By Kim Jae-won
Is making a political statement during a sport game acceptable?
The Sunday football match between old historic rival Korea and Japan has raised this old question anew. As expected, it has proved to be a divisive issue.
“Sports and politics are different matters. It is not desirable that political issues intervene in sports games,” said Maeng Ji-young, a freshman at Gyeonggi Global Trade High School.
A middle-aged football fan, however, said that he felt relieved seeing a big banner with a message chiding Japan.
“I felt a load off from my chest for telling Japanese how to behave openly,” the fan said, in apparent reference to what some people say is Japan’s lack of contrite over its colonial misdeeds.
On Sunday, a group of Japanese fans waved the Rising Sun Flag, a symbol of the country’s militarism and imperialism that Koreans find offensive during an East Asian Cup football match between Korea and Japan at Jamsil Stadium in southern Seoul.
Korean fans hung a huge banner that read, in Korean, “No future for people who have forgotten their past.” The words of the late Korean historian and independence fighter Shin Chae-ho were apparently aimed at the Japanese leaders’ failure to come to terms with its colonial misdeeds.
The flags and the banner were removed during the game by the Korea Football Association (KFA), but those actions raised the question of how far political actions are accepted in sports games.
Chae Soo-yeon, another freshman at the school, doubted the effectiveness of political propaganda at sports games.
“Such an action may provoke side effects, raising the political conflict deepening between the two countries, rather than finding out reasonable solutions.”
However, some said that it does not make sense that Japanese media criticize Korean people for the political actions, though Japanese fans waved the Rising Sun Flags representing its imperialism, which suppressed Asian people including Koreans in the early 20th century.
“Japanese fans waved the Rising Sun Flags and first egged Koreans. I felt delighted when the Red Devils hung the banner which criticized Japan’s twisted historical sense,” said Koo Bon-keun, an editor at publisher Human & Books.
Experts say that presenting political statements in football matches clearly violates FIFA regulations.
According to the disciplinary code of the FIFA, “Anyone who insults someone in any way, especially by using offensive gestures or language, or who violates the principles of fair play or whose behavior is unsporting in any other way may be subject to sanctions.”
After the banner was taken down, the Red Devils, a group of Korean football supporters, refused to cheer on the national team in the second half. On its Facebook page, the Seoul sector of the Red Devils wrote that its members would not bang drums or chant songs for Korea in protest of the decision by the KFA, the country’s football governing body, to remove the banner.