[Choi Won-shik, Kim Hong-jun and Kim Jong-yup] What the World Cup Has Left Us (1)
Tripartite Talk
CHOI, Won-shik Literary critic; professor of Korean literature at Inha University (cws919@inha.ac.kr)
KIM, Hong-jun Film director; professor in the School of Film and Multimedia at the Korean National University of Arts (hjkim@knua.ac.kr)
KIM, Jong-yup Cultural critic; professor of sociology at Hanshin University (jykim@hanshin.ac.kr)
* Time: July 5, 2002 / Venue: Conference Room of Changbi Publishers, Inc.
CHOI, Won-shik
Gone is "happy June" and "cruel July" is with us now. Due to the military skirmish between the two Koreas in the West Sea, [1] the festival [World Cup] has met with a frosty end. I suppose we should take this incident as a sign demanding us properly to solve the numerous domestic and international problems that have been postponed by the World Cup. In other words, the South Korean society is being asked to gather its wits again after the World Cup. I appreciate your participation in the tripartite talk organized by Changbi Publishers, especially at a time when we are distracted in both mind and body. As a big fan of your movie La Vie en Rose, I particularly appreciate your presence here today, Mr. Kim [Hong-jun]. You must be terribly busy these days with the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan). Thank you for your time. This talk has been organized by Changbi in order for us to review our cultural climate, something that hasn't been done in a long time. As you know, there have been many changes in our cultural map lately. First of all, the central status of literature in our culture has been relativized. With the dominance of audiovisual language over literate or literal language and the emergence of an online world as an undeniable reality, loyalty to the symbols of past eras―that is, ethnicity, the populace, and class―has weakened considerably. Nonetheless, we may very well culturally translate South Korea's task of calmly accomplishing reform and progress, overcoming the national division system, and welcoming the era of national reunification into a theory of national culture. In that respect, the reality of the theory of national culture continues to be urgent. Considering that a shot from a machine gun can very well endanger the fruits of the World Cup, I tensely wonder whether, for us, training ourselves to think with the entire Korean Peninsula in our mind isn't like playing a survival game. On the other hand, the World Cup was held while we were preparing for this talk, which aims at scrutinizing the changed cultural map and the theory of national culture side by side. The World Cup, which turned all newspapers into sports newspapers, all television and radio broadcasts into sports broadcasts, and all citizens into the "Red Devils," may be seen as a cultural explosion that is at once chaotic and rapturous. Whether or not we were wildly enthusiastic about it, that cultural explosion certainly is a cultural text that we must interpret in detail. First of all, it would be best if we started our talk by sharing our personal experiences of the World Cup. Why don't you speak first, Mr. Kim [Hong-jun]?
The World Cup Experience
KIM, Hong-jun
Looking back upon my role in the World Cup throughout June, I would have to call myself an observer rather than a participant. Because of various reasons, I was unable to root for the Korean team in the street as countless people did. Instead, I usually enjoyed the World Cup by watching the games on television and cheering for our team with my family at home. What changed during the World Cup is that, almost for the first time, I, my wife, and my daughters shouted in front of the television together. At times, even hugging. Because I unexpectedly ended up watching television for over 4-5 hours each day even though I was busy preparing for the PiFan, my mind, body, and work schedule were all a mess. Many people probably went through the same thing. Thinking that the cultural and social phenomenon of the World Cup would provide us with much food for thought, I surfed the Internet a lot, too. Reading all those postings on BBS, I was simply amazed. All in all, the World Cup gave me a chance to watch television, spend more time with my family, and to check netizens' opinions through the Internet.
KIM, Jong-yup
During the World Cup, I mainly watched television because I unfortunately was unable to get tickets. In fact, I didn't have a strong desire to get them. I later thought that, since there's little likelihood that the World Cup will be held in Korea again in my lifetime, I should've been more active about obtaining tickets. Though I can't say that I went out into the street and rooted for our team, I at least bumped into a cheering crowd when I went downtown, so I was able to get a taste of the ambience. I think that people's cheer changed after our team made it to the preliminaries. At first, people who hadn't been able to get tickets occupied the streets of Gwanghwamun along with the "“Red Devils." The idea was to watch the games together. Later, however, the general public ended up creating a festival of their own and I found that very interesting. By the time our team held a match with Turkey, the game had lost its attraction as competition and there was low expectation of victory. Nonetheless, tons of people gathered in the streets. Of course, it must have been their wish to bring the whole World Cup to a successful conclusion. But there also seems to have been self-consciousness that they could simply have fun. That's probably why nearly 4 million people packed the streets again on that day. At any rate, I think that what we went through was an entirely new experience, an unplanned and unintended festival. On the other hand, I think too that the media served to mobilize the general public. This is clear from a comparison with Japan, where only one television station broadcast each game just once. In our case, all television stations broadcast the games. The Japanese must have been reticent because of a certain fear of hooligans, in terms of public security. A leader in information technology (IT) just like us, Japan has many electric signboards in the streets. Nonetheless, the authorities are said to have forbidden the broadcasting of the World Cup on the electric signboards of Tokyo. Compared to that, we really incited mass mobilization. Electric signboards are just like televisions. So you have televisions in homes and streets, the crowds who watch them, and the images of wildly cheering crowds on those televisions transmitted again as a spectacle―it's probably through this cycle that we ended up with the unbelievable number of crowds in the streets. Anyhow, the World Cup allowed us to experience amazing energy. Though that energy came about through a combination of coincidence, I think it's very important that we experienced it. That's why various groups are trying to define and absorb it, even fighting among themselves, and things will probably stay that way for some time. Though we could sublimate that energy to a degree, there's also a danger that we'll waste it in a self-contemptuous way, too.
CHOI, Won-shik
To be frank, I used to think of soccer as a rather boring game. But I do watch games when our team fights against foreign ones, though only on television. I'm dedicated enough to go to a soccer field. In other words, I'm a typically nationalistic soccer fan, a very low-grade spectator. Like you two, I ended up being sucked into the fever in spite of myself so that I actually watched the match with Portugal at the 문학 경기장 Munhak Stadium in Incheon. It was a most unusual experience. The game was held at night and I thought that the field was a huge and beautiful screen. When they turned on the night light, however, the reality of the field suddenly evaporated and I somehow wondered whether the field wasn't a cyber image or cyber reality instead of material reality. It was almost like an optical illusion. Along with the night light, the moving ../../image/common on the large screens on either sides of the field also added to this effect. But I realized through the experience that direct viewing of the game as well as indirect viewing on television all are inherently media-like because we're seeing through the media already planted in our eyes. In other words, hidden behind the fervor for the World Cup was none but the fervor for the ../../image/common of an age of mass media. And, above all, I was simply overwhelmed by the huge crowd. Both inside and outside the field, the people's enthusiasm was beyond words. And the little kids cheering―that was really pretty. But I myself hesitated. Even though I clapped a lot, I couldn't bring myself to shout, "Go Korea!" [2] In fact, it was a very complex experience for me. I felt as though I were sitting inside a colosseum and the players were gladiators. Nevertheless, the explosive energy of our players and spectators basically made me happy. In other words, I earnestly felt that, through the World Cup, the power of the media to hold and sway people had been greatly strengthened in South Korean society and that the emergence of the general public or the arrival of an age of the general public no longer was an empty slogan but an undeniable reality. Because the emergence of the crowds through the World Cup combines both voluntariness and a summons from the media or capital, it is unreasonable to view the phenomenon as either good or bad. What really struck me was the question of the duality of the general public―their fundamental conformity to the system and cultural explosiveness.
KIM, Jong-yup
To speak from the top of my head… Professor Choi, you just said that the soccer field had seemed like a colosseum and the players like gladiators. Come to think of it, soccer is a basically aggressive game. Compared to other sports with courts such as tennis and volleyball, there's a lot more physical contact and violence. Globally speaking, the ratio of men and women among soccer fans amounts to 7:3. In our case, though, there was quite a number of women spectators. So I asked a friend of mine for her opinion. You'll remember that, during one of the games, Hwang Seon-hong [3] jumped to head the ball but hurt his forehead. Right then, the camera shot Hwang, who was lying on the field with his hands covering his forehead. He then slowly lowered his hands, to reveal blood trickling from the wound. I asked my friend whether it was true that women liked soccer less than did men because of the aggressiveness of the game. Her answer was quite unexpected. At first, women are surprised, even frightened, and distressed. At the same time, though, they feel curious pleasure. According to her, it feels as though she has finally seen through the essence of the game. In other words, soccer seems to enable us to experience a very primitive form of aggression and that's what excites the general public so much. I watched one of the matches in the Gwacheon Municipal Cultural Center with thousands of people. The most difficult thing about cheering with the crowd was thrusting my thumb into the air while yelling, “Go Korea!” Seeing the spectators make this motion, I wondered whether they weren't different from similar crowds I'd seen before. In the case of June 1987, [4] the crowd had been extremely politicized; as for the World Cup, the crowd was apolitical. In addition, while past crowds had thrust their fists and yelled political slogans, these crowds thrust their thumbs. It seems to me that such slight differences in the gestures reflect considerable cultural differences. But, somehow, I couldn't make the motion very well [laughs]. At any rate, I thought that this gesture was completely different from one that clearly expresses political passions.
KIM, Hong-jun
All class societies have had institutions whereby the aggressiveness or primitiveness of the general public can be released so that it wouldn't be channelled into different, undesirable directions. In ancient Rome, the colosseum was one such symbol. Even in those days, they're bound to have meticulously calculated how the cries of the spectators would be reflected by the structure of the building and the arrangement of the seats. The World Cup soccer field then is a distant descendant of the colosseum. One of the most frequently used blurbs for the World Cup soccer field stresses that, from the seats, you can even hear the players breathe. This means you can indirectly experience bloody violence right in front of your eyes and almost participate in it, as you would in a colosseum. The difference is that, in the World Cup held in Korea, we used IT. In other words, it was because of technological support that the act of cheering in the streets could turn into an explosive cultural phenomenon. That technology can be summarized by electric signboards and large television sets because the images transmitted through the television monitors and signboards were like having a small colosseum cover the entire country. So people who rooted for the Koran team weren't watching some player make a goal but were caught up in a mass frenzy. What made the World Cup this year interesting was that the images broadcast by various television stations were all the same so that differences in the commentators determined the audience rating. Because the relay was monopolized by a station designated by the FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association), everyone ended up seeing the same images and this served to fix what were considered important images from the games. In other words, we all remember whether the shot of Bak Ji-seong [5] making a goal was a closeup or a long shot and the degree of the camera at that moment. If it had been televised news, what we remember about the same incident would have differed according to the particular television station and the incident itself would have been the main focus. Because they were identical during the World Cup this year, the images became reality itself. The only thing the spectators remember about the Korean players' goal ceremony [6] is that the camera in the corner used a full shot, like in a movie, to capture the players running toward it. Shots taken from different angles are almost never broadcast. All in all, World Cup 2002 will be remembered as a series of identical images that were nearly forced on everyone, as if the same pictures were in everyone's head. But what made it different from the colosseum is that the original gladiators who fought against one another and died were foreigners. That's why the Roman spectators were able to watch Others kill one another as if it had been a dogfight. In the World Cup this year, the players weren't Others, however. One of you persuasively explained why there are so many women soccer fans. Because the World Cup is a war, emotional intimacy with your players is only natural. In other words, the women worry about and watch their men―their husbands, lovers, and sons―go to the battlefield and fight. As for electric signboards, I don't think it was much to do with IT in Korea. We just bought and consumed them. Rather, they standardized the voluntary energy of the general public with uniform images. For example, they continued to emphasize order and repeatedly broadcast images of spectators voluntarily cleaning the streets after a game, thus turning the act into a duty of sorts.
CHOI, Won-shik
While the Internet was decisive in the emergence of the "Red Devils," most of the spectators watched the games on television. Even large electric signboards are slightly different forms of televisions. In that respect, we mustn't overlook the fact that the general public relied on the television, which is a representative tool used by cultural power to "enlighten" the masses.
KIM, Hong-jun
I think it's now been demonstrated that not only images but even people's memories of events like the World Cup can be controlled.
KIM, Hong-jun
Though I was proud that such crowds could be so orderly, I also wondered how they could disperse so feebly.
KIM, Jong-yup
Throughout the world, people reportedly were surprised by and praised our very unaggressive crowds, even coining the word "Korligan." Why Korean spectators were so orderly is an interesting topic. I think there were several factors. First, relatively unaggressive groups such as women took up a large portion of the crowds. As we all know, soccer is a game that freely uses military metaphors. As you said, Mr. Kim [Hong-jun], women who watch international soccer games feel as though they were watching their own husbands or lovers in war. But I think it was the first time, too, that female fandom ventured into the streets. Because of the large number of women, the level of violence dropped so that cases of untoward incidents were extremely small in comparison with the sheer size of the crowds. Another factor is that our spectators had no need to violate regulations and order in order to feel pleasure, whereas crowds usually turn violent and violate rules in order to feel pleasure. The Korean team kept winning and eventually made it to the semifinals, which seemed like a miracle so that everyone was experiencing a radical departure from everyday routine. Because they were already full of joy and pleasure, the crowds probably didn't need any more violation or deviation. As a sociologist interested in mass behavior, I'm sorry that our match with the American team was a tie. That score of 1:1 was a feat because it controlled the spectators' behavior.
* Editor's note: This is an abridged version of the tripartite talk published in the fall 2002 issue (vol. no. 117) of Changjak-kwa Bipyong (Creation and Criticism).
[1] On June 29, 2002, North and South Korean navies engaged in a battle when North Korean patrol ships crossed the northern limit line (NLL) and invaded South Korean waters. Though victorious, the South Korean navy suffered casualties.
[2] Throughout the games, the crowds literally yelled, "The Republic of Korea"”
[3] A member of the Korean national soccer team.
[4] Huge crowds spontaneously gathered in downtown Seoul and demonstrated against the military dictator regime headed by former President Chun Doo-hwan.
[5] Another member of the Korean national soccer team.
[6] Apollo Anton Ono.