The Emergence of Korean Unity

In Henry Em’s, “Minjok as a Modern and Democratic Construct: Sin Ch’aeho’s Historiography,” he talks about how the concept of Korean national identity is a fairly modern construct and that before the 19^th century, there was no sense of unity or loyalty among the people who lived in Korea regarding their state or each other. (338) It was not until Korea was conquered by Japan that the idea of nationalism was created because for:

Organizing movements for independence, self-strengthening-and people's rights, [...] intellectuals re-imagined Korea's collective identity in terms of a "deep, horizontal comradeship" - regardless of, or because of, the actual divisions and inequalities that prevailed in Korean society. (Em, 339)

This transition from identification by class to identification by national pride is exemplified in one of the last scenes of YMCA Baseball Team (2002).

Throughout the movie, the YCMA baseball team is considered the best in all of Korea and remain undefeated until they go against the Japanese soldiers. The key scene is in the two teams’ rematch. Jeong Byeong-Hwan (Kim Il-Woong) breaks his bat and goes to get another one from the bucket. He finds all of them unsuitable and eventually accepts the bat of his teammate, Ma Seong-Han (Lee Dae-Yeon). This in itself is a great show of teamwork, but there is so much more meaning in the gesture once one looks back at the rest of the movie. When all the members first gathered, Seong-Han ran up to Byeong-Hwan, his previous employer, to greet him. In response, Byeong-Hwan completely dismissed him because Seong-Han was but a lowly servant to him. This trend follows as Byeong-Hwan refuses to catch the ball that Seong-Han throws at him, saying that he could never work with someone who was of such low class. This came to a climax when the YCMA baseball team lost their first match against Japan, and Seong-Han finally yelled at Byeong-Hwan saying that class discrimination had ended long ago, so there was no reason for him to be so hostile. Then Byeong-Hwan asserted that he would always be above Seong-Han and walked off. The next time they see each other is that the rematch where Byeong-Hwan accepts the bat from Seong-Han despite having other choices, finally breaking the barrier between class status in order to be a truly unified team for one purpose—defeating the Japanese team. In the same way that a unified identity that is “Korea” was created in reaction to Japan, the unified identity of the YCMA baseball team was finally accomplished in reaction to the Japanese baseball team.

Even in the movie, it is recognized that the baseball rematch was much more than just a game. The Japanese official, Hidenori Nomura (Masato Ibu), who was so against his son, Hideo Nomura (Kazuma Suzuki), playing baseball instead of being a soldier, allowed him to play the game instead of arresting traitors-- his biggest job as a soldier. Hidenori explicitly stated that their team had to crush the YCMA baseball team because the audience of Koreans were looking at the team with a sense of hope and national pride that had to be destroyed. So clearly it is supported that the two baseball teams and their members are analogous to the countries they came from.