In 2002, Korean soccer fans and the rest of the nation were ecstatic as the national squad in the FIFA World Cup reached the semifinals, beating major powers one after the other. Team manager Guus Hiddink, a Dutchman, instantly became the most popular person in the country.

Now sixteen years later, the Vietnamese team made it to the finals of the U-23 AFC championship in China, the joy of their compatriots looked even greater than we had in the 2002 World Cup. Park Hang-seo, the Korean manager of the team, has received all kinds of accolades from Vietnamese fans, topped by a national medal given by the Hanoi government. Vietnam dropped the championship to Uzbekistan, but the Vietnamese remain proud.

Soccer is the most popular sport in Vietnam, where 14 professional clubs compete in V. League matches to packed stadiums, although their national squad remained in what fans termed the “Southeast Asian level,” unable to beat the Thais in most of their games. When the Vietnamese Football Federation recruited Park Hang-seo from Korea in October last year, fans complained that the team did not employ a better-known European manager.

Park, 59, who played professional soccer from 1981 was also a coach for the Korean national team under Hiddink in 2002. Much credit went to the foreign manager when the low-ranked host team won its way into the final four. Koreans still remember the excitement of watching Park Ji-sung deflect the ball from left to right and kick it into the Portuguese net to qualify his team for the round of 16 knockout stage. Ahn Jung-hwan’s golden goal with a header into the Italian goal was another great gift to his country.

Vietnamese enthusiasm grew when the national squad beat the physically overwhelming Australia 1-0 and drew 0-0 with Syria in the preliminaries after losing to Korea 2-1. Park Hang-seo emerged as a kind of savior who elevated Vietnamese soccer to world class. A newspaper cartoon depicted him flying in an airplane with his players while other Southeast Asian teams were struggling in the water below.

Park, appointed as manager for both the adult national team and the U-23 squad last October, had less than three months to train players for the championship to be held across four Chinese cities. Vietnamese sports officials said they picked up Park because he “shared Hiddink’s philosophy of soccer,” the excellence of which was shown in Korea in 2002. Park was modest in saying he was “far from being another Hiddink,” but he eventually proved he was colder than the Dutchman in training the players and warmer off the field.

Video clips on YouTube uploaded by Vietnamese fans reveal how Park became one with his players during games. Standing at the touchline, he shouts in Vietnamese and Korean, hops and jumps when a goal is scored, making the uppercut gesture like Hiddink. In the locker room, he hugs each player before and after matches. “No one before him had ever shown such passion and enthusiasm,” an online Vietnamese newspaper commented.

The Korean manager seems to know how to assimilate into Vietnamese culture, a socialist state with an up-and-coming economy. He follows his players when they sing the national anthem, with his right hand touching the emblem of a yellow star on the jacket. He repeated that he was happy to have made a miracle together with players.

Throughout Vietnam, the two weeks from the victorious match with Australia were a time of great exultation with all people engrossed in U-23 soccer, and when Vietnam beat Qatar in the semifinals, the whole nation went crazy. Corporations and regional governments joined in celebration with congratulatory donations to the team. An automobile dealer presented Park Hang-seo with a sedan.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc awarded Park the Hero of Labor medal, which is given to individuals who are “loyal to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and possess revolutionary virtues and qualities.” The same medals with different grades were given to all members of the team in a formal event at Hanoi’s national stadium. Park praised his players for struggling 120 minutes in all the last three games, the finals on a snow-covered field with snow still falling. Only three of the players had reportedly even seen snow before.

It is pleasing to have a Korean treated as a hero in a foreign country. Park deserves the honor and we also appreciate him for drawing the two peoples closer. South Korea is already a major partner of Vietnam -- No. 1 in direct foreign investment, second in development projects and third in bilateral trade volume -- but there was a short chapter in history (1965-1972) when we fought on the side of the US and South Vietnam.

Thanks to Hanoi leaders’ choice of “Doi Moi” (renovation) toward a capitalist economy, trade, investment and people-to-people contacts has grown rapidly over the past decades. During a short visit to Ho Chi Minh City about a year ago, I could confirm the Vietnamese magnanimity and dismissal of the past. Yet a brief scan of the Quora website, a global online forum, could detect still mixed feelings toward South Korea among Vietnamese intellectuals.

Some comments included the following points:

--Korea is the only country in the world that has a parallel history with Vietnam -- struggles against Chinese dominance in ancient times, colonization by foreign powers in the more recent past, territorial division of the country and fighting in wars with superpowers involved.

--Korea is rich, Vietnam is still poor. The Vietnamese have a lot to learn from Koreans, their diligence, perseverance and discipline possibly to follow in their footsteps.

--News stories about Korean discrimination against the Vietnamese, about Korean men’s abuse of Vietnamese brides, violent treatment even leading to suicides and manslaughter is angering.

--K-pop is good and Korean girls are pretty, even if “artificially.”

Hanoi is 2,741 kilometers from Seoul. Park Hang-seo in the U-23 AFC championship helped narrow the distance by increasing mutual trust and fondness. After all, bilateral relations between nations are the accrual of how individuals feel about each other. May Park succeed in his job by winning a medal in the Asian Games this summer and then gaining entry to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.


Kim Myong-sik
Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald. He can be reached at kmyongsik@hanmail.net – Ed.