I went to South Korea's biggest rugby game
Rugby is not very popular in Korea. There are a few semi-pro teams playing a tournament nobody watches, there is a very obscure Korean Netflix Rugby-Gameshow, the national team is currently 38th in the world and besides that, the armed forces have a team as well. That's it. Almost.
"Almost", because there are also Korea University and Yonsei University (2 of the country's 3 most prestigious universities) who have an annual sports competition against each other. They compete in five different sports: baseball, football (soccer), basketball, (ice) hockey, and rugby. All five games happen on just one weekend - last weekend - with the students going absolutely mad about the whole thing.
My Korean wife is casually interested in rugby and agreed to take me to this year's game. As far as I understood, it's not really possible for non-students to buy tickets to this game with money. However, rugby is not the most popular of the five matches , and kickoff was at 11 am on a Saturday. My wife thought with other games being played the night before everyone would still be hungover and the stadium half empty and that most likely the gates would either just be open or someone would try to get rid of tickets in front of the stadium.
She wasn't right. The subway was flooded with students, the way from the station to the stadium was a river of red and blue shirts and there was no one trying to sell tickets. Luckily my wife found the desk for "Korea University Alumni" and after somehow producing prove that she is one (she actually is, I just wouldn't know how to find evidence that spontaneously) we both got handed not just free tickets but also a gift bag with water, a soft drink, some cake and cool hat.
Our "Alumni" section was on the main stand, in the shade, and roped off from the rest of the stadium. To my surprise, there really didn't seem to be any change to get in if you're not associated with one of the two schools - apart from most probably the black market.
The match would usually be held in Jamsil at Soul's Olympic stadium, but that seems to undergo some renovations currently (at least that's why I understood - my Korean isn't very good), thus this year the match happened in Mokdong Stadium seating 15K people. At the start of the match the stadium was probably half full, but lots of people (I reckon many of them were indeed still drunk from the day before) poured in during the entirety of the game. By the second half, the stadium was almost filled. So this is EASILY South Korea's biggest rugby game.
Both universities each brought two giant stages for multiple cheerleading groups to dance in front of the crowd. Also Korea University even brought an entire rock band to play the chants (see 4th picture). During half time there was also an elaborate flag waving, dancing and singing kinda show (see 6th picture).
In terms of quality: well, I guess for university teams, they were actually pretty decent. I was surprised though how hard the boys went. You could definitely tell it's their biggest game of the year. Some collisions were outright brutal!
Also, most of the kids in the stands didn't actually care too much about the game. Priority one was having a good time. Priority two was cheering for their school. Whether actually following the game made the top 10, I'm not sure. Still, an estimated 12-13K people having a great time at a rugby game in Korea on a Saturday morning put a very big smile on my face!