World Baseball Classic

Last night was the championship game of the World Baseball Classic (WBC). The inaugural WBC was played in 2006, with Japan beat Cuba in the finals by the score of 10-6. Three years later, with the WBC garnering more international interest, the championship game pitted Korea against the defending champions and bitter archrivals, Japan. Under the lights of Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles, the game certainly did not disappoint fans of all stripes. It was a thrilling extra-inning affair, with Japan coming out on top 5-3, much to the agony of Korean fans all over the world.

People suggest that I have an identity crisis. Having lived in the United States for all but three years of my life, I am automatically assumed to have my loyalties towards America in all things. But that hasn't always been the case. Often times in international competitions such as the Olympics and the World Cup, my allegiance has usually gone to the place where I was born. And people question how I can do that when realistically speaking, I have far more connections with America than I do with Korea. To them, the only answer I have is that I don't know. All I know is that for some reason, I have a deep sense of nationalism towards Korea, and I don't perceive this to die down anytime.

This morning, I was asked by a non-Korean friend why Korea-Japan rivalry is such an emotional affair. One word: nationalism. It is very much like the Yankees-Red Sox, Michigan-Ohio State, Lakers-Celtics, and North Carolina-Duke rivalries in American sports. The only thing is that this is exponentially more intense because there's political, historical, and social components to the Korea-Japan rivalry that doesn't exist in a domestic sports rivalry. For many Koreans and first generation Korean-Americans, emotions can run high when it comes to anything related to Japan, as Japan raises memories and stories of atrocities committed by Japan during its colonization of Korea from 1910-1945. Such resentment towards Japan continues to be fueld by modern political developments such as the Dokdo/Takeshima island dispute, visits to the Yasukuni War Shrine by Japanese leaders, and Japanese revisionist history textbooks.

I understand that from an American perspective, it can look highly irrational and even annoying that a small country with under 50 million people goes crazy every time there's some international competition. But with such sporting events is the power of the "rally-around-the-flag effect." For a country whose people have felt betrayed by the world since 1895, lived under three decades of brutal Japanese colonialism, and bordered by a menacing nuclear threat, Korea's "rally-around-the-flag effect" includes the performances of its athletes in the world's greatest stages as well as high profile Koreans breaking glass ceilings in academia, American politics, international politics, and so on and so forth. To put it very bluntly, this, I don't think, can ever be truly understood by an American in a world dominated by the United States.

With this being said, it is no surprise that Dodgers Stadium was filled with tens of thousands of Koreans with their Thunderstix screaming "Dae Han Min Gook" for four hours straight. And even though I have two papers due this week, I rushed home from the library to watch this epic game on my couch and unable to hide my anxiety throughout the game. And even despite the loss, I am still proud of the team for reaching the finals and showing the world that Korean baseball has arrived in the big stage. And even though they did not win, I'm still going to buy this.