SKIRMISHER

John and Sairo in a devil mood
[Photo by John, horns from Min, sarcasm from Sairo]

I really don’t get tennis. Neither do I get football. But as a dutiful temporary citizen of Seoul, I just had to watch the World Cup game versus Togo last June 14th, along with a gajillion screaming Koreans at Seoul City Hall.

Picture this: cool giant TV screens a hundred feet high, lots of Cass and Hite beer being sold by ajushees (old manongs), major fireworks and huge balloons lighting up the sky over City Hall, couples in identical red outfits. There were a few girls wearing little else but Korean flags knotted into tube tops, stilettos and devil-horn headbands (the same silly twits who limped with bleeding ankles into the Seoul Metro subway carriages a little past midnight).

It was a hot summer night so you can also imagine the smell of the crowd (think sweaty kimchi). Add to that the less-than-savory aroma of stewed silkworm pupaes sold by ajummas (elderly women), the scent wafting through the night air and lodging into your nostrils. Made me vomit into my mouth every so often.

The mood that night felt a little like EDSA 2 but waaay dorkier. All these jerky dances that creepily resemble the Marxist-Maoist communal dancing that goes on above the 38th parallel (that’s North Korea, in case you’re dumb). Then there were the corny songs and cheers that kinda underscore what looks like an inferiority complex they’re trying very hard to hide.

Sample lyrics: “(point at giant TVs) Pink Flamingoes! (clap-clap, clap-clap clap!)” At least, that was what we thought the Korean football crazies were shouting every couple of breaths. Apparently, it’s “(point at giant TVs) Deh Han-min-gook! (clap-clap, clap-clap clap!)” or to translate: “(point at giant TVs) The Great Republic of Korea! (clap-clap, clap-clap clap!)”

Another crowd favorite: “(point at sky, stamp feet nonstop, and pretend to have a grand mal seizure) O, pilsung Koreya…O, pilsung Koreya…” This translates to “a sure, definite, complete victory for Korea” and must be repeated ad nauseam. Of course, we misheard this as “Oh, Mister Kalinga… Oh, Mister Kalinga!” I like our versions better.

Caveat/nota bene/insert random Latin word here: The nastiness here is meant to match the devil-horn headband I wore, a gift from Min, a dowoomi (Korean for buddy-helper-tutor dude) from Korea University (kinda like Ateneo without the Jesuits). Lame excuse, I know. Anyway. We really wanted to get hammered while watching the game but walking to and from the subway toilets through a snarling mob of Koreans didn’t quite appeal to us. The last time I was in a crowd this huge, we kicked a president out of office. Death by Korean crowd was not something I wished for myself.

The game sucked big time; both teams were bano. Nothing happened for forty minutes, just some desultory kicking of a ball around some big green field, accompanied by lots of racist hissing and sneering laughter from the xenophobes all around us whenever an African (athlete or audience, didn’t really matter) appeared on the giant TV screens. I was so mad I almost cheered when Togo scored the first goal. But I didn’t because I wanted to get back to Crimson House (my dorm) alive. After a break and more pointless kicking, some hottie from the Togo team got a red card, and Korea finally, finally managed a goal.

The crowd went into paroxysms of multifarious insanities. Imagine tens of thousands of Korean kids jumping and screaming. Imagine fireworks exploding above our heads. Imagine the smell of kimchi breath multiplied by twenty thousand detonating all around me. I wanted to curl into a ball on the ground to escape the noxious fumes but I had to stand up just like everyone else, or risk getting trampled by crazy kids finding validation and profound meaning in the scoring of a goal. Or two.

You might wonder… where is all my antagonism coming from? No, it’s not the fact that many Koreans are horribly racist, especially towards Pinoys and other Southeast Asians. It’s not the rabid nationalism (’Korya da best! Korya nomboh won!’) that say more about their stupendous ignorance of the amazingly diverse cultures all around the world. Neither is it the olfactory assault that hits you whenever you step into the subway (truly gag-worthy) or when the sidewalk traffic gets too busy (minimum three people on a summer day, all within a 5-ft radius from you).

To be brief, the nadir of that night was that I broke my camera. It slipped from my wrist thirty minutes before the game started, and it hit the pavement smack on the corner of the retractable lens. Auuugghh. It cost me 30,000 won to have it fixed. While this happened almost two months ago, and my camera’s back from the dead, that one incident will always taint my memories of that night.

But here’s what it was like before things got bad: We Go to the Game, a short clip in which my favorite Tibetan auteur captures a bit of the insanity that is World Cup fever in Korea. Premise: Six unsuspecting foreigners get caught in the red-shirted, balloon-waving, horn-wearing crush, and a digital camera gets broken. Features a song that is absolutely perfect for that mad, mad night. Pinoys may find the size and mood of the crowd familiar–the last time we partied like this, we kicked a president out of office. Cast: Assif (the GI Bear from Azerbaijan), John (tall emo-haired Kano), Tenzin (Tibetan auteur), Kalinga (cinematographer from Sri Lanka), Carlos, Sairo.

Stumble it!