For Fans, Korea’s Loss Is Bitter Pill

“A notice posted on FIFA official website says that if five million or more people sign their names to a petition within 24 hours, there will be a rematch.”

“FIFA regulations say an objection against refereeing is legitimate only when it is raised within 24 hours. Please send this message to others.”

These are the SMS messages that flooded people’s cell phones on Saturday at dawn.

It is estimated that these messages from an unreliable source were sent to several million people across the nation.

The messages prevailed until Sunday morning, as people delivered the messages to others in hopes of a rematch.

An English-written objection to be posted on the FIFA official website also made the rounds on the Internet.

As a vast number of people who received the messages visited the website to check the notice and netizens accessed the website in order to post an objection, the FIFA official website was inaccessible for the whole weekend, and the official website of the Korea Football Association (KFA) was partially down as well.

Some netizens, not knowing how to overcome their anger, posted messages on several websites saying that people should send written protests to major international media, foreign portal websites, as well as the Swiss embassy in Korea.

The KFA, however, tried to calm the public by announcing that there is no such regulation of “a rematch if five million people write in protest,” and a rematch only takes place when there is an unavoidable situation, such as a natural disaster.

Also, the Jung-rang police station booked a Mr. Kim (44) without detention on the charge of calling the police to tell that he would blow up the Swiss embassy.

According to the police, Kim, who was watching the match in a bar near Kyunghee University, called the police via his cell phone right before the game ended to say, “Where is the Swiss embassy, I’m going to blow it up.”

Kim told the police he did it because “it was so unfair that Korea lost on account of wrong refereeing.”

peacechaos@donga.com sukim@donga.com