[KS] World Cup, etc.

[johnfrankl at yahoo.com]

Apologies. "We" somehow turned into "Wea."

--- On Fri, 5/28/10, johnfrankl at yahoo.com <johnfrankl at yahoo.com> wrote:


From: johnfrankl at yahoo.com <johnfrankl at yahoo.com>
Subject: [KS] World Cup, etc.
To: Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
Date: Friday, May 28, 2010, 6:50 PM







Yes, the World Cup is and will be an interesting time in Korea. "Wea" comes out a bit more frequently, hard as that may be to believe, as do "They" and their less savory synonyms. 
 
"As the article below brings home, what this means is that
at least for a few weeks literally hundreds of millions of
people, in every corner of the planet and from every walk 
of life, who normally never think about Korea, will do so."
 
And this is just perfect, since millions of Koreans who normally never think about football will be reciprocating (, assuming Korea advances far enough and the media prod them enough).
 
On a more serious and less cynical note, though, and since the original post mentioned the rather negative press being given to the two Koreas of late, it might do us well, even as we don our red shirts, to ponder the similarities between politics and sport on the peninsula. Their is something between congnitive dissonance and schizophrenia that characterizes the two. On the one hand, sport is about healthy competition and comraderie through shared rules, goals, and values. On the other,  it often devolves into a fascistic "us vs. them" frenzy. This being the KS list, I trust I can omit peninsular politics and still be understood.
 
>From Seoul,
 
John M. Frankl



      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://koreanstudies.com/pipermail/koreanstudies_koreanstudies.com/attachments/20100528/d10d3541/attachment.html>