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Korea's Football Federation Has a Pattern: Blame the Star. It Happened in '98. It's Happening Again Now.

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By Sumi

Incheon Airport, then a flight back to LA two days later.

This isn't just a Korean sports story — it's showing up in American coverage too, from ESPN to Yahoo Sports. Argentine outlet Olé and Spain's COPE went further, reporting that former South Korea coach Hong Myung-bo left for Los Angeles over death threats against him and his family, not just to "rest."

What actually happened

South Korea's World Cup ended in the group stage — a win over Czechia, then back-to-back 1-0 losses to Mexico and South Africa, three points total. In the must-win match against South Africa, the one that decided the Round-of-32 spot, Hong benched both Son Heung-min and Lee Jae-sung from the start — reusing a substitution gamble that had actually worked in the Czech match (where Oh Hyeon-gyu scored the winner after subbing in for Son). This time it didn't. Reports surfaced of a locker-room confrontation between Hong and Son after the Mexico match. There's also a less-discussed thread behind the team's media boycott in the first place: it started after reporters were caught mocking players like Son who took the early-overseas-training route instead of serving mandatory military duty. Whether to resume interviews after that boycott became its own flashpoint with Son and others.

President Lee Jae-myung publicly criticized the hiring process that put Hong in charge in the first place, calling out favoritism over competence. KFA president Chung Mong-gyu resigned after 13 years in the role. Two days after Hong landed back in Korea, he flew out again — to LA, where his US-born children already live. Since then, reports have started surfacing that the federation, with Hong as the visible face of it, had been quietly and deliberately sidelining certain players who didn't fit the KFA's internal culture, for a long time.

After the resignation.

A word for what happened to Son

A scapegoat is someone who takes the blame for a failure that was never really theirs alone to carry. It's the word a lot of Korean commentary is reaching for right now.

My husband thinks he's seen this movie before

Jinguk brought up something I hadn't connected: this same organization did almost the same thing to Cha Bum-kun in 1998. Cha was fired mid-tournament at the France World Cup, after a loss to Mexico and a brutal 5-0 defeat to the Netherlands. He and his wife later blamed the federation's incompetence, factionalism, and what they called a "pile-on" against him specifically. Looking back now, most people agree that firing was excessive — the federation and press effectively treated him like he'd committed a crime, and it took until 2017 for him to get his first official role back in Korean football administration.

One detail Jinguk pointed out: in 1998 the federation was run by Chung Mong-joon; in 2026, by Chung Mong-gyu — both from the Hyundai family lineage, at the helm both times a star got sacrificed after a World Cup collapse.

To be fair to the facts: Cha was a coach who got fired, and Son is a player who got benched by his own coach — not quite the same mechanism. But the shape of it, blame landing on one face instead of the organization, keeps repeating. Jinguk's theory goes a layer deeper: both men spent long stretches outside Korea, never fully absorbed into the federation's internal culture, and both drew massive public support that had nothing to do with the federation's own approval. His read is that the KFA's biggest fear isn't losing — it's a person earning a position through public opinion and merit rather than internal politics, because that makes the federation's existing unfairness impossible to ignore. His theory on this World Cup specifically: there was already a plan to get through the tournament using only the federation's own preferred players, deliberately denying Son and Lee Jae-sung any spotlight — and when that plan collapsed, the scapegoat narrative got pulled out as the backup plan.

We're easing back into the studio and garden rhythm this week — there's fresh 깻잎 ready for kimchi, and I'm sneaking in canvas time between all this World Cup drama.

Subscribe if you're following the World Cup fallout, and let me know in the comments what you think of the Cha Bum-kun comparison.


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