Last Saturday night, there was a big fireworks display on the beach in Pohang. I wasn't initially planning on going, not knowing exactly where it was and having no one to go with, but John got me. We hopped on some random bikes and went pedaling for the beach. We soon realized we wouldn't make it, since we started too late, but we stopped on a mountain dug out for road construction and had a nice, private, cool long-distance view of the show.



Last night was Korea's first game in the World Cup (soccer, for the completely uninitiated, like me). To this day, I can't recall watching an entire soccer match through. The closest I came was one of the collegiate games at LETU, but even then, it was a newspaper assignment.

This first game was the biggest sports celebration I've ever seen. Americans just don't have the same passion for any sport, even football or baseball, that many other nationals have for soccer. These people would scream and shout and almost dance, when their team simply had the ball. When they made a score, it is unusual *not* to get a slap or hug from a screaming fan.

Handong provided their own pre-show and halftime show.





Admittedly, I have no strong emotional ties with soccer, or the performance of teams from Togo or South Korea. I do favor a degree of sportsmanship, in any game, along the lines of not laughing out loud when an opposing player slips, injures himself and rolls on the ground in agony.

For the Koreans I was with, it was more a matter of, well, nationalism I would call it. Korea is the best. Korea can't be stopped. Korea couldn't care if their team played a bunch of cripples because it's all about winning. We base our national pride on whether we can outplay a tiny African nation. Go Korea.

I'm a foreigner so how could I "get it."