This story first appeared on The LA Local.
In 2002, Josh Lee watched South Korea’s World Cup run from a Korean Pentecostal megachurch in New York.
Congregants gathered before dawn to watch the matches, packing into a sanctuary normally reserved for worship. When Ahn Jung-hwan scored the golden goal that sent South Korea past heavily favored Italy and into the World Cup quarterfinals, the church erupted.
“We’re used to people praying in tongues and stuff, but people were going even crazier at like three in the morning,” Lee said. “It literally was in a house of worship and I think that bridged a lot of things for me of how important this is.”
Memories like Lee’s sit at the center of Korea, Away, a documentary series exploring the Korean diaspora through the Korean men’s national soccer team. The title, the creators say, refers to the experience of always being the away team, even in your home country.
Behind the series is Lee, a Los Angeles-based creative and member of a Koreatown-based LAFC supporters group; Ray An, founder and creative director of a L.A. streetwear brand; and Emanuel Hahn, a filmmaker and photographer. Drawing on interviews and reporting from Korean communities across North America throughout the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the three are trying to understand why people support a team from a country they no longer live in — or, in many cases, have never lived in at all.
For An, the question “Why do we support Team Korea?” begins with a contradiction. Many of the people around him are U.S. citizens who don’t closely follow soccer. An, while a soccer fanatic — he’s been to every World Cup since 2014 — was raised in the U.S. Yet every four years, when the World Cup arrives, they find themselves pulling for South Korea.
Again and again, their interviews returned to 2002, when South Korea stunned the world with a run to the semifinals.
The 2002 of it all
Hahn was 12 years old at the time, living in Singapore with his brothers. The family didn’t have cable, so they followed South Korea’s matches through Yahoo Sports’ live updates.
“I didn’t even understand the significance of winning against a powerhouse like Italy. We were just so ecstatic.”
For Hahn, who jumped from place to place as he was growing up — Singapore, Cambodia, Saipan, New York and L.A. — soccer was a constant in his life and how he found his identity.
The tournament left a similarly lasting impression on James Kim, who was 21 and watching matches at Liberty Park in Koreatown.
“I just remember they were selling ‘Be the Reds’ shirts everywhere,” Kim, 45, said. “I even had the ‘Be the Reds’ and Korean flags attached to my car and you just kind of saw that all over Koreatown and it was a really big, cultural experience.”
Kim, who is half Korean and half Filipino, was raised primarily in a Korean household by his Korean father and stepmother. He said the tournament also changed the way he thought about himself.
“I don’t look full-Korean,” he said, “so whether it was at the market or at a restaurant, I never really got treated like I was Korean, and so that was always a little bit of a struggle.”
“I felt like I was able to be a part of something that everyone else — all the other Korean Americans around me — were also a part of,” he continued. “I think that was probably the first time I felt just very proud to be Korean.”
Finding a place on Team Korea
Hahn said many of the people they spoke with described support for the national team in terms of belonging, particularly among immigrants and members of the diaspora navigating questions of identity.
Many immigrants arrive in the U.S. expecting to assimilate, Hahn said, only to discover that that is often more complicated than they imagined.
“When that assimilation is thwarted for whatever reason, there is this response to finding a place that they feel like they can belong,” he said.
The team’s reputation as an underdog resonates with many immigrants who see parallels in their own experiences.
“When they see the South Korean team, especially in 2002, overcoming the odds to go on this sort of Cinderella run, it’s hard not to be romantic about that,” Hahn said.
The interviews also revealed very different relationships to Korean identity.
One of the earliest interviews featured in the project was with Meeja Richards, a biracial Korean and the child of an adopted Korean parent.
Lee said Richards described supporting the national team as a way to connect with a culture she did not grow up around.
“The Korean national team became this choice that she made in adulthood as a way to be like, ‘hey, I want an extension, I want an extra branch, I want a bridge to the Korean culture that I’m not very familiar with,'” Lee said.
Another interviewee, Lee said, considers it his “birthright” to support South Korea despite being a U.S. citizen.
The project tries to understand what lies beneath those convictions, An said.
The interviews also revealed generational differences, Hahn said.
While younger interview subjects grew up surrounded by Korean cultural exports such as BTS, Blackpink and Son Heung-min, older interview subjects often viewed the success of the national team through the lens of immigration and sacrifice.
“What I gathered from these interviews was it’s very gratifying, I think, for them to see the success of the Korean men’s national team and to see someone like Sonny, it almost feels like a validation of all the hard work that they’ve done,” he said.
While the docuseries focuses on Korean identity, An, Hahn and Lee say that diversity is central to the series.
“We want to highlight just how diverse the diaspora is,” Hahn said. “How can soccer be a tool to inform the parts of yourself? We want to build a big tent where hopefully people can see a bit of themselves in the interviews that we do.”
The series is expected to be released after the World Cup, likely in late summer or early fall. Follow the project on Instagram, @korea.away, for updates.
