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At six o'clock on Wednesday morning, a TV newscaster began his program: "Here comes the first bright news in a long time. Our under-20 FIFA World Cup team has advanced to the finals."
The talk of the town was the South Korea-Ecuador semifinal of the 2019 global youth football extravaganza now being held in Poland. A common question of the day at each work place was: "Did you see it?
The numerous "night owls" who stayed up through the night or woke up at 3:30 a.m. to watch the match deserve to feel jubilant over the "young ones" winning spree. The icing on the cake is the time of the final against Ukraine: 1 a.m. Sunday, when they don't have to go to work.
What made the people at home so happy, in particular, is that the team used to be underdogs with little hope of contending for the championship. Experts were not that optimistic about the team's performance, though the players said with confidence ahead of the tournament: "We can do it."
Irrespective of the result of the final showdown, our young team made it ― against all odds ― to the applause of not only Koreans but also global fans. Their brilliant performances complement the sensation of BTS or Bangtan Boys, a seven-member boy band from Seoul, who made history two weeks ago as the first Korean group to headline London's massive Wembley Stadium.
Both in the culture and sports fields, not in the diplomatic and economic sectors, our young men have been doing so well on international stages that they have upgraded South Korea's global status remarkably.
How about our lady golfers? Rookie Lee Jeong-eun won the 2019 U.S. Women's Open for her maiden LPGA victory. The 23-year-old, rallied to take the oldest major championship in women's golf two weeks ago at the Country Club of Charleston, South Carolina, becoming the 19th player in history to win her first LPGA title at the American national contest.
Indeed, their achievements have certainly been a consolation to the people who are fed up with the never-ending political strife at the National Assembly amid the ever-worsening ideological confrontation between the ruling progressives and opposition conservatives, and the difficult economic situation that shows no sign of an early recovery.
What is behind the fabulous success of the young football players and Bangtan boys? They give a very simple and easy answer. No team could stop the "One Team" composed of 11 key players and substitutes who united firmly, either on the pitch or the bench.
BTS is no exception. Nothing could penetrate the bullet-proof teamwork of the "Bullet-proof (meaning Bangtan) Boys" that features cooperation and harmony. They became the first band to stay for five weeks in the top slot of the Billboard 100 last month. Earlier in April, they joined the Beatles and the Monkees as the third group in half a century to put three No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 in less than a year.
What a great and surprising accomplishment? Not only in the cultural field, but also in the economic sector, they were superb as they contributed to bringing in more than 5 trillion won (about $4.15 billion) toward the national economy annually. BTS has also engineered nearly one million tourists to have visited South Korea.
The winning streak of the young soccer players also gives a good lesson to many people, including those in the "leading class of society," especially chief executives of various organizations, in terms of employment tactics.
Their victorious odyssey owes much to manager Chung Jung-yong, who is not that famous at home as a professional soccer coach. The on-going tournament proves that he has the knowledge about how to employ the players. He put the right man in the right place at the right time, well versed in tactics.
His leadership to employ the players properly without any prejudices, helped the young players, both key players or substitutes, to get united firmly to make "One Team," led by Lee Kang-in, an 18-year-old prodigy of Spain's Valencia, called by his older teammates, "youngest big brother."
Few will object to the idea that our leaders in politics, the economy and other fields, should learn a lesson from the soccer coach's leadership.
Few will deny the problems of the incumbent administration's personnel management. Many people doubt that President Moon Jae-in has appointed the right people to the right posts, either progressives or conservatives.
Our young ones are doing well. What are our adults doing?
Park Moo-jong (emjei29@gmail.com) is a standing adviser of The Korea Times. He served as the president-publisher of the nation's first English daily newspaper from 2004 to 2014 after working as a reporter since 1974.
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