Peace Cup 2005

On Sunday, I was privilaged to watch a football match between the Ilhwa Chunma and the Lyons Olympiques (from France). Lyons won the game be a score of 2-1. The game was part of the Peace Cup tournament, which I'm pretty sure that nobody outside of Korea or the Unification Church (sans the teams involved) has heard about before. At least TSN's and ESPN's sites failed to acknowledge this tournament.

Both the Ilhwa Chunma and the Peace Cup are financed by Sun Myong Moon and the Unification Church. They are better known as the Moonies.

The game itself was a lot of fun, and the Ulsan World Cup Stadium was more packed than I've ever seen it at any K-League game. Tickets were only 10,000 won (10 $US). Our little group of foreigners managed to drink the place dry before the 10-minute mark of the first half. The folks that run the stadium have no idea how to capitalize on beer sales. They didn't have nearly enough beer (mind you, I'm sure that us foreigners buy a lot more beer than the locals), and there were no restrictions on how much beer you can buy and the prices are barely marked up. As well, you are free to load up a cooler or backpack full of beer and bring it into the game with you. I bought three Heinekin's (that's all they had at this point) for 7,500 ($2.50 each), and Al bought an entire case for 60,000; which we shared amounst ourselves until we ran out well before the second half had started. The Koreans (and the other foreingers!) must've been slightly upset that there was no beer left. Well, blame the stadium management for their poor planning.

Here's some pictures from just before the game and from the game itself. Remember, you can click on the pictures to make them larger:















This is in my neighborhood. Those Koreans sure look white! Notice how Dave covered his face because to my bad jokes?
















A shot of the field from the top level.
















These three fans were happily cheering for Lyons and booing Korea. Probably because the Korean team playing is a rival of the local Ulsan Hyundai Tigers team. I taught them a nice chant to help encourage the team de france.

"Lyons, mange la merde! Lyons, mange la merde!"

They had fun AND learned some good francais!
















10,000 won for general admission, and I get a seat on field level? Why would I ever pay 30,000 for "better seats"? Where was absolutely no assigned seating. I just sat wherever I wanted to. Never ever pay for anything more than general seating in Korea. If you pay more money, you'll just get laughed at by the person sitting beside you that paid half of what you did. Strangly enough, movie theatres have assigned seating. WTF gives?
















Here's a shot of the crowd behind me.
















Lyons was in the white, while Korea was in the yellow. Lyons won the game. What a surprise...