Intro
Man it has been cold this week, but I think it’s warming up again. Time to go outside. *wind sounds* BRRRR naaah hell no! I’m getting out the popcorn and the hot choco and staying my big butt indoors! Ain’t no way I’m going outside in them Siberian winds. What is the temp in Seoul? (pause for 2 seconds) MINUS 19! It’s so cold the ramyeon froze! Naaah, I ain’t going to Incheon! I’m changing my flight to Busan Gimhae! Instead of going out, I’m watching some Korean sports movies! Come along with me as I explain a few more.
Dream
The first movie on my list is called Dream. A 2023 comedy drama directed by Lee Byeong-heon who’s famous for 2019’s Extreme Job, this film focuses on a misbehaving footballer who becomes coach of a football team composed of homeless players. OK so in real life, there is a special tournament called the Homeless World Cup. It actually was played in Seoul in 2024, surprisingly after this movie was filmed. But the movie seems to focus on Korea’s 2010 team that went to Brazil, but they go to Europe so I think they meant the 2011 cup in Paris because they didn’t have a team in 2009. Anyway some of the scenes were filmed in Hungary, and filming started in 2020 but was delayed for two years so you see a little bit of weathering on some of the actors. Speaking of actors, Park Seo-joon plays Yoon Hong-dae the coach of the team. You might remember him as the singing Prince Yan from the Marvels movie. The famous pop star IU plays Lee So-min, a director assigned to make a documentary about the team. Oh, it’s IU not IOU, which I used to get wrong all the time until my middle school students hit me with a toy hammer *joke sting*. Ko Chang-seok plays Jeon Hyo-bong one of the homeless players. Mr. Ko is kinda well known for appearing in series and movies made from webtoons so I call him the webtoon guy. Sorry Mr. Ko but you’ve been typecast like Jeremy Renner *joke sting*. Anyway, Hong-dae is forced to coach the team because he pushed his teammate during a game and poked the eyes of a reporter afterwards. It kinda reminds me of the Glove movie in some regards. Director Lee wants to make the experience more like a guided docu-drama rather than a real documentary so she forces new takes and makes new lines which annoys Coach Yoon. Some of the players have never played football before or at least since kindergarten and have no idea what to do. And so, Coach Yoon whips them into shape and gets them able to play in Europe. Because this is not a pro tournament or hell barely an amateur one, it looked more like rugby than actual football. The players are down on their luck and homeless with Hyo-bong about to lose sight of his daughter because his ex re-married and is moving the family to Australia so he wants to win at least once to prove to his daughter he is still a man. Overall, I’d say this movie has some good points and it’s more of a comedy that shouldn’t be taken seriously. Give it a watch if you want something that isn’t too serious, even if homelessness and alcoholism should be.
Rebound
And here we have another underdog sports movie, this time in basketball called Rebound from 2023. Yes, I have a type. *joke sting* Also like Dream, it is based on a true story although this one is more true. In 2012 the Busan Jungang High School boys basketball team went on an incredible run at the national championships even though they only had like 6 or 7 players including one with a bad ankle. Directed by Jang Han Joon of Forgotten fame and written by Kwon Sung Hui of Escape fame, this is one of the easiest to find sports films out there and arguably one of the more famous lately. Compared to Dream it is also not much of a comedy. Ahn Jae-hong plays Kang Yang Hyun, a former basketball player who gets a chance to coach for Busan Central High school. The team is a mess and down to only 6 players and whoo they do not like each other! From the trailer there’s one scene where they threw the ball at each other in anger and knocked out the ref. So it’s up to Coach Kang to whip them into shape and attract more players, which they successfully get Kim Taek and Jeong Geon-ju and Jeong Jin-woon the player with the bad ankle, to join. It follows the usual sports movie tropes of players overcoming things and going on to the championship round. There are a couple problems with the movie. The one I had was the actors do resemble their real-life counterparts, they don’t look like high schoolers. Shoot I saw tiny wrinkles on one of them! *joke sting* The other issue is the accent; the players are supposed to be from Busan, but their accents are all over the place. I didn’t pick it up as much but Busan residents definitely did. Also, the point guard player Cheon in real life had a growth spurt and was hard to block, but the move portrayed him as short, but it was one of the keys to their playoff run. Overall, I’d say it has the elements of a good sports film even though it is lacking in how real kids talk to each other.
Queen of Walking
Next on the list is a high school comedy from 2016 called Queen of Walking. You can watch it on Amazon and Apple TV. Shim Eun-kyung plays Man Bok a high schooler at Ganghwa high school who walks 2 hours each way to school because she has congenital motion sickness and can’t ride the bus. Her friend Su Ji is on the running team and she does some walking on the track, which gives the homeroom teacher the idea to have Man-bok compete in race walking, which is an actual sport by the way. Kim Sae Byeok is the homeroom teacher and she was in Sunny and Kingmaker. Anyway, the key phase of the film is part of the conversation with Man-bok in which she wants Man-bok to try harder in school but Man-bok feels so tired she just wants to be and move at a slow pace. She says quote maybe it’s OK to take it slow unquote. Think about that in regards to the ending. But there were some issues with the music that viewers didn’t like, they found the soundtrack to not match the scenes well and the acting wasn’t so good but I liked their acting. I think the script could have used a little more work. I also like the dialog and narration with Ms. Cow! If you like sports comedy and coming of age movies, I think you’ll like this one more than Rebound.
Fourth Place
And now we’ve seen too many nice ones. I wanted y’all to have some happiness, but this is Korean Sports Movies and there are never a lot of happy ones. We’re talking about 4th Place, a movie so dire it made my wife leave the room while watching it. Released in 2016 and produced in part by the National Human Rights Commission, it is about a kid played by Yoo Jae-sang who has a mother with some kinda mental illness, and a slightly caring father. He keeps getting 4th place in swimming matches and his mom meets Coach Kim Gwang Soo, a former national swim team member who lost his place because of gambling and bad behavior. Gwang-soo starts coaching Joon-ho but in a lazy way and goes to the PC bang instead of coaching him at first. Eventually he starts training Joon-ho but when Joon-ho doesn’t win, he starts beating him during training. Eventually Joon-ho’s dad sees the welts and bruises on his son’s body and wants to demand the coach stop beating him. Jeong-ae wants a gold medal and gets in the way, leading to a family feud, and Joon-Ho becomes abusive towards his younger brother. A cycle of violence because Coach Kim never got justice for the abusive coaching he received as a kid. At the pool, Coach Kim gets fired because an employee reported his sadistic level abuse of the kid to the pool management and he had to leave but Joon-ho wanted Coach to stop beating him. He refused but gave him his old googles and told Joon-ho to do things his own way. So a lot about Coach Kim’s methods stem from the old korean excuse for corporal punishment called quote the hawk of love unquote. Today’s….well, yesterday’s coaches who were coached by people who grew up in the military dictatorship days and things like that were taught cruelly and became crude or cruel as a result. But these days, coaches are learning better methods or they’ll be fired, thanks to movies like this raising the public consciousness around corporal punishment. And that’s the message of the day!
Gelato World Cup
Just before the Olympics in Italy, we got the Gelato World Cup in Rinni. I thought Korea fielded a team since they got second place in 2024. And they did but they didn’t make it to the final round in Italy. Part of that was the website’s fault since they didn’t put dates on their articles. This year, Singapore’s gelato team won the overall championship. I’m a bit disappointed. We’re slipping, Korea. We used to be good at gelato, at football, at chip manufacturing, at kimchi…well we’re still the best at kimchi *joke sting*. But I must call upon my Korean listeners. WE MUST NOT ALLOW A GELATO GAP *joke sting*.
GOTW
Tonight at 7PM we get Busan KCC hosting Changwon LG at Sajik for basketball, and Hyundai Capital Skywalkers hosting KEPCO Vixton in men’s volleyball in Cheonan. Both games have good teams so they won’t be boring. There’s also figure skating championships in Beijing this weekend. Coverage begins at 1:15pm and goes for a while. At midnight tonight Vietnam is playing Korea in the 3rd place match in the U23 Asian Cup. At 4:30PM there’s men’s basketball with Seoul Samsung Thunder hosting the SonicBoom. The Sonicboom need a win to break the losing streak and who better than an ass team like Samsung? Let’s keep it a buck; they ass. *joke sting* Personally, I’ll be watching Handball in Gwangju!
ending
Thank you for tuning in today. We hope you learned something about Korean Sports because if you didn’t, you set the sleep timer too soon *joke sting*. Pass this pod on to anyone interested in Korean sports and especially rookies because trust me they need every ounce of help we can pour on them. If you don’t believe me, spend 5 minutes on Living in Korea subreddit *Joke sting*. If you wish to read along or contact the show, visit our website at hwatingsportspodcast dot com or our Facebook page and everything you need is right there. Give our podcast 5 stars if you have time. Music notes like the opening song thanks to DumiAFava. You can reach him on Instagram @daf_daffy247. Cover art thanks to our cycling expert James! A shoutout to our listeners in Oakland California! I used to live there! I wonder who’s listening? They still have pro teams there, albeit at a lower tier. Is it the Roots or the Soul? (sound excited) I’ll buy a shirt if it’s one of y’all! Anyway, we’re going on our usual Seollal break and will be back on Feb 20th with a roundup of Korea’s performance in the Winter Olympics! See you then!
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NOTES
Dream (2023) | Rotten Tomatoes
Rebound (Korean movie) - NamuWiki
(Movie Review) 'Queen of Walking' speaks to hurting youths | Yonhap News Agency