Korea vs Ghana
Tuesday, June 29
Well, it is the end of the line for the South Korean soccer team. I will not pretend that watching the World Cup in Cheongju has opened my eyes and converted me to the thralldom of soccer but it has provided me with loads of fun.
A Korean asked me atop the roof deck of MJ’s, an expat bar located in downtown, during the Brazil vs. Portugal game why Americans were so drawn to football while the rest of the world goes glossy eyed over the checkered ball and athletes that pay as much attention to acting as they do the game.
I mustered some terribly lame and fairly pretentious answer about it being a spectacle of controlled violence with enough testosterone to keep us warm against the falling winter.
Later on, as we were leaving MJ’s a girl from Philadelphia summed it up much more accurately.
“It’s the social atmosphere.”
That is what I will miss the most with the elimination of South Korea.
Hours before the game, I met up with a handful of fellow expats at one of the hundreds of barbeque restaurants of Cheongju. If you asked me the name of the place I wouldn’t be able to tell you. It is no exaggeration to say that nearly every street in Cheongju has at least one, if not many barbeque restaurants and they look just about the same: a dozen or so tables with holes cut into the center and a few dozen plastic chairs strewn about. There are times when the Cheongju night is ripe with the smell of burning meat.
It is, thus far, my favorite food here in Korea.
Barbeque in Korea is different than barbeque in the States. For one thing I have not seen a steak since I have been here and while I have seen hamburgers (or very horrible takes on what we would call a burger “I didn‘t know hamburgers were orange?”) they do not appear at Korean barbeque. Instead you are given a plate full of chopped raw meat, a million sides and a fire in the middle of the table.
The meat that you cook (by yourself though the waiter will usually come and replace the grate after you have succeeded in charring the meat and sending up amateur plumes of white smoke) is not limited to traditional cuts that are familiar to westerners. I’ve had thick slabs of lean and fat that resemble a giant’s bacon (pretty good), volcano hot chicken (amazing if you don’t mind sweating profusely), chicken anus (not so good) and pig organs (surprisingly delicious).
On this day we had pork. It is now one of my favorites.
The day had threatened and delivered rain off and on. A couple of times during the meal workers would rush to pull a canopy over the outdoor patios, killing any sort of breeze on a humid night and bringing on the dreaded spicy-food-way-too-humid dinner sweats.
With time to kill we found our way to another common sight in Cheongju: Garten Bier. In an odd sort of way this place reminds me of home. My girlfriend, while a full blooded American, was born and partially raised in Germany before moving to California, Texas, and finally Massachusetts. She has a passion for schnitzel and sausage.
While they do serve Koreanized sausages there does not appear to be any schnitzel at Garten Bier. In any case we got neither, instead we ate the traditional Korean soccer food of fried chicken and beer. The neat thing about this place is that each place at the table has a sunken cup holder that is kept chilled so that the hookah-like shaped glasses of beer are consistently frosty.
The original plan was to watch the game at Chunbuk Stadium. The place has been ground central for Korea’s World Cup fight. Chunbuk Stadium is located a whopping 3 minutes from my apartment and is less a stadium than it is a bunch of concrete bleachers surrounding a multi purpose field, where a screen has been erected on which to watch the games.
Earlier in the day I had scoped the place out to stave off boredom. At 3pm kids were carrying banners across the field, souvenir carts were already stocked and van upon van was unloading its goods (a massive amount of booze) onto the side of the road. It was looking like a good night.
The weather conspired against us, though and we didn’t end up at the stadium. Instead we ended up again on the roof of MJ’s with the place to ourselves with the exception of a few older Koreans who sat on a sofa beneath a canopy.
By the time we sat down Ghana had already scored. Most of the predictions floating around had Ghana taking the victory and Korea being eliminated. Of course, this is what happened but the game was not without its excitement. With each attempt on either net there were screams of hope and despair with at least a few people (and all of the Koreans) jumping from their water-logged seats.
At some point Korea scored but I didn’t see it. I only heard maddened screams as I stepped into a rooftop bathroom that smelled like a port-a-potty in the hottest part of hell.
The tie didn’t last long though, and Ghana’s next goal proved to be the last of the night. While Ghana rejoiced the Koreans atop MJ’s (and likely all about the country) smashed their glasses of beer to pieces on the floor.
There is a sense of heartbreak every time your team loses. This is also true with an adoptive team in a sport you really care very little about. When the players stopped running and moped off of the field they took with them the patriotism that won’t be seen until the next time around.
I remember watching the Red Sox take on the Yankees in the post season of 2003. Framingham State College and all of New England was galvanized one moment and distraught the next as we all saw that ball sail out of the field. It was over. Now the World Cup is over and the vevuzelas are silenced in the Land of the Morning Calm.
The group broke up and I ended the night playing Jenga and eating Nachos in another expat joint called Pearl Jam. Korea might have lost to Ghana, but I owned at Jenga.
Things I ate today: Kimchi mandu (dumpling), omurice (omelette and fried rice), sundae (blood sausage) and ttekbokki (rice cakes in a spicy red sauce with fish cakes).