Chasing 2002 Again: Why the World Cup Still Owns the Korean Summer

On the morning of June 12, tens of thousands of people in red shirts packed into Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul, faces painted with the 태극기 (taegukgi), the national flag, to watch Korea’s World Cup opener on giant screens. When Oh Hyeon-gyu buried the winner against the Czech Republic in the 80th minute, strangers linked arms and sang the team’s anthem at full volume. It looked spontaneous. It was actually a ritual, one the entire country has been performing with remarkable consistency for nearly a quarter of a century.

To understand why Koreans pour into the streets for a sport their national team has never won, you have to go back to one impossible summer.

The summer that rewired a country

In 2002, Korea co-hosted the World Cup with Japan, and almost nobody expected the home team to do anything. The squad was unheralded, and the country was still catching its breath after the 1997 IMF crisis had gutted its economy and its confidence. Then, under Dutch coach Guus Hiddink, the taegeuk warriors simply refused to lose. They topped a group containing Portugal, beat Italy, then beat Spain on penalties, and rode a sea of red all the way to the semifinals, the deepest run any Asian team had ever made.

What happened off the pitch mattered just as much. Millions filled the streets of every major city, and the taegukgi changed meaning overnight. Before 2002, the flag was treated as something close to sacred, never to be worn or draped casually. That summer, people wrapped themselves in it, painted it on their cheeks, tied it around their heads. A symbol of solemn nationhood became something joyful and shared.

2002 didn’t just give Korea a great soccer team for a month. It gave the country a new way to be proud of itself in public.

The chant born that summer still echoes through Gwanghwamun today: 대~한민국 (Dae-han-min-guk), the country’s own name shouted in a five-beat rhythm. So does 길거리 응원 (gilgeori eungwon), the street-cheering phenomenon that turned public squares into open-air stadiums. The 붉은 악마 (Bulgeun Angma), the “Red Devils” supporters’ group, remain the beating heart of it all. Every World Cup since has been, on some level, an attempt to feel 2002 again.

Why this time, Koreans actually believe

Here’s the thing about that nostalgia: Korea has never come close to repeating 2002. There have been bright moments since, like knocking out Germany in 2018 or sneaking past Portugal into the Round of 16 in 2022, but nothing approaching that semifinal high. Hope, for two decades, has mostly meant showing up and praying.

This year feels different, and the reason is the roster. This is arguably the most talented squad Korea has ever assembled, anchored by players competing at the very top of the European game. Son Heung-min, now captain, is widely regarded as the greatest Asian footballer of all time, and at 33 he is almost certainly playing his final World Cup. Behind him, Kim Min-jae holds down the defense for Bayern Munich, and Lee Kang-in pulls strings for Paris Saint-Germain. A generation that grew up watching Park Ji-sung at Manchester United now follows these names at five in the morning, league weekend after league weekend.

The opening win over the Czech Republic, Korea’s first World Cup opener victory in sixteen years, only sharpened the feeling. For once, “we could go far” sounds less like wishful thinking and more like a reasonable read of the talent on hand. That gap between hope and plausibility is exactly where the excitement lives.

And, of course, there’s Japan

No account of Korean soccer is complete without 한일전 (Han-Il-jeon), the Korea-Japan match. Relations between the two countries are, on the whole, more amicable than they’ve been in years, woven together by trade, travel, and a steady flow of culture in both directions. But none of that quite reaches the part of the brain that lights up when Korea beats Japan at anything.

Soccer is the purest stage for it. A win over Japan needs no trophy and no context to feel like a national holiday; the scoreline alone is the reward. It’s friendly rivalry now, mostly, the kind where both sets of fans can drink together afterward. But the intensity in the moment is real, and it traces straight back through decades of shared and contested history. The two nations co-hosted in 2002 as partners. They will still want, more than almost anything, to outlast each other.

That is the strange, layered thing the World Cup does in Korea. It is a sporting event, yes. But it is also a yearly referendum on national pride, a memory of one transcendent summer, and a stage for a rivalry that words alone can’t settle. So the country puts on red again, floods the square again, and chants its own name into the morning heat, chasing, as always, the ghost of 2002.