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6/19/202:
The
tale of Korean performance in the 2002 World Cup is
just too good to be ignored. To crush two super
European teams, Italy and Portugal, and beat a
used-to-be-good Poland, certainly need more than luck.
No doubt, there will be many myths and lessons out of
it in the coming days. Already South Korea's corporate
captains are interested in analyzing "the Hiddink way"
– named after Guus Hiddink, the South Korea’s coach -
to see if his football management tactics can be
applied to industry. After all, soccer is a part of
life of millions of people around the globe. It
encompasses race and economic boundaries. From the
downtown of Munich to a village in Senegal, people are
talking about soccer. It was reported at MSNBC’s site
a few days ago that Palestinians and Israelis sit side
by site watching the World Cup on TV.
Being lived in the US,
where soccer is the fifth or sixth of the most popular
sports and when there is a big difference of time
between the East Asia and the US, it’s not easy to
follow all the games live on TV. However, a World Cup
is a World Cup. It has magic. The excitement of
watching the games can overcome tiredness. When it
comes to a game, everything can happen. Senegal buried
the hope of the glamour France. Who predicted that
Italy would win the Cup in 1982 when they barely made
to the second round after their ugly draws with
Poland, Peru and Cameroon?
About 19% of 24197 responses at
MSNBC predicted that the US team would win the
2002 World Cup, ahead of Germany and England. Brazil
got 30% and Korea, interestingly, got 10% of the
votes. In a World Cup, everything seems possible.
In a long article at a local newspaper in Indonesia in
the early 1986, I commented the decision of the FIFA
to downgrade Argentina. FIFA excluded Argentina as a
seeded team when it cast the 1986 World Cup groups,
despite the Argentinians won the Cup in 1978 and were
filled with stars such as Maradona and Ramon Diaz.
Predicted that Argentina would play in the final
against West Germany and loose to the Panzers by 2-3,
I only missed the order. Argentina was the first, then
the Panzers. In soccer, it has never been easy to
predict the outcome of a game unless you have a divine
power. That makes the sport so attractive.
One year prior to the above article, I also wrote a
series of analysis at the same newspaper about the
prospects of the Indonesian team to beat South Korea
in the qualification round for Mexico 1986. Again, I
was wrong. Having won Asia subgroup IIIb, Indonesia,
coached by Sinyo Aliandu, had to play against a winner
of another subgroup, South Korea. In Seoul, the
Indonesians suffered a defeat of 0-2. With the hope
that the Indonesians would beat the Koreans in the
home match in Jakarta, I wrote suggestions to make the
Indonesian team better. One of the suggestions was to
recruit two strong amateur strikers at that time,
Adolf Kabo of Persipura, Jayapura and Ajat Sudrajat of
Persib Bandung. Unfortunately, the match in Jakarta
was no difference from that of Seoul, a humiliating
defeat for Indonesia. Since then, South Korea has
regularly participated in the World Cup while
Indonesia has never won even Asian Cup.
Our professional soccer teams imported third class
foreign players. South Korea exports world-class
players to tough and competitive leagues: Bundesliga
in Germany and Serie A in Italy. South Korean all-time
great, Cha Bum-kun had played with one of the most
talented German players, Rudi Voeller, at Bayer
Leverkusen more than a decade ago. The Korean 2002
World Cup hero, Ahn Jung Hwan plays with Perugia in
Italy. Once upon a time, our approach to build a
strong national team was by sending a bunch of young
men to be trained in Italy: a primavera project. It
was more than a failure rather than a success story.
Just like many things in life, there is no magic
available to turn a poor team into a super duper one
instantaneously. The stunning performance of the
Koreans two days ago was not a result of a two-day
laborious work. It’s more than a 16 years of constant
and hard working efforts. And their success is not
limited to soccer. This is a country which already
hosted the greatest sport event on earth, Olympic in
1988, while our proud is still stuck to the Ganefo
event in 1962. In that year, with an initiative from
Soekarno Indonesia hosted a well-respected sport event
among Non-Alignment countries called Ganefo. That’s
how the country has a super stadium, Senayan. Imagine
if the Soekarno’s regime never hosted the event and
never built such stadium. One possible scenario is,
the New Order regime would build a large and expensive
sport arena and the company which would take the job
would be the one from the regime’s family. No doubt,
it would be one of the most lucrative and corrupted
projects in the history of the nation. Thanks that it
didn’t happen.
If you don’t like sport,
there is also an amazing story about South Korea. This
is perhaps the only country in the world which put two
of its formers presidents into jail. Chun Doo Hwan, a
former strong man who came to the power through a
military coup in 1979 was arrested and accused of
military rebellion in relation to the coup and
massacre in Kwangju in 1980. Noh Tae Woo, his
successor, was also arrested for massive, almost
unbelievable corruption during his term in office,
corruption in which Chun has also been implicated and
which has provided the trigger for the wider push for
justice. In the first week of this month, a son of President Kim Young-sam was charged
with bribery and tax evasion in a corruption scandal
that has crippled his father's administration. The
indictment of Kim Hyun-chul, 37, was the final act in
an investigation by state prosecutors who charged him
with taking $3.6 million in bribes from two
businessmen seeking government contracts, licenses and
his influence in a court case.
Despite the massive human right abuses and corruption,
Indonesia is only able to put chicken thieves into jail.
One can say, “look, Bob Hasan is now in jail.” But who
knows the real story? And what about the rest?
South Korea has emerged from one of the poorest
countries in the 50s into one of the most performing
ones in the 21st century. It is true that
the financial crisis in 1997 revealed that the
fundaments of Korean business and economy are not as
strong as what people have thought before. Just like
many conglomerates in other developing countries,
their big business people accumulated huge external
debts. But almost everyone knows that Hyundai, Daewoo
and Kia are from South Korea. A widely known
electronic brand, Goldstar, is from there, too. South
Korea is also a major producer of ships in the world.
On the other hand, Indonesia only has CN235, a super
expensive project that turns out to be a huge loss to
the country. In a private sector, Indonesian firms
accumulate huge debts and practice massive
manipulative business deals, but in the end they are
not able to produce strong and well-respected
products. Compared to South Korea, Indonesia is a
total loser, almost in all aspects.
Don’t like sport, business or politics? Let’s talk
about human resources. The Koreans are almost top
performers in all fields of science, from social
science to engineering. Korean economists are
considered the best after Americans and British. In
terms of educational institutions, Korean universities
are among the best in Asia. According to a survey
conducted by Asiaweek magazine in 2000, Korea Advanced
Institute of Science and Technology is the number one
school in science and technology in Asia. The number
two is again from South Korea, Pohang University of
Science and Technology. Institute Technology of
Bandung, Indonesia, was number 21 among 39 schools.
For multi-disciplinary schools, Seoul National
University stood at number four after Kyoto
University, Tohuku University (both from Japan) and
Hong Kong University. Indonesia, represented by the
University of Indonesia, has no better than number 61.
When you watch South Korea playing at the World Cup,
think about their achievements in many aspects of
life, from the way they handle human right abusers and
corruptors to the way they perform in sports and
education. The best we can expect is, hopefully our
top government officials, political leaders,
legislative members and unethical business people
watch their games and learn something from them. Who
knows, afterwards, they become aware of making
progress instead of regress.
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