Glocalization: South Korea

Last week in class we had a guest speaker who is actually a professor here at the university which is Dr. Cho. The main thesis about his presentation is how sports effect other cultures and how globalization of sports effects the world. He gave a lot of great back round history of sports in South Korea which is where he is from. The main sports he discussed were baseball and soccer in Korea and how the two sports impact the country as a whole.

The main emphasis that I took from Dr. Cho's speech is that of how sports in his country has such a great impact between the various countries in Asia. He pointed out that even though all the different countries have similar aspects due to their close proximity to each other but the countries have many differences between South Korea, North Korea, China, and also Japan. The video of the soccer game when South Korea was playing shows the support the country gets for its sports. The entire downtown area was filled with spectators watching the game and most likely a large number of those people were not interested in the game of soccer however they were there to support their country as they play for a win but also for their countries pride. Dr. Cho mentioned how South Korea has high moral for their country and when their country plays nearby neighbors such as Chine it's a big rivalry and the whole country watches the event.

What I believe is a main difference between countries such as South Korea and the United States are things like these that are little individual citizen differences that make up the complexity of a country. Here in the U.S. if a mens soccer game was on tv the only viewers that would be watching are one's that actual follow the game of soccer. However as mentioned South Korea the majority of people would be supporting their country. That's just how I feel about how Americans differ than what other countries have for their national pride.