last night was awesome, i got to fulfill one of my major goals on coming to korea, to see the national soccer team play. even better, i got to see them play in an actual world cup qualifier match, a game that actually counted and mattered for their 2006 world cup hopes.

back in 2002, korea co-hosted the world cup with japan, and it was then that i really became a soccer fan. i ended up cheering for korea, and they had an amazing run, making it all the way to the semifinals, beating such european powerhouses as portugal, italy, and spain. in the end they finished fourth, better than they ever could have hoped for. the nation was in a frenzy, there were amazing pictures of thousands and thousands of koreans taking to the streets to support their team, all wearing red.

i went to watch two games in koreatown, both of which were amazing experiences. i was among at least five thousand red-shirted screaming fans cheering for their team, watching on a big screen set up in an empty parking lot at 3:00a. it was so much fun, i really wanted to experience it again now that i'm in korea.

sunny got us tickets through a friend of hers, so it ended up being me, sunny, natalie, natalie's friend claire, sunny's friend, and her boyfriend, who was an american. korea was taking on kuwait, in the first game of the third and final round of qualifications for the asian football confederation. our seats were really high up, but we were right at the midfield line, so i thought they were great. i took tons of pictures and even some videos, i hope you enjoy 'em!

unfortunately i couldn't get a good shot of them, but i couldn't believe that all the scalpers for the game where these old ladies. now that's something i'd never seen.

it felt so amazing to actually be at the stadium where i'd watched so many memorable games on tv so long ago and far away.

the game hadn't even started yet, but the hard-core fans were pumped up and ready to go. the signs they're holding up spelled out 대한민국 (daehan mingook, which i think basically means great korea. it's a chant they did throughout the game, something i remembered from the last world cup.

on the left you can see the flag of kuwait, to the right is the south korean flag.

kuwait is wearing royal blue on the left, the koreans are in their dark blue warm-ups to the right. their game jerseys are actually a pinkish red.

korea struck first in the 24th minute on an incredible volley into the top left corner of the goal off the post and in. needless to say, the crowd went crazy. korea was dominating possession, the kuwaitis barely had the ball to start the game, but it was great for them to finally take the lead.

this guy ended up not being hurt too badly, he soon returned to the game. but it was funny seeing the guys with the white and light blue shirts bring out the stretcher for him. one of the really cool things about soccer is the sportsmanship you see in it. the clock runs constantly in soccer, and there aren't any timeouts. so if someone gets injured badly, whoever has possession of the ball, no matter which team it is, will kick the ball out of bounds to stop play. then once the injured player has been carried off the field and play resumes, the other team will kick the ball out again to return possession to the team who had it at the time of the injury.

the hard-core fans rolled out this immense flag of their mascot, the red devil, to start the second half. at this point korea led 1-0.

it was great being able to watch the game from such a high angle like this. on television you can't always see what's going on all around the field, so it was really cool to be able to take it all in here.

korea finally got their second goal in the 81st minute on a nifty line drive shot that bounced over the goalie's outstretched hands. korea had dominated throughout, the kuwaitis hadn't been able to muster any offense, but with the score at 1-0, all they needed was one lucky play to tie the game. korea had lots of close calls to score again, but once they finally got through and got the second goal, we could all relax. as it turned out, kuwait never got anything going, they had one shot that went far over the goal in the first half, and it wasn't until the 90th minute that korea's goalie made his first and only save.

it was a great game, even more fun since korea won. the only bad thing about the experience was that we were freezing our butts off out there. still, it was totally worth it for such an amazing experience. at one point, some fans behind us gave us some mandu they had brought with them. it was good, and after i ate it, i turned to thank them again, and they insisted that i have another. they were cool, throughout the game they were commenting on and criticizing the player's actions in korean.

i took some videos with my camera, too. right click on the image and say save target as… and choose a location to save it to your hard drive. you'll need the divx codec to watch them, which you can download for free fromhttp://www.divx.com/divx/download/.