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Cold War strikers form foundation of S Korean football

The 20 young men were gathered by South Korea's much-feared spy agency at its secluded compound in Seoul and told to go to war against North Korea "without guns and bayonets."

Their battlefield: the grassy pitch. Their weapon: a soccer ball.

The all-star team, marshaled to play more than three decades ago, was probably the only soccer squad ever run by government spy agents. But it has now recaptured headlines as the nostalgic foundation of South Korea's modern soccer success and a sober reminder of Cold War rivalries that still divide the Korean peninsula.

Back in the 1960s, however, the inter-Korean rivalry between the capitalist South and communist North ran so deep that both countries even hatched competing plots to assassinate each other's leaders.

Naturally, no one was more shocked than the South when North Korea's little-known national soccer team upset Italy 1-0 to reach the quarterfinals at the 1966 World Cup finals in England.

South Korea's horrified Korean Central Intelligence Agency, notorious for torturing political dissidents, commandeered the 20 best players from teams around the nation for a squad that would not only surpass the North but also elevate South Korea to supremacy in Asian soccer -- a position the country still holds today.

"The KCIA director told us we should be ready to fight North Korea," said Lee Se-yon, 58, former goalkeeper for the hand-picked team. "He said it's going to be a war without guns and bayonets. He said all men are born to be patriots, and we should become patriots through soccer."

The commando-style squad, which formed the backbone of the South Korean national team, was dubbed Yangji, or "sunlit land," after the KCIA motto: "We work in the dark to protect the sunlit land." Every win on the field was to translate into a propaganda victory of South over North.

For three years, the players were sequestered in a KCIA compound for grueling training on one of the few grass fields then available in South Korea. They were dosed with American vitamins, fed US Army C-rations, and got a fat monthly allowance. Their Yangji days counted toward South Korea's three-year mandatory military service.

KCIA director Kim Hyong-wook personally plied the players with gourmet food. He awarded expensive wristwatches to players who trained hard. He even promised to give a house to each player if the team won third place in an international military soccer tournament. The team wound up fourth.

"They said they would do anything for us, as long as we won matches," said former Yangji defender Cho Jong-soo, now 59.

But Kim also kept close tabs on his players.

"Once the head coach called us in and asked what we did during a leave. When I lied about drinking, he showed me a report that recorded all my activities on an hour-by-hour basis," Lee said.

"It was spooky, like a 007 movie."

When the KCIA learned that North Korea honed its team's skills by sending it to the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, KCIA also sent its squad to Europe for training -- 105 days in a row.

Then-President Park Chung-hee supported soccer to muster nationalistic fervor against communism and also as a diversion from rising domestic discontent with authoritarian rule.

During the 2002 World Cup it co-hosted with Japan, South Korea became the first Asian country to advance to the semifinals of world soccer's showcase tournament, breaking North Korea's record set 36 years ago. North Korea stayed away from the 2002 tournament.

"It was during those Yangji days that the foundation of South Korean soccer was laid," said former national team coach Kim Ho, who was also a member of the KCIA team.

Many of Yangji's players became soccer stars, coaches of future national teams or officials at the Korean Football Federation.
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