{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.029711375212224108, 'fraction_numerical': 0.00622524052065648, 'mean_word_length': 4.951178451178452, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Feminization of the 2002 World Cup and women's fandom1

The history of soccer shows a happy union of masculinity and nationalism. In the case of the 2002 World Cup games, however, at least in Korean society, soccer seems to have become a feminized event, with the main ‘symbols’ associated with the masculine soccer losing their powers. This claim that the World Cup, hosted in Korea was ‘feminized’, is based on the following two factors. First, Korean women participated in the games in unprecedented numbers, as the majority of consumers and active supporters. It is said that half or two thirds of those cheering the games were women.2 The participation of women pushed out the ‘soju (cheap and popular Korean liquor) packs,’ ‘bad language under the pretence of cheering’ and the ‘hooligans’ who romanticized collective violence. Instead, they filled the stadium and the streets with style and vibrant energy. Second, women transformed the soccer games into a space where they could project their ‘sexual desires’, breaking the linkage of harsh solidarity and tension between the macho male players and the macho (male-supremacist) male supporters. The cheerleaders, who had been the only women shared between those two groups of men, disappeared, and women in stadiums, on the streets, and in front of the TV enjoyed imaginary and direct ‘heterosexual’ romance with the male soccer players. In short, women brought soccer, which had been the symbol of men’s exclusive homosocial solidarity, out into the ‘open world’ of romance and fantasy. It was due to their outstanding activities that Korean women, known to hate ‘boring stories about soccer games played by men, specially while they were in the army’, came to decorate the media with headlines such as ‘wind of women’, ‘woman power’ and ‘cheering women warriors’. Stripping the Korean national flag of its heavy solemnity and nationalism, they brought change with their white, red, blue and black sports bras, scarves, tank tops and skirts. And the young Korean women who had been the target of criticism by the media every summer for their ‘excessive spending’ and ‘oversexed outfits’ were praised as original and attractive fashion leaders at the soccer scenes. As the participation in the soccer scenes of the new generation’s women increased in considerable numbers, the ‘ajumma’s (a popular term indicating older, married women) who had waited for their husbands while setting the table with beers, set out for ‘Gwanghwamoon Square (main street in front of City Hall)’ with their kids. Foreigners of different skin colours joined in the street festivals, free from fears of unpredictable group violence. Women, as the majority of the street supporters, had saved the stadium and the streets from madness and violence and enlivened them as an open space of cultural festivity. In the midst of this, women’s soccer teams started to be formed around the country and suggestions that women’s soccer should be developed grew rapidly. The appearance of women as the biggest ‘unexpected event’ of the 2002 World Cup signalled the points of negotiations that were to be formed between the World Cup as a global event and the local women of Korea. Although soccer is a game, the FIFA World Cup is a global cultural product created by the global media and various commercial advertisements. The 2002 World Cup was geared toward satisfying the cultural taste of the new generation of Koreans who came to dictate the consumer patterns in the 1990s. It successfully reconstructed an