Did Crush Snub Black Fans at a Concert in South Korea?
With his country’s World Cup victory in June, South Korea’s most famous footballer, Parkin Song-gil, became the country’s top soccer star. He became idolized by an entire generation of young Korean males.
But all that success doesn’t necessarily mean a lot to a bunch of black South Korean fans. One night in a concert that was meant for the whole nation only featured a handful of white people, and when that few showed up, there was a loud cheer from the crowd. The black South Korean fans were snubbed.
Then, a few weeks later, Parkin did the unthinkable, and snubbed another group of South Korean fans in a concert in Europe. The reaction to that snub has only been heightened in the news cycle since then. It’s been dubbed #WonkDoorin. It was like the punchline to a joke. But it wasn’t.
Parkin was just doing his job. The same job many Koreans do, even when the country’s soccer team wins at the World Cup. Parkin, a native of South Korea, is one of the few foreign players in the South Korean national team. He’s often seen with an entourage of black South Korean fans, who have been to many national team games to cheer for him. Parkin also snubs them when he comes to the stadium.
When South Korean fans have the opportunity to see Parkin, they often turn up in droves. That’s because the soccer stadium is close enough for them to attend the matches. They love to attend the matches because they can be the only black people there, and they’re allowed to eat and drink whatever they want in the rest of the stadium. But they don’t get to see Parkin, the best player in South Korea.
That’s because the national team’s game in Germany had been switched to a different venue, forcing every single soccer fan in Germany, some of them the black South Korean fans who attend the matches, to get up and walk around the stadium in the middle of the night.
Now, that black South Korean fan, who had been to many Parkin matches, is worried that Parkin won’t recognize him when he sees him at