Every time the South Korean males’s soccer crew scored in opposition to Singapore throughout a current 5-0 rout in a World Cup qualifier, the roar from the house crowd got here largely from ladies, who held almost two-thirds of the tickets to the match.
Within the Seoul stadium that November day, a billboard-size banner for the star striker Son Heung-min had been made by a women-only group. A banner for one in every of his teammates — “Cho Gue-sung wins the day” — had been signed by a membership referred to as “Girls Rooting for Cho Gue-sung’s Pursuit of Happiness.”
The scene illustrated a undeniable fact that has puzzled consultants in one of many world’s most patriarchal societies: In sports activities, South Korean ladies usually outnumber males within the stands.
Girls right here make up 55 % of followers at skilled sporting occasions, together with baseball, basketball, soccer and volleyball, based on a 2022 estimate by the Korea Skilled Sports activities Affiliation. Related estimates for main sports activities in america put the determine at lower than half for girls. In Britain and Australia, that quantity drops to 1 / 4 or much less.
Followers and sports activities consultants attribute South Korea’s excessive charge of feminine fandom partly to the sense of safety on the nation’s sports activities venues. Others say it’s influenced by a nationwide fan tradition powered by intense worship of stars, who’re in some instances heartthrobs.
“Folks don’t consider the gamers as athletes, however as celebrities,” stated Yim Subin, 24, who attends video games and fan meet-ups, and watches baseball on TV day-after-day of the season. “It’s not a lot completely different from the way in which Okay-pop followers comply with their idols.”
In South Korea, the place fashionable sports activities like baseball and soccer had been launched within the late nineteenth century, skilled leagues had been a product of brisk financial development that started within the Sixties and created a big center class. The leagues matured in tandem with the internet hosting of main worldwide competitions, together with the 1988 Summer time Olympics and the 2002 males’s World Cup.
Girls have lengthy been a part of a South Korean fan base that considers following sports activities a nationwide pastime, glorifying elite (and normally male) athletes who compete overseas. Within the Seventies, the person of the second was Cha Bum-kun, who scored 98 objectives for 2 golf equipment in Germany’s prime soccer league. Now the sports activities idol is Son, a striker for Tottenham Hotspur within the English Premier League.
Feminine followers have been current at home competitions for simply as lengthy. Within the Nineteen Nineties, younger ladies packed school basketball stands, stated Dae Hee Kwak, an affiliate professor of sport administration on the College of Michigan. He stated they had been often called “oppa budae,” or armies cheering for male stars they name “oppa,” an affectionate time period that Korean ladies use for an older man.
One rationalization for South Korea’s excessive charge of feminine fandom is that its arenas are secure locations to look at a sport. A rising variety of venues now supply family-friendly facilities, together with youngsters’s playrooms.
In that environment, preventing and different expressions of hooliganism are more and more uncommon, stated Cho Yijin, a postdoctoral researcher at Yonsei College in Seoul.
“There’s much less smoking, consuming and swearing than earlier than,” she stated. “There’s a friendlier vibe.”
One other issue, consultants say, is the extraordinary home fan tradition that permeates the nation’s leisure tradition.
The meteoric rise of worldwide curiosity in South Korean movies, dramas and music over the previous decade or so created a passionate fan base round celebrities whose success is seen as a mark of nationwide delight.
Now the identical slang that describes how superfans worship such idols — “deok-jil,” or “fangirling” — is broadly used for sports activities. Fan ladies journey throughout the nation to attend video games, ship espresso vans to observe as a present of help and snap pictures of gamers with highly effective zoom lenses from front-row seats.
The groups’ advertising departments have observed. There isn’t a scarcity of merchandise for girls, together with jerseys and headbands. And within the nation’s prime soccer league, the crew Daejeon Hana Citizen hosts an novice “Queen’s Cup” for its feminine followers.
Eunji Shin, 43, who attends a number of baseball video games every week and takes copious notes on discipline technique, as soon as adopted her favourite crew, the Doosan Bears of Seoul, to its spring coaching camp in Japan. She additionally helped take out a newspaper advert with a thank-you be aware to a retiring pitcher.
Shin stated there was a “decrease barrier to entry” for following baseball gamers than leisure celebrities for a easy motive: It’s simpler to get bodily nearer to them.
In her expertise, the one individuals who carry cameras to video games are ladies. “Males don’t do this,” she added, “besides the few who wish to {photograph} the cheerleaders.”
The rise of girls as sports activities followers in South Korea has not led to gender parity on courts or fields, or in teaching rooms. Sports activities consultants say that’s partly as a result of South Korea has no anti-discrimination legislation, a lot much less laws like Title IX, the landmark U.S. legislation from 1972 that considerably expanded ladies’ entry to sports activities.
For a lot of feminine followers, seeing different ladies within the stands provides them a way of belonging and solidarity, stated NaRi Shin, an assistant professor of sport administration on the College of Michigan and a freestyle snowboarder.
A number of feminine followers stated that, whereas male gamers had been their gateway to sports activities, they ultimately developed a deeper appreciation of the sport itself.
Celine Lim, 39, stated she began watching Kim Byung-hyun, a Korean pitcher, play for the Boston Pink Sox when she was residing in america partly as a result of she was drawn to his “dangerous boy” character. She saved watching his Korean crew, the Kiwoom Heroes, play nearly each sport even after he retired.
Han Nagyeong, 26, stated her curiosity in soccer deepened whereas watching Son play for Tottenham Hotspur. Now, at the same time as a busy college scholar, she makes time to comply with every participant on the crew. She stated she has a number of mates whose fandom has taken an analogous flip.
“Step by step, they turned extra honest in regards to the sport itself than anybody else,” she stated.
