SEOUL - A month ago, if anyone on the
streets here or anywhere else in South Korea were
asked to define the word "Togo", the response
would have been a shrug of disbelief - except
possibly on the part of a small minority of
sophisticates wondering if the word was a
mispronounced variation of "to go", as in "latte
to go".
While the term "to go" has entered
the local lingo at some of the country's trendier
coffee-shops, Togo with a capital "T" until lately
was as far from the concerns of Koreans as some
newly discovered planet. In fact, the comparison
may not be fair to astronomers, considering the
publicity their discoveries sometimes get in the
local media.
All that changed on Tuesday
night, however, when upwards of one
and a
half million people, mostly young and swathed in
red shirts, flooded the streets here and in every
other South Korean city and town, yelling in
alternating joy and consternation as if the
country were in mortal combat with a small African
country named, yes, Togo.
By the time it
was all over, South Korea had proved its might,
and everyone could again relegate Togo to the
pages of geography books.
The South Korean
soccer team, barely, had edged out a hard-tackling
Togo 11, actually 10 after their captain was
red-carded and sent off, coming from a goal behind
to win 2-1 in the opener for both teams of World
Cup 2006 in Germany. Koreans could now take a deep
breath and focus on how their beloved Red Devils
might possibly defeat highly favored France, which
managed a scoreless draw with Switzerland.
The grating music, the chants of tens of
thousands massed on city squares and streets, and
the images on huge overhead screens were a noisy
reprise of the burst of pride just four years
earlier when South Korea had co-hosted World Cup
2002 with Japan. The main difference: this time
the dozen cavernous World Cup stadiums, built at a
cost of more than US$100 million, were empty, as
they are most of the time, and the games were half
a world away.
In a society that has made
an art form of organized protest, the nationwide
turnout on Tuesday night was the ultimate
demonstration, a reaffirmation of national success
and a relief from reminders of trouble ahead. For
two days, before and after Tuesday's match, the
Red Devils dominated front pages and television
news, driving away unpleasant news of an
"imminent" launch of a long-range North Korean
missile and divisive dissent against the policies
of the left-of-center President Roh Moo-hyun.
It was that way in 2002 when a 48-ton US
Army armored vehicle rolled over two 13-year-old
schoolgirls, crushing them, in the second week of
the World Cup. And then, two days before South
Korea's final match with Turkey on June 30, 2002,
a contest for third-place ranking that Korea lost
3-2, five South Korean sailors were killed in a
shootout with the North Koreans south of the
"northern limit line" in the Yellow Sea.
Such was the fervor over the Red Devils
then that the deaths of the two girls were
marginalized until afterward, when people began
turning out by the tens of thousands in
demonstrations in central Seoul and outside US
military bases. The protest reached its peak in
the autumn after the refusal of the US command to
turn the two sergeants who had been driving the
vehicle over to Korean authorities and their
acquittal by a US military court. The outrage over
the two girls was one reason the conservative Lee
Hoi-chang lost his second race for the presidency,
defeated by Roh in December 2002, five years after
losing, by a narrower margin, to Kim Dae-jung.
This time the issues may be more sharply
defined - though not yet by a tragedy that
captures emotions across the country as did the
deaths of the schoolgirls. The central issue, now
as then, is what to do about North Korea, what's
become of the military alliance with the United
States - and whether these two issues will come to
an alarming, crunching climax soon after the last
shouts of World Cup fans have died away.
The North Korea issue, much to the
distress of South Korean as well as US leaders, is
likely to get worse before it gets better. US
reconnaissance planes have sniffed out how close
the North Koreans are coming to test-firing a
Taepodong II ballistic missile with a range as far
as the west coast of the United States. Meanwhile,
Pyongyang threatens to shoot down any planes that
intrude into North Korean air space.
The
latest Northern threat was considerably stronger
than the usual, almost ritualistic accusations of
US spy flights. The statement accused the United
States of sending three RC-135 planes -
four-engined turboprop versions of the C-135,
fitted out with an enormous array of electronic
gear - over North Korean waters in a "violent
infringement of sovereignty and a grave violation
of international law".
The North Korean
air force vowed, moreover, to "sternly punish the
aggressors if their planes continue illegally
intruding into the sky" and carried a grim
reminder of what it called "the wretched fate of
the EC-121 large spy plane in the 1960s". That
reference recalled the shootdown on April 15,
1969, 90 miles off the North Korean east coast, of
a US Navy reconnaissance plane in which all 31
crew members were killed.
The unusually
strong tone of the statement was proof in itself
that the planes had been closely scrutinizing the
site on the northeast coast, in North Hamgyong
province, where North Korea has positioned the
missile for testing. North Korea came out with its
warning after senior officials in Seoul, both on
the record and for background, and reflecting
information provided by the US, warned of the
imminence of a launch.
North Korea has
test-fired a Taepodong prototype once before - on
August 31, 1998, when Taepodong I flew over the
main Japanese island of Honshu. The missile landed
harmlessly enough in waters south of Vladivostok,
but Japanese were outraged by the ease with which
North Korean fired a missile over their territory.
This time, Pyongyang is prepared to launch
a missile capable of traveling much further, on
the basis of technology and equipment reflecting
North Korea's success over the years in
engineering missiles. The system relies first on a
Nodong missile, the initial vehicle to be fired
from the site. Then a Scud would be fired from the
Nodong and, finally, a rocket mounted on the Scud
would complete the journey. Theoretically the
rocket could travel several thousand nautical
miles, though it would be likely to travel a much
shorter distance on an initial test flight.
The question, though, was whether North
Korea had put on an appearance of the imminence of
a launch as a ruse to alarm the United States -
and impel Washington to ease up on retaliation for
North Korea's counterfeiting US$100 bills. US
officials suggested that a compromise might be
possible after Banco Delta Asia in Macau had
finished going over its books and unfrozen North
Korea's accounts. Banco Delta Asia suspended its
long-standing relations with North Korea after the
US Treasury Department banned firms dealing with
BDA from doing business with US institutions - the
decision that North Korea brands as "sanctions".
A South Korean Foreign Ministry official said
a launch would "negatively affect North-South
relations, the stability of Northeast Asia and the
six-nation talks over North Korea's nuclear
program". A launch would also deepen the rift
between the United States and South Korea. There
is no way Seoul would respond with anything other
than aggrieved statements, leaving retaliation,
economic or diplomatic, to the United States while
opposing any move that might risk armed
confrontation.
Confrontation of a
different sort, though, is inevitable. Several
hundred farmers - their will steeled by dissenters
led by a Catholic priest who was a highly visible
figure at the forefront of street protests in 2002
- hold out in a rural district about 65 kilometers
south of Seoul in a campaign to get them to leave
their land. South Korea promises to turn the land
over to the Americans for a huge new military base
but is clearly reluctant to force a struggle
characterized by images of elderly farmers
battling with helmeted police.
The
government is hesitant, worried about its rising
unpopularity as demonstrated in local elections at
the end of last month in which "ruling" party
candidates won only one of 16 elections for mayor
of major cities and provincial governors. The
World Cup plays into the hands of conservatives,
affirming the pursuit of patriotic fun while
distracting from the sort of protests that shook
the established order in the second half of 2002
and may embarrass the government again as
thousands of police swarm over the site of the
proposed US base.
Such concerns, though,
could hardly have been further from the thoughts
of the crowds on Tuesday night.
A holiday
air infused the atmosphere. Sidewalk stands
purveyed red shirts emblazoned with symbols and
signatures of star players. Crowds hushed and
groaned as Togo scored the first goal but came to
ear-splitting life on each of South Korea's
second-half goals, and the fireworks and song
echoed into the early morning hours as crews
cleaned up the streets and buses and subways,
running two hours later than usual, finally got
everyone home.
Like Korea's successes in
World Cup 2002, victory over an unknown country
named Togo was a narcotic that momentarily swept
away the same old fears that keep Koreans in a
perpetual stage of underlying insecurity and fear
for the future.
Journalist Donald
Kirk has been in and out of Korea since
1972.
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