Annual Salary of 1,500,000 Dollars for One and Half Year

Rewards of 250 Thousand Dollars for Reaching Semi-final and 300 Million Won of CF Guarantee, etc

‘2 million dollars + a’

Coach Guus Hiddink who presented big gift so called ‘semi-final myth’ of WORLD CUP to Korea and went back to Netherlands. Would he receive ‘cost’ commensurate to it? The person concerned at KFA stated, “The total money that Coach Hiddink took is around 2 million dollars (about 2.4 billion won)”. About salary of 1 million 500 thousand dollars a year.

Reward of 250 thousand dollars for qualifying semi-final. Encouragement money of 100 million won for A match. And (estimated) 300 million won as Samsung Card CF model payment. In addition, there were many other encouragement money and prizes, which each different field presented, as well as unrevealed money due to contract.

Annual salary and reward is the money that Coach Hiddink takes as cash, after KFA pay taxes. And encouragement money and CF model payment follow domestic tax rules. Although such things are encountered, but KFA reckons it would be above 2 million dollars.

According to KFA, it invested much more money on coach Hiddink, if it adds such as providing of Hyundai Grandeur XG car, Lotte hotel and Hyatt hotel fee, which were used for his staying, etc. However, KFA reacts, “We obtained hundred, thousand times more than what we invested. KFA analyzed that it received an effect of more than thousand million dollars considering upgraded national image on entering semi-finals in World Cup, newly established relations between Korea and Netherlands, and induction of soccer fan’s interest, etc. At this point, Coach Hiddink took back huge ‘fame’ because he could stand firmly as the world’s best coach through Korean team.

Jong-Koo Yang yjongk@donga.com