- guardian.co.uk, Sunday June 23 2002 04.40 BST
All through yesterday, the batteries of loudspeakers that line the 150-mile border played and replayed South Korea's controversial and entirely unexpected victory over Spain. Huge billboards - which more usually extol the virtues of capitalism - flashed the news of South Korea's advance to the semi-finals.
'We are broadcasting the World Cup matches as part of our psychological warfare against the North,' said Major Yoon Won Shik. 'There has been no discernible reaction,' he added laconically.
But there was nothing understated about the reaction among Yoon's countrymen. At least four million of them filled the streets with red flags, red shirts, red faces and red banners to celebrate their team's quarter-final win in the penalty shoot-out. They were loud, happy, sober, excited and, above all, young. For years, South Korea's youth - fed up with Cold War politics - had been seeking a new identity. Yesterday they found it in football.
Clad in the uniform of young Asia - jeans and bleached hair - they filled streets and parks as they sat in the sunshine watching the big screens. 'Korea! Korea! We did it!' exclaimed 25-year-old Cho Min Soo, wearing a hat made out of a football. 'My heart seems to be exploding with joy. I can hardly breathe.'
At the stunning stadium in Kwangju, Kim Dae Jung, the veteran democrat and South Korea's President since 1998, embraced Guus Hiddink, the Dutch-born national coach who has become a national hero. A giant banner of him flapped from a building in Seoul with the slogan 'Let's go to Yokohama', where, if the South Koreans can beat Germany when they meet in Seoul on Tuesday, the final will be played against Brazil or Turkey on Sunday.
Nearly 40,000 Koreans had joined the President to watch their team, who were 150-1 outsiders at the beginning of the tournament, win 5-3 in a penalty shoot-out after the match finished goalless. Hong Myung-Bo converted the final spot-kick, after Joaquín had missed Spain's fourth effort.
'It's a tremendous achievement by the boys,' said Hiddink. 'We will approach the next match against Germany like, once more, a bunch of young dogs.'
Last week Minister of Commerce Shin Kook Hwan called for Samsung, Daewoo and the other flagging giants of South Korean business to 'adopt the Hiddink style' and go all out to win new foreign investment.
President Kim himself badly needs the boost of a World Cup win to divert attention from the political mess surrounding him as he nears the end of his five-year term. On Friday he made a personal apology to the nation for what the Korean media called his 'double family disgrace' - then wished the football team good luck. Two of his sons are in police custody, one for taking bribes and the other for involvement in a financial scandal.
Many Koreans are belated victims of football mania. Ma Shil Park, 22, had never been to a football match before. Yesterday, when the two teams began the penalty shoot-out, she put her face in her hands and prayed. 'I couldn't bear to watch,' said the 22-year-old student from Taejon. 'They were so close anything could happen. It was in God's hands.'
The sudden outpouring of emotion yesterday has deep roots. The student generation of the 1980s challenged the dictators in the streets until, under US pressure, the generals eventually backed down. Many of that generation are now politicians in the new - but tarnished - democracy. Kim's pledge to fight corruption, like his 'sunshine' diplomacy towards North Korea, is deeply flawed.
Older Koreans - almost entirely male - headed last night to traditional bars to get drunk on soju (Korean vodka) and eat octopus or cold noodles. In Seoul's Myongdong district and other cosmopolitan areas, young Koreans - as many women as men - drank coffee and ate pizza.
And though the Korean youth may cheer their national team, they are much less narrowly nationalistic than their parents. They are part of the Asian youth culture that stretches from Tokyo to Kuala Lumpur, from Shanghai to Singapore. 'In South Korea,' complains a Korean youth website, 'we are invisible in public. Teenagers are supposed to spend 14 hours at school. Young ones in the streets are treated as delinquents.'
This month they have been far from invisible. They have appropriated the national flag - associated with heavy-handed political ceremonies, particularly under the dictatorship - wearing it as a scarf or a cape or even as a skirt.
The police are happy to go along with what are highly regimented celebrations. A police spokesman at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said 71 police squads had been stationed at designated 'major cheering points'.
