GANGNEUNG, South Korea (AP) — As South Korea’s national soccer coach prepared to play Japan in a 1954 World Cup qualifier, President Syngman Rhee, who’d been liberated, with the rest of Korea, from Japan’s brutal colonial rule in 1945, had some advice should the Koreans lose: “Don’t think about coming back alive,” he supposedly told the coach. “Just throw yourself into the Genkai Sea.”
NBCOlympics.com: Linguistic divide poses problem to Korea Olympic hockey team
There are sports rivalries, and then there’s Korea vs. Japan — an often toxic mix of violent history and politics, with a (un)healthy dose of cultural chauvinism and envy mixed in.