Cold War weighs on minds of veteran World Cup commentators from divided Koreas

 

Blood may be thicker than water, but for the veteran football commentators of the divided Koreas, it is not as thick as the Cold War sentiment of their nation still at war.

 

On Wednesday, just hours before North Korea was to play Brazil in its first World Cup match in 44 years, Cha Bum-keun, a commentator for South Korean broadcaster SBS, confessed to his mounting anxieties over the political reality of his nation.

 

"(People) have said that I should not commentate with affections for the North Korean players. Last night, I was so worried that I sent text messages to about 20 people in Korea to ask," the legendary former Bundesliga striker wrote on a Twitter-like message board on a South Korean Web site.

 

   Cha's anxieties were especially strong as tension remains at one of the highest points in decades between the two states. The deadly March sinking of a South Korean warship near their Yellow Sea border has been blamed on North Korea, and Pyongyang has threatened war if it is punished for the tragedy that it denies any role in.

 

   Cha, who disclosed later that the Cheonan sinking prevented a television commercial featuring both South and North Korean star players from being shot, braved the growing political enmity.

 

   "To be honest, I am developing affections for the North Korean players," he said. "Not only because we share the same blood, but also because I have as great affections for Ahn Young-hak and Jong Tae-se as I do for my country's players. They make my heart beat."

 

   Ahn, born in Japan into a family loyal to North Korea, once played for a K-League team Cha headed. Jong, dubbed "The People's Rooney," is the North's top striker who was also born in Japan.

 

   Cha kept his emotions mostly hidden during the 90-minute live broadcast of North Korea's match against Brazil, South Korean fans said. Some even expressed "disappointment" at Cha on Web sites.

 

   "He commentated on North Korea like it was some remote African country," an Internet user with the ID 'sableye' said on Naver. "It hurt my heart."

 

   Cha is not the only one feeling the peer pressure on the divided peninsula, which has remained technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce instead of a peace treaty.

 

   Ri Tong-gyu, a North Korean football professor who has commentated for the communist state for years, exercised restraint when he broadcast South Korea's 2-0 win last week over Greece.

 

   He came short of heaping praise on South Korean midfielder Park Ji-sung when the player intercepted the ball from a defender and drove it all the way up to the penalty area to net it, one of the most inspiring moments in the 2010 South Africa World Cup so far.

 

His restraint was in contrast with his comments during the 2006 World Cup when he described the South Korean English Premier Leaguer "a jack-of-all-trades who roams back and forth."

 

   During the abridged broadcast of South Korea's match this year, Ri and his fellow commentator displayed little excitement, offering dry assessments of the South Korean performance against Greece.

 

   In 2002, when South Korea reached the quarterfinals of the World Cup, Ri called the advance a "feat of our nation as well as an achievement of the South." That comment came amid thawing ties between the Koreas, which held their first-ever summit in 2000.

 

   Following nearly a decade of reconciliation, during which the two sides even considered fielding a joint World Cup squad, the relations between the countries started to deteriorate amid a standoff over the North's nuclear weapons programs.

 

   South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who took office in 2008, says the North must take concrete steps to denuclearize itself before his government can consider progress in inter-Korean trade and cooperation. The North says the South is merely conspiring with the U.S. to topple its regime by undermining its war deterrent.

 

Source: The Korea Herald