"I don't know where to begin," Son Heung-min wrote on Instagram the night before flying home. "I can't pretend [nothing happened], and I don't want to escape reality." That apology landed. What greeted him at Incheon Airport at 4:30 a.m. wasn't anger — it was "I love you" and "thank you for your hard work."
His coach got a completely different reception.
Hong Myung-bo walked into boos and chants of "Hong Myung-bo, get out." He'd already resigned by then — taken full blame, announced his retirement from football — and it still wasn't enough. The national team's official fan club, the Red Devils, issued a statement demanding he "kneel before the entire nation and leave the football world forever."
A group-stage exit with no easy explanations
South Korea went into this World Cup unbeaten through qualification. They had Son, PSG's Lee Kang-in, and Bayern Munich's Kim Min-jae. They beat Czechia. Then came back-to-back losses to Mexico and South Africa — the South Africa defeat, against a side ranked 60th in the world, is the one that broke the nation's patience entirely.
The disparity in how fans treated the captain versus the coach tells you something about how accountability gets distributed when a tournament goes wrong. Son's public apology bought him grace. Hong had no such currency left — not least because this isn't his first difficult chapter with the national team. He managed South Korea at the 2014 World Cup too. They went home winless that time as well.
KFA president Chung Mong-gyu had reportedly tried to block Hong's reappointment in the first place. That detail, now public, is only adding fuel.
The president wants answers
South Korea's President Lee Jae Myung has called on the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to investigate the team's performance, citing the level of public funding behind World Cup participation. "Thoroughly investigate the precise circumstances of this incident, analyse its causes, and develop thorough measures for preventing recurrence," he said.
A government investigation into a football team's group-stage exit is not a normal outcome. It signals that this has moved well beyond a sporting disappointment into something the political class feels it needs to respond to. Whether that produces anything meaningful — structural changes, accountability at federation level — depends on what, if anything, the investigation actually finds.
Hong Myung-bo is gone. The federation is under pressure. And South Korea's next head coach will inherit a squad full of world-class players and a fanbase that has made very clear how thin its patience runs.
