“The Sporting Image” is the summer 2024 edition of the Notebook Insert, a seasonal supplement on moving-image culture.
Illustration by Ivy Johnson.
The 1990s were a turbulent decade for Park Chan-wook the director, whose first two films, The Moon Is... the Sun's Dream (1992) and Trio (1997), were unmitigated box-office disasters. But it was also an illustrious decade for Park the film critic, whose writing for Screen, Kino, and Sports Chosun had developed a cult following. Before Joint Security Area (2000) put him on the map as a filmmaker, he was known for his sharp critical insights and dynamic prose. Meanwhile, he worked at the video rental store Movie Village in Seoul, where he initiated hundreds of cinephiles into the work of Leos Carax, Kim Ki-young, and Abel Ferrara.
I was twelve when the R-rated Lady Vengeance (2005) came out. I didn’t have the patience to wait until I turned eighteen, so I decided to read the screenplays of all the “Vengeance” trilogy films at a bookstore in Yeongdeungpo over the course of five hours. Soon after that, I devoured the two volumes of his collected writing: Park Chan-wook’s Homage, an anthology of his published film reviews, and Park Chan-wook’s Montage, comprising the director’s personal essays and columns for Cine21 and Monthly Word, among other outlets. He wrote on a wide range of topics, such as Tom Waits, censorship, his daughter’s love of dogs, and Seijun Suzuki.
To this day, I can't help but think of his prose when I watch his films. Park’s erudition, love of hyperbole, and dry humor are present in both, but his comedic sensibility tends to work particularly well in his personal essays. “The World Cup”—originally published as “The Sin of Not Liking Soccer” in Kyunghyang Shinmun, a month after the 2002 FIFA World Cup, co-hosted by South Korea and Japan—is a case in point. The essay, later included in Montage, centers on Park’s aversion to soccer, and he narrates the lengths to which he went to stave off social pressure to watch the FIFA games with a comical mix of histrionic self-deprecation, charming passive aggression, and Catholic guilt.
Non-Korean readers may ask: “Why so much drama over not liking soccer?”
The Korea-Japan World Cup was an era-defining event for South Korea. It is estimated that more than twenty million Koreans, myself included, took to the streets and cheered for the national team during the tournament. Dressed in red T-shirts and red bandanas, we called ourselves “red devils” and screamed “dae han min guk!” [Republic of Korea!] to a cacophony of claps, makeshift percussion, whistles, and klaxons. Never before or since this World Cup, some might argue, has South Korea pulled off a more successful nation-building project. So it is not wholly unreasonable for Park to hyperbolically liken himself to chinilpa—ethnic Koreans who collaborated with Imperial Japan—living in hiding after the fall of the Japanese Empire.
In the foreword for Montage, Park admits that he was more or less forced into writing criticism and essays due to economic hardships before the success of Joint Security Area, and continued to write for a short while afterward because he didn’t know how to say no. But he gave his very best to these articles, he adds. As glad as I am that he is in a place where he can focus solely on filmmaking, part of me wishes he was still writing essays that leave me howling with laughter.
Perhaps I have taken on this translation project as a way to cope with my yearning for new prose from Park. But more importantly, I have always thought it was such a shame that Montage is available in Chinese and Japanese, but not in English. It is a great honor that the kind folks at Maumsanchaek, the Korean publisher of Park’s two books, entrusted me with the first English-language sample translation of his prose. I am beyond excited for anglophone readers to (re)discover Park as a writer with an ingenious comedic voice. Hopefully, the rest of Montage will become available in English in the near future.
—Jawni Han
The World Cup
For the past two months, I have been agonizing over whether or not I should go public with this confession. What good would it do for me to tell the whole world this grave sin I committed? I wondered if this radical act of honesty would make me a better person. But I could not bear to carry on living in my motherland unless I got it off my chest. I couldn’t even look my family in the eyes. And on one decisive Sunday, I went to church for the first time in twenty years.
A priest asked me, “What troubles you, my child?”
“So, I… Well… No, I can’t!”
“Our Lord is more generous than you can ever imagine. So, please go on. What sin have you committed?”
“I… I don’t like soccer.”
“Excuse me? You mean to tell me… Wait… Surely, you’ve been keeping up with the World Cup, at least?”
“To tell you the truth… Not a second of it.”
“Oh, goodness gracious!”
There, I said it after all this time. Or perhaps I never should have. But I hate soccer, especially the World Cup games. Don’t ask me why. It is no different than the reason that some of you were indifferent to my latest film [Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, 2002]. All I am saying is, I struggle to see what is so exciting about watching other people kicking a ball around in order to have it land inside a hole. Had this year’s World Cup been hosted by another country or had Korea failed to advance to the knockout stage, I wouldn’t have cared about any of this. But the Korean team’s winning streak on the home front turned my indifference to antipathy. It’s because all any of you could talk about was the World Cup. It’s because none of you were around whenever there was a match. It’s because nothing interesting was airing on TV. It’s because there were no movies worth seeing in theaters. It’s because a group of complete strangers climbed atop the roof of my car and stomped on it. It’s because I couldn’t get much sleep, thanks to all the incessant klaxon noises. You see, I felt so desolate. I found myself empathizing with kids who are bullied at school. An average person cannot fathom the depth of paranoia faced by this national traitor living in hiding. Is this like the guilty conscience of chinilpa? Did the collaborationists live under this much fear? One night, I had a nightmare in which I screamed “I can’t stand the World Cup” at the top of my lungs and subsequently got my mouth disfigured.
I had a hunch that things would end up like this. Which is why I arranged to attend a film festival overseas though I didn't have to go. Europe and Latin America are equally crazy about soccer, so I opted for a festival in the United States where people are pretty relaxed about the sport. But the world—I mean, Ahn Jung-hwan [Korea’s forward] was no pushover. On the day I returned to Korea, I foolishly assumed Korea would be out of the tournament by then. Upon entering the arrival lounge after baggage claim, I caught a glimpse of Ahn scoring the famous golden goal on a TV screen. Thinking, “It’s so over for me,” I got dizzy and plopped on the floor. The wave of red shirts I confronted on my way home sent chills down my spine. I feared I might get jumped if I didn’t clap along to their chants. That night, my wife and I got home via sketchy back alleys as though we were thieves sneaking into someone else’s house. I felt condemned. It felt like I was no longer a citizen of this country, and no longer had permission to even lay my eyes on Taegukgi [the national flag].
If there was any silver lining, it was that my wife had no interest in soccer, either. Our bond grew all the more intimate during this season of trials. But even that came to an end when I caught her covertly watching Korea’s semifinal match against Germany. I pleaded to her with tears: “Have you completely lost your sense of pride? How could you join the mob that trampled on us?” Her response devastated me yet again. Apparently, our neighbors had pointed their fingers at our child and gossiped about her parents who did not follow the World Cup. I no longer had the strength to keep fighting. I surrendered, then went to confession.
The conversation with the honorable priest concluded in the following way:
“Will God forgive me?”
“Hmm… My brother, this is no light matter. As penance, you must watch the rerun of every game thrice over.”
P.S. Some time after this was published, I received a phone call from a committee tasked with compiling documents related to the 2002 FIFA World Cup. Apparently, the committee’s president Chung Mong-joon deemed it necessary to include even a hater like me, so they asked me to join the team. The man who called me was so insistent that I eventually capitulated. I had to attend numerous meetings where I felt desolate once again while many important people discussed their brilliant ideas. All I could do was scribble on the margins of meeting materials and eventually, two hefty books got published. My name is on the acknowledgements page. Such is life…
