World Cup 2010 - Jong Tae-Se (정대세)
While waiting for my first class to start today I joined a conversation between two women at work concerning the World Cup. Or, more accurately, about Jong Tae-Se (정대세 / 鄭大世). For those of you who aren't familiar with Jong Tae-Se - which will likely be most people reading this blog post - he was born in Nagoya, Japan to Zainichi Korean parents holding South Korean citizenship but currently plays for the North Korean national team.
As it turns out, Jong attended a Chongryon-run school before going on to study at Korea University (Japan) and eventually signing for the Japanese professional club Kawasaki Frontale in 2006. Chongryon schools and the Kodaira-based Korea University are educational institutions geared toward the children of ethnic Koreans in Japan and feature a strong bias toward the North Korean government. (In fact, if Wikipedia is to be believed, the Chongryon seems to function as the de facto North Korean embassy in Japan.) But if Jong's parents hold South Korean citizenship why did he receive a pro-North Korean education and how did he ever come to play for the North Korean national team?
In a recent interview posted to the Asian Football Confederation website he states:
“I am playing for my family,” said Jong. “I have never lived in Korea, north or south, so I don’t know what it is like there. “My Grandparents were born in North Korea and were brought to Japan during the Second World War. It was a very painful experience. It is personal and my identity is North Korean.”
I've spoken with a few people about Jong Tae-Se since the World Cup began and the general response I've encountered has been one of admiration. While not everyone may agree with his affiliation with the Kim Jong-Il dictatorship there has been respect for his decision to choose the homeland of his grandparents at the cost of his general marketability as a player. (There are a few North Korean players in Japan, Russia, and South Korea but you'd be hard-pressed to find many outside of those nations.) A New York Times article from February of this year mentions that much of Jong's popularity has come from South Korean media attention:
In an interview with Fifa.com in April 2008, he revealed that he had been receiving media requests every day - 90 percent of which he said were from South Korean journalists - as well as multiple offers for documentaries to be made about his life.
In a radio interview later that year, Jong gamely sang a few lines of a popular Korean song about a long disputed territory in the Japanese Sea, to the delight of many South Koreans. The song, “Dokdo is Our Land,” refers to a tiny islet (called Takeshima in Japanese or, in English, the Liancourt Rocks) that Korea and Japan have feuded over for centuries. The conflict, insignificant in the larger scheme of things, is perhaps symbolic of how the two nations can turn even small disputes into bitter points of rivalry.
Jong has even featured in television commercials alongside Park Ji-Sung of Manchester United, the most popular and accomplished of South Korea's current players.
On top of that, the two women who were chatting about Jong this afternoon both remarked that he was 멋있다 - handsome - in the course of their discussion. An exception to the common expression 'northern women, southern men' (남남북녀?) - suggesting that women from North Korea are more beautiful than their southern counterparts while the opposite holds true for men - perhaps? Here are a few more images of Jong Tae-Se so you can judge for yourself. I'm off to watch the Brazil - North Korea match now ...!
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The shirt in that last picture is a reference to all the South Korean shirts promoting the "Again 2002" motto in an effort to urge the national team onto performances similar to those in the 2002 World Cup, which saw the team finish in fourth. During the 1966 World Cup North Korea made it to the quarter-finals and took a 3-0 lead against Portugal before Eusebio helped the Iberians come back to take a 5-3 win. Cheeky!!