Football in North and South Korea c.1910-2002: Diffusion and Development Jong Sung Lee Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for PhD Degree awarded by De Montfort University, Leicester Submission Date: December 2012 Contents Abstract 7 List of abbreviations 8 Acknowledgements 9 Chapter 1 : Introduction (1) An overview: a national game for the two Koreas 10 (2) The historiography of Korean football 14 (3) Main themes and sources 21 (4) Thesis structure 38 Chapter 2 : The development of Korean football under Japanese rule, 41 1910-44 (1) The arrival and diffusion of football in Korean schools 45 (2) Religious organizations and regional young men‘s clubs 48 (3) The rise and fall of Gyung-Pyong football 53 (4) Newspaper support for Korean football 68 (5) Individual football patrons 75 (6) Overseas football tours and Korean footballers abroad 80 3 (7) Conclusion 88 Chapter 3 : Korean football in turbulent time, 1945-65 93 (1) The last Gyung-Pyong Championship and the first Olympics 95 (2) Northern footballers‘ contribution to the South 102 (3) Football and the military in South Korea 109 (4) The birth of the North Korean football style 115 (5) Comparative strength of South and North Korean football 124 Chapter 4 : North Korea’s impact on world football and South Korea’s 129 football revolution, 1966-73 (1) North Korea‘s road to the 1966 World Cup 131 (2) The cult of the underdog and North Korea‘s attacking football 135 (3) North Korea‘s view and mixed responses from abroad 144 (4) Football revolution in South Korea 150 (5) North Korea: the purge of the World Cup heroes and the 162 ‗Cinema Football Club‘ (6) The impact of ‗1966‘ on North and South Korean football 169 4 Chapter 5 : The decline of the North and the rise of the South, 173 1974-91 (1) A surrogate war: the Korean derbies 175 (2) Rapprochement on the football field 184 (3) The Bad boys and Red devils 193 (4) The professionalization of South Korean football 201 (5) The 1986 World Cup and the making of ‗FC Korea‘ 208 (6) Conclusion 214 Chapter 6 : ‘Again 1966’: the two Koreas and the 2002 World Cup, 219 1992-2002 (1) The Miracle in Doha 221 (2) The race between Japan and South Korea to stage the World 228 Cup (3) The growth and development of women‘s football in North 237 Korea (4) The 2002 World Cup and the two Koreas: ‗Again 1966!‘ 247 (5) Conclusion 261 5 Chapter 7 : Conclusion (1) Nationalism and Regionalism 264 (2) Internationalism and Globalism 276 (3) Patrons 287 (4) The Korean style of play 293 Bibliography 302 Appendix (1) Some key dates of Korean history 318 (2) Some key dates of Korean football history 320 6 Abstract Politics has been an integral part of Korean football since the Japanese colonial era when the game became a vehicle for the Korean independence movement. The split between North and South Korea following the Korean War further accentuated the intrusion of politics into the domain of Korean football. As Koreans residing on either side of the border followed the game with intense interest and often regarded performance in international competition as a signifier of national prestige, the governments of both North and South Korea attached more importance to football than to any other sport and became its foremost patrons. In these circumstances it is not surprising to find that the relative performance of the national teams of North and South Korea mirrored changing economic and political conditions. Thus the rapid rise of North Korean football in the 1960s was a reflection of the state‘s systematic and successful postwar reconstruction. Since the 1980s, however, South Korea, with its booming economy, has clearly surpassed its increasingly impoverished northern counterparts in the football field. Undoubtedly, the most two important events pertaining to the development of Korean football were the 1966 and 2002 World Cups. They provided occasions when nationalist sentiment could be expressed through football in both North and South Korea. They also provided opportunities for Korean footballers, through their achievements on the field, to show that the gap between the traditional periphery and core of world football was narrowing. At the same time, participation in competition at this level, whether by teams from North or South Korea, suggested that there was a recognizable and distinctive Korean football style nurtured in training camps where the emphasis was on producing players with sufficient stamina to run at their opponents for ninety minutes. Tireless running football has been the characteristic of successful teams from both North and South Korea. Thus, while recognizing the profound ideological differences that separate North and South Korea, this thesis also emphasizes the football tradition and culture that ethnically homogenous Koreans have in common. 7 List of Abbreviations Abbreviation Full Title ACFC All Chosun Football Championship AFC Asian Football Confedration AGF Asian Games Federation ASF Australian Soccer Federation CIC Counter Intelligence Corps CONCACAF Confederation of North, Central and Caribbean Association Football Associations DCM Dehli Cloth Mills DPRK Democratic People‘s Republic of Korea FIFA Fédération Internationale de Football Association GANEFO The Games of the Newly Emerging Forces IAAF International Association of Atheletics Federations IOC International Olympic Committee ISL International Sports & Leisure KASA Korea Amateur Sports Association KBS Korea Broadcasting Company KCIA Korean Central Intelligence Agency KFA Korea Football Association KSA Korea Sports Association MBC Munwha Broadcasting Company Park’s Cup President Park Chung Hee‘s Cup Asia Football Tournament PMH Provost Marshal Headquarters UAR United Arab Republic UEFA Union of European Football Associations YMCA Young Men‘s Christian Association 8 Acknowledgements Many experienced scholars and my colleagues told me that researching any subject of history could make me feel lonely and frustrated at times before I attempted to begin this study for my PhD thesis. This advice was partly true. However ‗doing PhD‘ also provided much pleasure which was derived from not only new findings but also those who gave me a great deal of interest and encouragement. In this sense, I was particularly indebted to my two supervisors, Professor Dilwyn Porter and Dr. Jean Williams whose countless invaluable suggestions, thorough and detailed reading of drafts of my thesis and encouraging words led me to complete this study successfully. Also I would like to appreciate Professor Richard Holt and Professor Alan Bairner for their useful comments on my thesis, which was a great help. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all the staffs of the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University. Whenever I came over their offices to make inquiries about various parts, they always welcomed and satisfied me with kind answer. I am especially grateful to some interviewees and many staffs of libraries and organizations. By virtue of their kind help, I was able to obtain many revealing evidences and could spend many enjoyable hours at the newspaper branch of the British library at Colindale, the National Diet library at Tokyo and the Information Centre on North Korea at Seoul. Finally special appreciation must go to those closest to me. My wife, Kim Jong Soon always offered considerable academic and non-academic support for me and our cute baby, Lee Yun Ju has been a source of much pleasure. My mother has provided me with continuing reassurance and encouragement and my late father inspired me to have an interest in Korean cultural history. This thesis is dedicated to the memory of him. 9 Chapter 1 Introduction (1) An overview: a national game for the two Koreas Over the course of the twentieth century the Korean people suffered a series of unusual and agonizing experiences: Japanese colonization, the Korean War, and then the division into two nation states, North and South Korea. The Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910 gave rise to a movement for independence, and the ensuing struggle meant that anti-Japanese sentiments became deeply entrenched in the Korean psyche. However, it is unfortunate that the liberation from Japanese imperialism in 1945 was followed by the tragic Korean War (1950-53). After the split, North and South Korea rapidly fell into Cold War politics in which both camps attempted to defeat their neighbours in any field. These socio-political circumstances have contributed to the strong sense of national identity that exists in both North and South Korea and sport had played a major part in this process. All the modern sports introduced into Korea helped to foster the spirit of the independence under the Japanese and sports later turned into a high-profile battle ground during the Cold War. As Ha and Mangan have argued, modern sport in Korea was essentially ‗the consequence of its political priorities‘.1 Changes in Korean society over the years are clearly reflected in the history of Korean football. For the Koreans there has been no sport to surpass football in terms of its 1 Nam-gil Ha and J. Mangan, ‗Ideology, Politics, Power: Korean Sport-Transformation, 1945-92‘, in Fan Hong and J. Mangan, (eds.), Sport in Asian Society: Past and Present, London, 2002, 213. 10 popularity and national importance. During the Japanese colonization era, football emerged as a national game since it provided more victories over Japanese than did any other sport. This established a patriotic tradition that meant that the two Koreas attached great importance to football at the outset of the Cold War. The World Cup successes enjoyed by North Korea in 1966 and South Korea in 2002 exemplify the Korean effort to put their nations on the international map through football. As far as the totalitarian North Korean government was concerned their team‘s football‘s memorable feat in reaching the World Cup quarter-finals in 1966 provided evidence of how their post-war reconstruction and state-making programmes were on track.