Faces of Football: South Korea - a letter to the national team

Dear South Korean national team, 

I'm Jaebeom Hong, a 35-year-old radiologist from Daegu in South Korea. Next to work and taking care of my wonderful children, football is the most important thing in my life.  

I’ve been supporting the South Korean national team since the 1994 FIFA World Cup. I was just eight years old at the time but I vividly remember celebrating Hong Myung-bo’s brilliant long range goal against Germany in the group stages. We lost that game 3-2, but having gone three goals behind in the first half, our boys showed great courage to score two goals and ‘win’ the second half. 

My most memorable moment as a fan has to be the final group stage game of the 2018 World Cup, when we did manage to beat Germany. It was against all the odds, but South Korea managed to win thanks to a 94th minute goal from Kim Young-gwon and a 95th minute goal from Son Heung-min. It was truly incredible. 

Like every other South Korean fan, Son is one of my favourite players of all time. He is definitely the best player we currently have at our disposal and I’m looking forward to seeing him fire us to glory once again this winter. My other favourite of all time is Park Ji-sung. He is perhaps our greatest ever player, and I always appreciated how diligently he covered ground and how much he was willing to fight for the national team shirt.  

I'm planning to watch the tournament at home with my family this year. It will be my three-year-old daughter’s first ever World Cup and I’m so excited to watch the games with her and see her fall in love with the national team in the same way that I did when I was a child. She has been to the stadium of our local team Daegu FC several times and I can already see her interest in the beautiful game growing. 

I’m backing the team to make it through to the round of 16. We are in a difficult group, yes, as Portugal and Uruguay are two very good teams and Ghana are certainly no pushovers either. I think, in order to get through, we need to be a bit more defence and perhaps hit teams on the counter attack and score goals via set pieces. 

I know it’s a pipe dream, but winning the World Cup would be the greatest moment of my life as a football fan and it would change South Korean football forever. 

Regardless of how you guys perform though, remember that there will always be 50 million fans supporting you and cheering you on back home. I wish you all the best at the tournament.

Good luck!