Son Heung-min, widely regarded as the best Asian player in the English Premier League, has recently transferred from Tottenham Hotspur to Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC), after captaining Tottenham to a UEFA Europa League championship. His professional career has flourished in Europe and is expected to do so in America. Yet his popularity in Korea remains as palpable and immediate as if he were playing on home soil. Perhaps the accelerating pace of international media, amplified by the immediacy and scrutiny of social media, along with football clubs’ strategies to expand their global fanbase by catering to international supporters such as Koreans, has fuelled this phenomenon—Son as both a Premier League icon and a national pride. Is this merely a matter of following one’s favourite player wherever his pitch may be? Or does it reveal new ways in which Koreans envision themselves?
Even before Son Heung-min, Korean football had produced figures such as Park Ji-sung and Cha Bum-kun, who built remarkable international careers. Cha, affectionately nicknamed “Cha Boom” in Germany for his explosive pace and dribbling skill, played for Eintracht Frankfurt and Bayer Leverkusen, scoring 121 goals during the 1980s. He won the UEFA Cup with each club—achievements made all the more impressive given that Korea then stood at the periphery of the global football map. His technical excellence and fame in the German league became a source of hope for the future of Korean football.
Park Ji-sung, known as an “oxygen tank” for his exceptional fitness and endurance, emerged as a star of Korea’s national team during the 2002 FIFA World Cup. His outstanding performances helped propel Korea to the semi-finals, after which he signed with Manchester United in 2005 and later Queens Park Rangers in 2012. Even while playing in the English Premier League, Park remained a national hero, embodying the seemingly impossible dreams of Korean football fans. Each match he played in England felt like an extension of the World Cup stage, where he had once carried the nation’s footballing aspirations.
Son Heung-min shares elements of this national-hero status, yet his trajectory diverges in important ways from that of his predecessors. He signed with the German club Hamburger SV in 2010, at just 18 years of age. Although he was undoubtedly a promising young player, he did not have the opportunity to cultivate a reputation on the basis of national sentiment in the way Cha and Park had—both of whom were already celebrated by Korean fans before making their moves to Europe. Son’s credentials as a professional footballer were forged entirely through his progression in European clubs. He had no shared histories or formative memories with Korean supporters that could directly translate his success into a collective national achievement. When he scored, he scored for his clubs; when he lifted a trophy, he lifted it for his clubs. Yet Korean fans, and Koreans more broadly, have embraced his achievements as their own, crowning him a proud son of their footballing lineage.
Global Stages and Local Identities
Son’s career, built almost entirely outside the domestic football sphere yet still claimed as a source of national pride, reflects the changing ways in which Koreans imagine their place—and their representatives—on the global stage. Through Son, Koreans break from the idea that being Korean means being bound to physically Korean conditions: geography, family, and domestic careers. One can now be Korean in multiple, diverse ways, shaping one’s own mode of belonging. Son’s years in European clubs did not mean he abandoned his Korean identity; rather, he fashioned a version of it that was distinctly Korean yet fully immersed in the rules and rhythms of European football. Korean fans did much the same. They could support Son and embrace his European clubs as their own teams without any sense of contradiction or betrayal. This was a moment when the boundaries between what is physically or purely Korean and what is not began to blur—producing an ever-expanding set of reference points through which new anchors for Korean identity could be formed.
Of the many changing circumstances, perhaps the most decisive in enabling the Son phenomenon has been the widespread accessibility of international flights. By the mid-2010s, overseas travel had become markedly more affordable, turning trips abroad from a luxury into a legitimate form of leisure for young Koreans. Suddenly, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London felt surprisingly close. With the disappearance of the distance barrier—which had once lent an almost mystical aura—matches of an English Premier League team no longer seemed like exotic spectacles shrouded in the inscrutable histories of football legends. Young fans could fly to London, watch matches in the stadium, mingle with local supporters, and cheer both for their idol and for the team he played for. While there was surely a sense of national pride among the Korean fans present, that pride blended seamlessly with a broader passion for football and a sports camaraderie that transcended national boundaries.
If Park Ji-sung’s career narrative, in cinematic terms, resembles a melodrama—like Billy Elliot (2000), the story of a small-town boy who makes it big in the city—then Son Heung-min’s is more of an action-adventure, akin to the Indiana Jones franchise, where the hero leaves home, crosses borders, and bends a few rules in search of both treasure and self-discovery. A social media post captured his recent transfer from Tottenham Hotspur to LAFC by noting that “Son came here as a boy and left a man.” In doing so, he demonstrated that becoming an internationally successful footballer can be a powerful way of being—and being seen as—Korean.
Son of Los Angeles: A Hero Between Worlds
Son Heung-min now faces a new chapter in his career, navigating between football cultures and national contexts while developing his own distinctive style. In the dry landscape of Los Angeles, situated within a desert climate zone, his narrative might unfold in the manner of Lawrence of Arabia (1962). T.E. Lawrence is a complex figure: a British army officer involved in the attacks on Aqaba and Damascus during the First World War. Amid the international politics of world powers and the Arab tribes, his loyalties were tested, and his sense of belonging repeatedly challenged. Yet, when cracks appeared in his identity as a British officer, Lawrence stepped beyond the mould imposed on him. Rather than simply serving the empire, he redefined what it meant to be British by aligning his actions with principles that transcended national interest. His fear of becoming barbaric—a war animal like the enemies he despised—did not weaken him but instead deepened his humanity. In doing so, he set a new measure of loyalty, not to the crown alone but to a higher vision of justice and belonging.
Similarly, Son in Los Angeles will continue to search for his place, his voice, and his identity as a Korean international footballer while navigating diverse cultures, languages, and footballing systems. What matters most is not a traditional sense of belonging or national pride, but his capacity to follow his own principles: to be an exceptional player and a Korean in a way that he himself has trailblazed, even if it breaks from conventional definitions of Korean identity.
He could have taken home $32 million if he had accepted the Saudi Pro League’s offer instead of the $4.83 million, the actual sum in his bank account after tax deductions in the U.S. By choosing Los Angeles, Son steps away from the symbolic authority of European football and enters a league still struggling for global legitimacy. Yet this move can be read as an initiative to define his career and success beyond financial gain, positioning himself as both a footballer and a cultural figure who seeks to expand the meaning of sporting achievement in new contexts. It will be exciting to watch how he fills this space of possibilities.