Away Days: Seoul's roar for Korea

The train from Astana to Seoul runs three days and two nights, and by the time it pulls into Yongsan I have eaten all the plov I brought and half the dried fish. From there the subway to the World Cup Stadium is forty minutes and costs a few hundred won. The ground stands on the north bank of the Han, and on the walk from the station the stalls are already thick with smoke and steam. I stop for tteokbokki, rice cakes in a red sauce that burns the cold out of me, and a cup of sweet odeng broth. The queue is full of families in red shirts, and a man in a padded jacket tells me he has been coming here since he was a boy. 'Now I bring my daughter,' he says, and the girl waves a small flag.

Inside, the ground is a bowl of grey concrete and red seats, open at the north end to the hills beyond. The pitch is immaculate, the floodlights already on against the winter dusk. The crowd is 80,711, and they are not here for the third division. They are here because it is Japan. The noise when the teams come out is a wall of sound, and it does not stop.

Korea score twice in fifteen first-half minutes. First Jang Tae-Hwan, the right-back, arrives late at the far post and smashes the ball in from a low cross. The stadium erupts. Then the right winger cuts inside and curls a shot into the far corner. The man next to me is on his feet, shouting something I do not need to translate. Japan pull one back with twenty minutes left, a scrappy goal from a corner, and for a while the game is stretched and nervous. But Korea hold on, and when the whistle goes the roar is as loud as anything I have heard.

The walk back to the station is long and slow, the crowd singing all the way. A young woman offers me a piece of hotteok, sweet and sticky, and I take it. The last train leaves at 22:12, and I am on it, the red of the stadium fading behind me. I have been to bigger games, but few that meant more to the people in the stands.