Soccer + Tennis = What? Korea's Insane National Sport

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTS0_zBUO5s

I have to admit that when I was asked to write an article about a Korean game called jokgu (족구/足球), I was a bit less than enthused. Vague images of hanbok-clad adolescents playing yutnori (윳노리) against their will on Lunar New Year’s Day (설날) drifting through my thoroughly uninterested brain, I reasoned (badly) that that it was probably just some game with sticks and tiles played by crowds of smoking ajusshi on Sunday afternoons in the park.

“It’s a cross between soccer and tennis,” our videographer informed me, as though that somehow made it exciting. Instead, I was just perplexed. How could hitting soccer balls with tennis rackets be fun?

“It was developed in the military," a close friend, who goes by the name of Wikipedia, added. Ah, yes. Cue the tobacco-scented ajusshi. I was getting nowhere.

Desperate, I turned to YouTube for some visual prompting. And my world screeched to a halt as I found myself watching clips that looked like a Shaolin Soccer remake directed by Michael Bay on a boxed gift set of Bacchus. A bunch of well-muscled guys leaping around a tennis court, Chuck Norrising the daylights out of a hapless soccer ball at speeds that would give any introductory student of Lorentz transformations a headache. Sending it off the shin as a straight volley into an opponent’s chest. Tearing across the full length of the court to leap valiantly through the air and defend from the forehead. Twisting around last-second to roundhouse from a teammate’s lob. Roundhouse. As I sat there, mouth agape, slouched in my own inadequacy and a little bit of drool, my sobbing mind’s eye slowly focused onto a single question: Why did I not know about this before?

Why did our Korean textbooks at the Yonsei KLI spend chapters brainwashing its students with useless ideas like “traditional Korean cuisine is very complicated to make” instead of “Koreans dreamed up a sport that makes ice hockey look like it was invented by your grandmother”? Why do a large contingent of Seoul’s more active expats spend cozy weekends prancing around old soccer fields with Discrafts instead of kicking each other in the face with a nine-inch plastic ball like real athletes? Why did millions of people gather round their television sets last weekend to get drunk around clips of padded men wrestling clumsily for a giant squishy almond instead of fire-eyed athletic warriors turning speed aerials around a far more reasonably shaped toy?

I don’t know. But I do know that this issue must be rectified. So watch our video and weep with inspiration. Then brush up with our simple starter set of jokgu rules:

1. The game is played on a tennis court (6.5 meters x15 meters), with 3 meters at both ends for serving. The net height is to be set at 1.05 meters.


2. Each team has four players on the court at any one time. Teams may have up to three additional players plus a team director on the bench. The team director may not enter the court.


3. Positions and rotation schedules are determined by the team’s own strategy.


4. The object of the game is, like volleyball, to send the ball to the floor of the opponent’s court.


5. Each play begins with a serve. The same team may serve continuously until the other team wins a point.


6. Three touches allowed per side before the ball must be sent to the opponent.


7. The best part: The ball may be contacted with only the feet, shins, or head. Hopefully your own.


8. Games are played to 15 points each; 3 games to a match. The first team to two wins is victorious. [1]

Finally, grab some friends and go out to kick some balls. Just make sure they’re the right ones.