea and I’d suspected that the Seoul World Cup Stadium would be close to its 65,000 capacity as the Korean fans gave their team a bit of a send off. Park Ji Sung, who is a superstar out here and appears in adverts in just about every media possible, would be playing and I was anticipating a bit of a party atmosphere.

Then I found out that the Korean Derby was taking place on the Sunday too. I’d been to the racetrack at Seoul a few weeks previously for a normal race meeting and it had been pretty busy. Whilst I didn’t care which horse won the Derby, I was quite keen to see if the spectacle differed much from the regular races day. The American girl I’ve been seeing isn’t much of a sports fan but has quite an inquisitive nature and so was happy to tag along to the races and the match. Then she mentioned that there was also a big lantern festival going on that day too, no doubt as part of the build up to Buddha’s birthday in a few days time.

Well, I’m all for festivals, even more so if there are naked flames involved, and so we thought we would try and squeeze that in too. First stop was the races. The crowds coming out of the subway were bigger than the last time I was here, which given that it was Derby Day wasn’t much of a surprise. The silkworm pupa on sale outside the station didn’t seem any more popular mind, despite the extra crowds. I was wondering if the 800 won admission charge would change with it being Derby Day, and it did. We were just waved through the turnstiles without having to pay.

After that though, it was all pretty much the same as the last time I was here. There was maybe a slightly larger crowd but no other indication that it was any different to a normal race day. I picked up an English form guide and discovered that the Derby itself wouldn’t be run until five o’clock. Well that didn’t really fit in with our plans so we hung about for about two hours, watching only three races due to the way that the races are so well spaced out around lunchtime and then cleared off to the Lantern Festival. There were still people coming in as we left about three o’clock and maybe that was the best way to do it. If I’m here next year on Derby Day, I’ll saunter up about half an hour before the big race, stick my bet on, collect my winnings and then celebrate with a tub of silkworms on the way out a few minutes later.

So next up was the Lantern Festival. My plan had been to spend a couple of hours there and then head off to the match. When we got there the streets were packed with people. There were stalls along the roadside offering various lantern making activities, insights into various different types of Buddhism and selling a variety of food. I had some sort of beans from Nepal that looked like peas, some of those clear noodles and some spicy dumpling that might have been pork. We were given lanterns with candles in for the parade later that evening and I thought that rather than dash off I’d rather miss the football on this occasion and stay at the festival. I might not get another chance to experience it all again, whilst I’d be watching South Korea play Argentina in the World Cup in a months time, that would probably be a bit better than a friendly against Ecuador. Apologies to those who read this far hoping for a match report, but that’s a risk you take with this blog. Still, if you keep reading I might tell you the score.

Anyway, it got dark and there was a lantern parade, which whilst it was quite impressive, wasn’t as much fun as I’d hoped it would be as we didn’t manage to find the place where everyone lined up. Instead of marching down the High Street brandishing flaming torches we ended up watching the parade from behind a barrier manned by policemen that looked no older than twelve years old. I didn’t even get to light my lantern. After an hour or so of floats and lanterns, we cleared off to a bar for beer and raw tuna.

Meanwhile South Korea won 2-0. Lee Dong Gook played just over an hour before being subbed with an injury that puts his World Cup participation in doubt. Interestingly, the match was reported as being a sellout, although attendances do get exaggerated here. It’s possible then that had we left the festival before the parade to get to the match we might not have got in, meaning that in the same day we would have turned up for, but failed to see the Derby, the Lantern Parade and the South Korea v Ecuador game. That would have been some hat trick.

Posted in Dead people and stuff, Football, Hiking, Horseracing | 5 Comments »

Geomdansan, 8th May

June 3, 2010

This was another weekend where my plans kept changing. It was the final week of the K-League before the mid-season break for the World Cup and initially I’d planned to head south to watch the game between Gwangu Sangmu and Gangwon. It wasn’t a game that particularly stood out from that week’s fixture list but what caught my attention was the nearby butterfly festival. A lot of places in Korea seem to try and publicise themselves by having festivals of one sort or another. The bullfighting one at Cheongdo being a prime example. Hampyeong’s big idea though was butterflies. Cheaper than bulls and less trouble if one escapes.

We used to catch butterflies in nets when we were kids, although we never really knew what to do with them once we caught them. Sometimes we would put them in a biscuit tin, sometimes a Tupperware container. If we remembered we would put a few holes in the lid to let some air in, although in the case of the Tupperware containers that didn’t always go down well with our Mams. Invariably, though, they all seemed to die within a few hours of being caught, which we took to be proof of the short life cycle of a butterfly rather than any consequence of our care regime.

I shot one once, when I was a bit older. It made the mistake of settling on a rock whilst it was my turn with the air rifle. I didn’t even put a pellet in the gun, just shot it with air from a range of about an inch. It just disintegrated. Anyway, I don’t do stuff like that these days, not least because I don’t have an air rifle, and so a trip to the butterfly festival before going on to a K-League match seemed a pretty good way to spend a weekend.

That was until a group that I’d been hiking with when I first arrived in Seoul suggested a trip to Jirisan. Jirisan is the second highest mountain in South Korea at 1915 metres and a weekend trip to tackle it would have meant an overnight bus ride and a 4.30am start in the dark. I liked that idea and so the butterflies would just have to wait for another year. Unfortunately, not enough other people fancied the early start and so the trip was cancelled at the last minute. I’d got my hiking head on by that time though and so I skipped the football and butterflies and went up Geomdansan with my other hiking group instead.

A bit crowded at the top

Geomdansan, at 657m, is nowhere near as high as Jirisan, but some stretches were a bit of a slog. It was enjoyable though and we had a bit of a picnic at the top before stopping at a barbeque restaurant at the bottom. There was plenty of makgeolli drunk on the way around with more at the end and a few shots of soju. I didn’t see a butterfly all day though.

More graves in the middle of nowhere

Whilst I was enjoying myself in the hills, Jeonbuk didn’t have a game. I don’t think it was their turn to miss out because of there being an odd number of teams in the K-League. It was more likely to be as a consequence of them having an Asian Champions League Game against Adelaide United in Australia four days later, which they won 3-2 courtesy of a Lee Dong Gook goal four minutes from the end of the second period of extra time. The lack of a final K-League game meant that Jeonbuk finished the first phase of the season in eighth position with sixteen points from ten games, eight points behind leaders Ulsan Horang-i, but with two games in hand.

Posted in Dead people and stuff, Hiking | Leave a Comment »

Suwon Bluewings v Daejeon Citizen, Wednesday 5th May

June 3, 2010

On Wednesday, we got the day off work as it was Children’s Day. An excellent concept, in my opinion, where families are encouraged to spend the day together. Unfortunately my children were six thousand miles away, so I decided to go to a football match instead. Somebody asked me recently if I miss them, now that I’ll only see them every four months or so, and I suppose that I do. Not as much as you might imagine, as I talk to them on the phone a couple of times a week and we send each other emails. What I do miss though, is them being children and there’s nothing I can do about that. I really enjoyed them being young. I have a great relationship with them as adults, but it’s not as much fun. They have their own grown-up lives now and I’m a smaller part of it than I was when they were kids. It’s just the way it is, I suppose.

I had a couple of different options for my choice of match. I had looked into going to Jeonbuk’s away game at Chunnam Dragons, but there didn’t seem to be a train back afterwards. In the end I settled for Suwon Bluewings against Daejeon Citizen. Suwon is a city just south of Seoul and you can get there with about an hours ride on the subway. When I got there I took a bus to Paldalmun, which is one of the main entrance gates to the Hwaseong fortress wall. The wall runs around the old city, it was originally built over two hundred years ago and is about three and a half miles all the way around. I thought I might was well have a wander around it before going to the match.

First though, I wanted something to eat. I stopped at a little café and had some pork dumplings. They were very nice, although as they had been deep fried I suspect that they probably weren’t too good for me. When I came out of the café I followed a sign for a palace, thinking that it would be something to do with the fortress wall. It wasn’t really, but there was a display of people dressed up in period costume, although which period I’d no idea, waving swords and sticks about. I watched them for a while and then conscious that I’d a wall to get around before the match I thought I’d better let them get on with cracking each others skulls and left them to it.

Careful, sonny

On the way to the wall I passed a hairdressers. The barber’s shops here are denoted by a red and blue pole outside. The only problem being that only some of them offer haircuts whilst the rest of them are brothels. I think the general rule is that if you can see inside and they have barber’s chairs then you will probably get a haircut, otherwise you won’t. To make life difficult, some do offer haircuts as part of an overall package at, I imagine, a bit more expensive price than a regular trim.

I had stuff to do so didn’t really have time to have some hairdresser fiddle with my bits afterwards, but I could have benefited from a haircut. It had been five weeks since the Japanese barber had shaved my head and some bits of it were starting to stick up at odd angles. The hairdresser’s shops have a different coloured pole to the barber’s, with a bit of yellow in them, so I thought I’d be safe with that. I went in and waited until the girl had finished with the old biddy in the chair. She didn’t speak any English, but I was able to mime the shaving of my head. To be fair, there wasn’t a lot else that she could have done with it. Maybe burnt the stubble off with a blowtorch, I suppose, but I was hardly likely to be looking for a curly perm or to have it highlighted. Ten minutes later and I was back outside after having my hair cut and washed for six thousand won. At that price I don’t think there was much prospect of any hanky panky.

Around the corner was the start of the fortress wall. It had been quite badly destroyed during the Japanese occupation but had been rebuilt using the original plans. I’d picked an uphill bit to begin with and for the next fifteen minutes had a steady climb until I was able to look down on the town. The wall was an impressive sight, although I couldn’t help but think that it would have been breachable by anyone with a twelve foot ladder. Perhaps they didn’t have them in the olden days.

I'd just walked up that.

Every hundred yards or so was a gatehouse or a temple, all with helpful explanations in English. A bit further around was a great big bell that you could ring for a thousand won. You hit it with what looked like a railway sleeper on a couple of ropes and you got three goes. The first was meant to signify gratitude and respect for your parents, the second was for the health of your family and the third one was to bring about the realisation of your dreams. Well, I don’t have too many dreams, not if you exclude the recurring one with Konnie Huq and the baby oil, but I was happy to toll the bell in honour of my parents and the health of my family.

I rang that. Three times.

Job done, I continued around the wall for about another thirty minutes until I came to an archery ground. It being Children’s Day, there were plenty of families shooting at the targets. I watched for a while, recalling how I used to take my children to Sherwood Forest when they were small. My son would dress as Robin Hood and fire arrows at my daughter, who would have to be anything from the Sheriff of Nottingham to a deer, depending upon whatever storyline my son could think up.

Safer than Sherwood Forest.

I’d spotted the Bluewings stadium from one of the higher points of the fortress and when I’d got about three quarters of the way around it was time to leave the wall and head for the stadium. It had been built for the 2002 World Cup and had a very distinctive roof, shaped to resemble a pair of wings. I bought a ticket for the East stand for 12,000 won, mainly so that I could get a good view of the winged roof opposite. There were no free pizzas this week, but we did all get given a banana on the way in instead.

No pizza this week

I wasn’t expecting a classic, Suwon were bottom of the league, with Daejeon just two places above them. There isn’t any relegation from the K-League so it doesn’t have the drastic financial implications of relegation in England, but the Suwon fans weren’t happy with their lot. There had been a few protests against the manager, Cha, and the rumours were that if they lost today he would resign.

Suwon fans

It was a decent sized crowd, with my stand being virtually full and with a lot of noise from the Suwon fans behind the goal to my right. It was goalless at half time and the best chance of the second half fell to Suwon’s Brazilian substitute Juninho. Yes really, but not him, and not the one who used to play for Lyon and who possibly still does either. There must be a Juninho factory somewhere. Brazil I imagine. That would be the sensible place to have it. Anyway, I was hoping that the crowd might sing his song, so I could join in for old time’s sake. Any chance of that disappeared though when he hit a penalty straight at the keeper.

Ole, ole, ole, ole, Juninho, ho, ho..

Daejeon lost a player with a quarter of an hour left when he gave the ref a bit of slaver and picked up his second yellow card. Despite the last few minutes being end to end stuff, it finished goalless. I ate my banana and headed back off to the fortress wall to finish the remainder of the circuit, before getting the subway back to Seoul. Meanwhile Jeonbuk lost 3-2 at Chunnam Dragons to slip to seventh place, five points off the top of the table. Lee Dong Gook didn’t get on the score sheet this week and was substituted after an hour.

The Wings

Posted in Dead people and stuff, Football, Haircuts, Hiking | 2 Comments »

My Beautiful Mint Life, Sunday 2nd May

June 2, 2010

My Beautiful Mint Life. It sounds like I’m showing off doesn’t it?  Well I’m not. Ok, maybe just a bit, but that’s the nature of blogs. They tend to either be a rant against the world or a bit of a smug ‘look at me, aren’t I having a great time’ sort of thing. I’m not really one for ranting, more for trying to have a great time so I suppose this blog falls into the latter category.

Anyway, My Beautiful Mint Life isn’t my latest attempt at telling you how wonderful everything is. No. It’s a festival, a music festival. Great name, eh. Perfect for a Teesside festival where those of you who don’t live there probably wont know that ‘mint’ is the word of choice for describing something that you quite like. Except this one wasn’t in Teesside, it was in Seoul.

One of the things that I have missed whilst I’ve been in Seoul is going to see bands. Hang on, perhaps this is turning into a ‘rant blog’ after all. I could have seen Bob Dylan about a month earlier, but it clashed with my trip to Japan to get my visa. Apart from that there hasn’t really been much else going on. I’ll particularly miss going to festivals. In recent years I’ve been cutting down on them, giving up Leeds and V, but I’ve still been going to the likes of Glastonbury and End of the Road when the opportunity arises. So the chance to see a music festival over here was something that I was keen to do.

Although I couldn’t have been that keen, as it ran for two days and I only went to one of them, the second day, Sunday. Another thing that I’ve been missing is going hiking (see, definitely one of those rant blogs, I’ll be complaining about work colleagues not appreciating me and locals pushing in front of me in queues next, it’s how these things work), so I decided to go hiking on the Saturday. The downside of this was that something had to give and this week that was the football. Apologies then, if you actually read this because you have an interest in Korean football. Although if that’s the case, then you’ve probably realized that you have to wade through an awful lot of dross just to find out the Jeonbuk result. Skip straight to the end now if you want to find out how Lee Dong Gook got on.

Seoul Racetrack from the top of a hill

So on Saturday I hiked up Mt. Cheonggyesan with a hiking group that I’d found on the internet. They were a friendly and interesting bunch, a mixture of mainly Koreans and Americans, with the odd Brit as well. Particularly odd, I suspect they thought, but that’s just my way. We walked for about five hours, with frequent stops for makgeolli, that milky looking Korean rice wine, bits of cake and pretty much any excuse for a chat that we could think of. One of the benefits of hiking with a group is that you don’t have any responsibility for where you go. I quite like that. It’s laziness I suppose, but as navigation isn’t one of my strong points, it’s a lot more enjoyable to leave it to people with a map and a sense of direction. At one stage when we were near the top we were able to look down on the racecourse that I’d visited a few weeks earlier and we passed some old burial mounds as well. When we were back down again we called into a Korean restaurant for more makgeolli and a barbeque. As the new boy I had to make a speech, which despite being kept down to about fifteen seconds, I was later told was too long. Fair point.

Graves

Sunday I didn’t have to make any speeches, but I did have to do a bit of navigation. I’d been seeing an American girl and thought that I’d take her along to the festival for a bit of company. Some things I prefer doing alone, the trips to football matches, for example, but some things benefit from having a drinking companion and, for me, music festivals fall into that category.

It was a bit of a trek to get there as it took place right on the outskirts of Seoul, three stops from the end of Line 3 at Jeongbalsan. I’d naively assumed that it would be signposted from the subway exit, but it wasn’t. We wandered about aimlessly for a while before I spotted a sign for it, quite close to the subway exit as it happens. We bought our day tickets, exchanged them for wristbands and went in. It wasn’t a particularly big festival, set in the grounds of a college I think. There were three stages, a main stage with tiered seating, a second stage where you just sat on the grass and a third stage that we didn’t bother even walking around to. There were probably about a thousand people in there, so it was easy to get around and get served.

It was a very pleasant way to spend a day, sitting in the sun listening to music whilst knocking back a variety of drinks. I started with beer, switched to bags of sangria that resembled blood bags from a hospital, tried beer with tomato, which I wasn’t too keen on and then moved onto some other stuff which I no longer remember. Possibly tequila sunrises. Without the accompanying coffee this time though I think.

The bands were pretty good, mainly folkie type guitar bands, with the odd acoustic one thrown in and a little bit of easy listening and jazz. Towards the end there was a flamenco style band who were very well received. It got a bit colder as it moved towards the finishing time of ten o’clock, but I’d brought a coat so that was fine too. My Beautiful Mint Life indeed.

Meanwhile, for those of you who are keeping up with his progress, Lee Dong Gook scored an injury time equalizer for Jeonbuk in their home draw with league leaders Gyeongnam. He was also named as one of the six strikers in the provisional World Cup squad of thirty. A couple of the others are pretty young and inexperienced, so as long as he stays fit it looks as though his good run of form will earn him a trip to South Africa.

Posted in Dead people and stuff, Hiking, Horseracing, Music | Leave a Comment »

Seoul FC v Jeonbuk Motors– 3pm, Sunday 14th March 2010

April 6, 2010

My second weekend in Seoul meant my first K-League match. K for Korean I imagine if anyone was wondering. Or maybe not, perhaps it’s sponsored by Kwick E Mart or someone. There are a lot of convenience stores in Korea, so it’s possible. The matches here seem to be spread over the full weekend as they are pretty much everywhere these days, with a game or two on Friday night and the others split between Saturday and Sunday. My local team, Seoul F.C, had a game at 3pm on the Sunday afternoon against Lee Dong Gook’s Jeonbuk Motors. The stadium is a fair distance from the city centre, but with a subway station actually called World Cup Stadium, I wasn’t too worried about finding it.

 I’d actually passed through that subway station the previous day on the way to the hills on the Northern edge of town. I’ve always liked doing a bit of hiking and thought that being out here shouldn’t be any reason to have to miss out. I met up with a group of mainly Americans at a subway station and ten minutes later we were at the bottom of a hill in the Bukhansan National Park.

 Part of the attraction of getting out into the hills in the UK is the remoteness, the solitude, the chance to get away from the towns and the crowds. Here though, it couldn’t have been more different. The paths were not only extremely well defined, but they were generally fenced in to stop people straying from the intended route. On sections where it got a bit steep, metal cable replaced the fencing, sometimes on sheer sections iron railings were provided to haul yourself up with. Occasionally a knotted rope would be handily placed to help with steep descents. The hardest aspect to get used to though was the number of people. Even though this was apparently very early in the Korean hiking season, the paths were packed with hikers of all ages. Quite often, on a steep section or on a path where the ice hadn’t quite melted, there would be a queue of people patiently waiting their turn to move forward. On sections where the path got a bit wider, groups of hikers would attempt to overtake slower walkers in front of them and a bottleneck would form as the path narrowed again.

The solitude of the mountains

 We got up four separate peaks in the day as we walked from Dokbawi to Munsubung and each one had hundreds of people on the top of them, most of whom had brought elaborate picnics, often with chairs and blankets. I’ve been on some of the more popular Lake District routes in the summer so I know what a crowded peak can be like, but this was something completely different. One of the walkers I was with told me that as the season went on it got so much busier and at its most congested you could barely see any rock for people. I had a good day out, the views over Seoul were fantastic and it was interesting to see the type of terrain in those hills, but it wasn’t my idea of a day out hiking. Still, it’s as near as I’m going to get out here I suspect, so I’m sure I’ll be joining the queues again soon.

 There were a few polite queues at the subway on the way to the match too, which I found equally unusual. The subway all seems very modern, it’s a bit like that new line in London where the tracks are behind glass. I like that, one of the things in life that makes me twitchy is waiting for a tube train in London at those stations that don’t seem to have changed since the days when Jack the Ripper had an Oyster Card. I tend to stand with my back to the wall to try and discourage those frustrated with life in the Capital from shoving me in front of an oncoming train. I feel a lot more comfortable in the modern stations where the worst they can do when the pace of life down there becomes too much is toss random Northerners against the glass barrier rather than onto the track.

 In Seoul, there are markings on the floor in front of each of the doors in the glass barrier where the people waiting for the train queue up. I’d always thought Britain was a place that was big on queuing but this certainly beats the sort of scrum that we tend to have on our underground. It beats us for price too, a single journey worked out at about 70p. I’m sure I paid four quid for the opportunity to dice with death last time I was in London.

 As the train made its way towards the World Cup Stadium I was entertained by a bloke going from carriage to carriage selling some sort of implement for unblocking sinks. He had brought a variety of plumbing with him and was demonstrating how this device would remove the most stubborn blockage in a hundred and one different ways. I have to say I was pretty impressed. But for all that I think he had the wrong crowd. How many people on their way to the match are going to make that sort of impulse buy? If he had been selling them after the game and if you were in a generous mood after seeing your team win then I suppose it’s something that you might buy to take back home with you as a treat for the wife, but honestly, who would want to lug it around with them all afternoon at the match?

 A little further on, an old lady sat down next to me. Her husband, who looked about ninety, was stood next to her. I got up and offered him my seat. He politely declined. I insisted and he declined just as politely a second time. This was getting a bit embarrassing now, with everyone watching. Again, I was unsure of the etiquette, do people offer their seats to the elderly in Korea? Maybe it is seen as an insult. Perhaps he felt I needed the seat more than he did. I offered one more time and with another big grin he refused. I did think about grabbing him by the lapels and manhandling him into the seat, but I had a nagging thought at the back of my mind that he may have been a retired ninja or something and he might politely extract my eyeballs from my skull with the handy sink plunger and, equally politely, replace them with my testicles. One hundred and two uses for it then. Perhaps that might clinch a sale or two. I reckoned that the crowd on the train had already had enough entertainment with the kitchen sink unblocker for one day though and I didn’t want to amuse them any more than necessary by having a bloke twice my age and half my size demonstrate his plumbing prowess on me. So I sheepishly sat back down to big smiles all around. Fortunately the next stop was the football stadium so I was able to get off pretty sharpish.

 The stadium was built for the 2002 World Cup, which makes sense really, building it for the following one in Germany would have been a bit of a balls up, and it was an impressive sight. I walked quite a long way around it as I often do and passed a swimming baths and a large supermarket built into the ground level of the stadium. Near the main walkway from the car parks were a number of stalls, some selling food, others replica shirts and one at which people could sign up for season tickets. I didn’t manage to work out how much they cost for the fourteen home games in the season, but there was a decent crowd of people buying them.

 My plan whilst I’m in Korea is to get around as many of the clubs as possible rather than revisiting the same stadium, so despite the potential savings a season ticket was of no use to me and I made my way up the steps to the ticket office. It was fortunate that I’d arrived early as there was a queue that snaked along the concourse for about a hundred yards. It wasn’t quite of the proportions of when we queued for the chance to buy Wembley tickets twenty years ago and the queues seemed to encompass most of Middlesbrough, but it certainly beat anything that I’d encountered on the hills the previous day.

It didn't quite reach Linthorpe Road

 The queue moved quickly though and I was soon at one of the eight ticket windows. I had a choice of paying 20,000 won (about twelve quid) for the West stand, 12000 won for the East and South or 8000 for North. I guessed that West and East would be the stands along the sides of the pitch and handed over my 12000 won for a ticket in the East stand. Fortunately the East stand had signs up identifying it and I joined a queue for one of the entrances. A steward, noticing the ticket in my hand, re-directed me to a different queue as the one I’d joined was exclusively for season ticket holders. Ticket scanned, I was soon into the ground and having a look around. There didn’t seem to be any seating details on my ticket, or if there was, I couldn’t read them and so I just sat wherever I fancied. The free seating surprised me a bit as I’d been to the cinema the previous week and was given a ticket for a specific seat. If allocating seats was the norm at the pictures it seemed strange not to do it for a football match. Incidentally at the cinema, I was the third person to go in and my seat was right next to the only other two people in there, a young couple sat towards the back. I was tempted to tell them to behave themselves as I sat down but thought better of it. I suspect they were equally tempted to tell me to f**k off and sit somewhere else, but they must have thought better of it too.

 The back row of the lower tier of the stadium was designed to accommodate pushchairs and quite a few people had taken advantage of this, turning up with sleeping toddlers. Some of the pushchairs were even loaded up with shopping from the in-stadium supermarket. Coming from a country that rarely seems to make adequate provision for disabled supporters, never mind people with babies and shopping, the arrangements were very impressive.

 I was right about the East Stand being down the side and it gave me the same view for 12,000 won that the West would have given me for 20,000. Jeonbuk had a few hundred supporters behind the goal in the South Stand, whilst the Seoul fans that looked likely to be making the noise were in the North Stand.

 We had a few fireworks in the build up to the game and a girl band called T-ara mimed a couple of numbers as well. They seemed quite popular, a Korean version of Girl’s Aloud or something by the sound of them. I thought I’d occupy myself by trying to work out which one was meant to be modeled upon which Girl’s Aloud band member, but as I’m not actually much more familiar with Girl’s Aloud than I am with their Korean counterparts T-ara, I got stuck after ‘Geordie Racist’ so had to give it up. Never mind though, it was time for the teams to come out. At my club, Middlesbrough, we have Pigbag as the run out song; or rather the run off after the handshaking thing song, as everyone gets the same tune to enter the pitch to in England these days. For those fans at Middlesbrough whose heart has ever sunk at the “Der Der Der Der” of Pigbag, count yourself lucky. The tune that Seoul has somehow appropriated is “If You’re Happy And You Know It, Clap Your Hands”. And they must be, because they did, bless them.

 The game kicked off to another volley of fireworks, which took me a bit by surprise. Seoul were wearing red and black stripes, Jeonbuk a sort of luminous green. Both teams were well supported by the fans behind each goal who stood and chanted all game. They had plenty of banners, even a flare, which I suspect, given the care with which the Koreans were disposing of their rubbish, was carefully extinguished and dropped into a bin labeled as being especially for incendiary devices.

 There were a couple of non Korean players, Dejan Damjanovich and Adilson for Seoul, who stood out pretty much because they weren’t Koreans. Lee Dong Gook was recognizable to me putting himself about up front for Jeonbuk. Halfway through the first half it started to rain and a lot of people in the lower tiers migrated to the upper tiers which, whilst still not totally dry, offered a little bit more protection than those seats closer to the pitch.

 At half time it was goalless and most people around me were eating from little cardboard boxes of sushi or bags of dried squid. I don’t know what Roy Keane would have to say about that. Into the second half and the attendance in the 65,000 capacity stadium was announced as 38,641. I would never have estimated that many people being there. It only looked about a third full at most to me. Perhaps a lot of those pushchairs held twins.

 With three minutes remaining Lee Dong Gook, who had had a pretty good game leading the line for Jeonbuk despite never looking like scoring, won a header which led to a Jeonbuk goal. The home crowd took it pretty stoically, although a fair few carefully collected their sushi packaging and made their way out. Jeonbuk had a player sent off for something off the ball in injury time but held on for a 1-0 victory and with seven points from three games moved to the top of the league. Before leaving the pitch the players all lined up for that organized handshaking thing that they do before kickoff and then the Seoul players made a point of walking to each touchline, lining up and bowing together to the fans. I can’t see that catching on in Middlesbrough after a defeat. The standard of football didn’t seem a whole lot different from what I’d been watching in the Championship with the Boro this season, no real outstanding players, plenty of mistakes, but with no-one seeming capable of punishing them.

 I decided to avoid the crowd at the subway on the way out and had a look around a market near to the ground. In addition to the stalls selling vegetables and filleted fish, there were a lot of live fish in tanks. It looked as if a few of the Koreans were just killing time too, some with kids treating it a bit like a trip at the zoo. I remember doing a similar thing with my Dad on a Saturday morning at Stockton market as a kid. Whilst my Mam did the shopping, we would always go and have a look at the pet stall and then call into the indoor market under the town Hall to see the dead rabbits hanging from the hooks. Whilst it might not have been Flamingo Land, it was better than trailing around the other stalls with my Mam whilst she looked in vain for one selling something that could unlock a sink in a hundred and one different ways.

 Next week it’s a trip down south on the Korean version of the ‘bullet train’ to see a bullfighting festival, yes really, and then bottom of the table Daegu taking on Ulsan.

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