About

Taeguk Warriors (or Taegeuk Warriors) is the nickname given to the South Korean National Football/Soccer team.

Taeguk represents the origin of everything in the universe; holding the two principles of yin and yang in perfect balance; blue= negative, red = positive. Swirling together, infinity in movement, and united as one. The Taeguk design was used by ancient Korean civilizations for different purposes, evolving into a symbol for Korean Taoism.

About Us

The Tavern of the Taeguk Warriors is an English-language Korean football website that has been creating original content, writing stories, previewing and reviewing matches and analyzing and scrutinizing Korean football since 2012.

We strive to tell the story of the beautiful game through a Korean perspective, by keeping up to date with the Korean National Team, Koreans Players Abroad, Youth Prospects, the K League as well as presenting innovative commentary and analysis you can’t get anywhere else on Korean football in the English language.

The Tavern is the brainchild of Roy Ghim, “The Old Tavern Owner”, who created this site as a blog following the jubilation and shock as Korean football once again stunned the world by claiming a historic Olympic bronze medal at the 2012 London Games. His deep passion and love for football is something emulated by the entire Tavern crew who are inspired by his story:

Tavern of the Taeguk Warriors was inspired partly by insanity – summers can be extremely hot in Maryland – but also a growing fascination with international soccer. The game is unique in our past century as a unifying international language. People can speak this common language despite enormous distances, lingual, cultural, and past differences.  It unites and occasionally divides (with horrific consequences), but ultimately bonds people across the world. I experienced it first hand in travels to rural Ghana as the 2006 World Cup was under way. In the village of Peki near the Togo border, jubilation erupted, people were animated by the word of mouth, and gunshots punctuated the air when Asamoah Gyan nailed the first shot in a 2-0 group stage victory over a heavily favored Czech Republic. People came out and handed me beers. It was pure magic. At night, drumming was loud and constant; despite it being 4 in the morning, I came to admire the endurance of the absolute joy Ghanians had in this victory.

The Tavern strives, yes, to relive these moments of delirium – the times when Korean football, and football in general, have inspired a generation. But the Tavern also strives to tell the story of today through various methods, by honing on the major structural and political issues surrounding Korean football in addition to following the Red Devils through cup competitions such as the elusive Asian Cup and the greatest sporting spectacle on earth – the World Cup.

Blogging, when done right, can be a way to illuminate the areas that the western media establishment under-report. The Tavern has several spotlights in order to raise the profile of Korean players within an western English language context.

Moreover, the Tavern strives to build a community. By uniting Koreans living abroad (of all generations), English-speaking Koreans at home and Korean football enthusiasts, the Tavern is dedicated to creating a space for passionate fans from all across the globe to share in the joys and the troubles of supporting Korean football. In addition, the Tavern staff is composed of a diverse and energetic team of contributors from across North America, Asia and Oceania ready to each bring their own perspective to hanguk chukgu.

Roy Ghim puts it best:

The Tavern of the Taeguk Warriors can be a place to convene, discuss, analyze, wring hands, pound the table, watch the games together, express joy and regret, and hang out and drink — except that you can’t really drink here, no liquor license in cyberspace… yet.

Find out more about our truly global crew of writers and contributors here.

For more on Roy’s story with football, the universal language, and reconnecting with his Korean roots, click here.

Update: the Tavern was recently rebooted in 12/2022 under Jinseok one of Roy’s first guest authors on the site. For a quick history of the Tavern how the 2022 reboot came to be, see Jinseok’s story here.

22 Comments

  1. Thank you for your website! Now I do not have to google everything and get all my information right here. I thought I was the only crazy fan of Korean soccer and their international exposure, but your website and commentary are spot on!

  2. This is fantastic stuff.
    Have you considered having another section about upcoming Korean talents? I think there’s a lot to talk about. There is this very young kid in the Valencia youth ranks that leaves everyone’s mouths open, I’m sure you’ve heard of him.
    Keep up the good work.
    And BTW this sport is FOOTBALL!

    • Yes indeed – we are getting around to him…trouble has been news from his club has been sparse, so we have less on him (but quite a bit more on the Barca Koreans).

      And yes, I agree – it’s football, but quite a number of Tavern goers are in the US, so we have to use ‘soccer’ from time to time. Semantics, you know… 😉

  3. May I ask where you go and what sites you use to keep up with Koreans all around the world? Including youth and such?

    • Tavern secret. Just kidding, there’s a couple of different sites – largely depending on the player.

      The obvious answer is Korean media. News on Korean footballers, both domestic and abroad is, as you can well imagine, fairly timely. Though it can be somewhat prone to incorrect information – I don’t know if it’s an over-reliance and lack of vetting of European news sources. Koreans who do play abroad regularly in top flight obviously treated like rock stars in the Korean press.

      That said, as far as english language source articles on Korean players -the local press nearest the teams they play on can have some timely news. So we aggregate & analyze.

      I’ll be honest, the BSK forum has some of the best timely info for many english language articles relating to Koreans in football abroad.

      I haven’t been on the ROK forum a whole lot, but I can only guess that they also have similarly timely info.

      Lastly, some of the big media outlets, ESPN FC, NYT Goals (now morphed into NYT Soccer), Sports Illustrated – all these places will occasionally have some relevant info on the bigger name Korean stars -as it pertains to the teams and tournaments they are on.

      The end of the weekend roundups, I go to soccerway.com and ESPN FC to get some stats, playing minutes, and whatever other relevant info I can include.

      Hope that helped answer yr question.

  4. Hey, I am an avid football fan, especially Korean. This blog is really amazing. Just what I wanted haha! YOu should like my facebook page supporting the Korean national Football team as well and we can work together on this!

    https://www.facebook.com/pages/%EB%8C%80%ED%95%9C%EB%AF%BC%EA%B5%AD-%EC%B6%95%EA%B5%AC-%EA%B5%AD%EA%B0%80%EB%8C%80%ED%91%9C-%EB%89%B4%EC%8A%A4/210882305592135

    4-2-3-1. whats your predicted line up for KOrea? Honestly I think Hong Myung bo should start using 4-1-4-1 cuz Ki is good enough to hold back as well as build up attacks. and btw do you speak korean?

    Mine:
    Kim Shin Wook

    Son Kim bo kyung Koo Ja Cheol Lee Chung Yong

    Ki

    Kim Jin Su Hong Jeong-Ho Kim young-Kwon Lee Yong

    Kim Seung Kyu

    • I’m sorry I haven’t replied earlier – predicted formation? 4-3-3 is a guess for the upcoming Mar 5 friendly with Greece – but I’m not 100% sure. I unfortunately don’t speak Korean – I got kicked out of Korean language school in 7th grade and at the time I thought I was bad ass. I sincerely regretted that since then (mein hamneeda sung-seng-nim!!!)

  5. Happened upon this site while searching for ‘lee seung woo’

    I totally feel ya about 2002 and getting into soccer (especially Korean)

    oh btw I’m from Texas but currently trying to be Gangnam style (I work and live in Gangnam now)

    – Edward

    • Hey, thanks for reading it! Although lots of the credit has to go to Roy for starting this incredible site. It’s so frickin’ awesome. Especially for ppl like me whose Hangul has… it’s limits.

  6. Help Please…Does anyone know how I can introduce my 10 year old daughter to a Korean youth team? She is a very talented and hard working player and says she would one day like to play in Korea. I was born in Busan myself and my mother has been teaching her to speak Korean. We live in the St. Louis, Missouri area and I have no idea where to start. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for this site, it really helps to familiarize us with football in Korea.

    • I also just thought of a really good idea! In terms of the women’s soccer community, and especially the WK League in Korea, nobody knows more than Hal Kaiser! He’s lived in Korea, has a lot of good contacts with Korean women’s players and NWSL. So I would suggest getting in touch with him via Twitter DMs, @Hal_Kaiser. His kids play youth soccer as well so I bet he’ll have some ideas for you!

  7. Hi Louis! First of all, thank you so much for reading and visiting our site! Love to have people like you as part of our TaegukWarriors community! Would you mind if I post your comment on our Tavern Facebook group? I just have this feeling that someone in our community may be able to help you with the youth soccer community in Missouri!

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