Cultural Evolution and Ideology in Korean Soccer: Sport and Nationalism

Abstract

Modern Korean sports have been adopted mostly from the West, but now Korea has emerged as a sporting power demanding global attention. The influence of historical and political ideology has been in the cultural background of Korean sports development, and the process of cultural evolution in soccer may be explained in the similar context. What helped the Korean soccer team qualify for the World Cup eight consecutive times – only the sixth country in the world to do so – thus making it the most powerful soccer team in Asia? Soccer initially appeared in Korea during the threat of Japanese invasion, and this backdrop provided the opportunity for soccer to be combined with nationalism and transformed into a cultural product that confronted Japanese imperialism. Since the Korean War, South Korean soccer has become a vehicle for ideological confrontation with North Korea amid the atmosphere of the Cold War, and it thus gave rise to sports nationalism by revealing an ideological superiority and nationalistic disposition. Soccer, which arrived in Korea on a British ship, has become a representative Korean sport and continuously challenges the global stage ahead of Asia's leading economic power. It was against the background of such rapid development that nationalism formed.