Could Japanese understand it?

KFA letter contains at least 27 grammatical, contextual errors

Cho Chung-yun KFA president

A brief six-paragraph letter sent by the Korea Football Association (FTA) to its Japanese counterpart regarding the brouhaha following the football match between the two countries at the London Olympics contains at least 27 mistakes.

Judging by his poor construction, it is doubtful that KFA President Cho Chung-yun intended to be as apologetic as Japanese media claimed he was on the basis of this letter.

Cho sent the letter after Korean footballer Park Jong-woo’s celebration over his team’s victory against Japan in the match to decide the bronze medal winner by parading a placard that read, “Dokdo is our land.”

The letter became public when Rep. An Min-seok of the opposition Democratic United Party released it to the press Friday and obtained by The Korea Times.

According to native English copyeditors and the Korean sports desk staff, even the title contains a mistake. “Unsporting celebrating activities after the Olympic football match should have read “Unsporting celebration after the Olympic football match.”

Throughout the one-page document, there are numerous poor word choices and grammatical errors and erroneous capitalization reflecting clumsiness on an issue that requires finessed diplomatic negotiations.

Grammatical errors include a section that states “it was just happened impulsively,” when referring to Park’s celebration. According to the copyeditors, it should have read, “it just happened impulsively.”

The letter says Cho will give a strong message to “every single Korea national team players” and “wish both Japan and Korea women’s players have surprise world football fans that Asian football is the future of the world” in the upcoming FIFA U-20 women’s world cup.”

The mistakes are highlighted in red in the photo of the edited copy of the letter.

The Korea Football Association’s letter to the Japan Football Association over footballer Park Jong-woo’s controversial celebration after winning the bronze medal match against Japan at the 2012 London Olympics. The document above shows corrections suggested by The Korea Times editors. (Photo : The Korea Times)

Pressured by An’s constant request for the release of the document, the KFA finally released it to the public after initially refusing to do so.

“Considering the sensitivity of the issue, the document should have been written under strict KFA supervision,” An said. “The mistakes show the limitation of the KFA’s administrative ability.”

An official on the Korean Olympic Committee (KOC) said they were not informed of the plan, saying that the decision was made by the KFA on its own without prior communication.

“Although they might have done it with good intentions, they made some errors in picking the right words and the process of delivering them,” an KOC official said.

The KOC is waiting for the IOC and FIFA’s decision over Park’s controversial celebration. The KFA said Thursday that their delegation has finished explaining to FIFA that the 24-year-old’s action was unintentional.

Park was banned from participating in the medal ceremony based on the Olympic Charter that prohibits political statement by the athletes. FIFA also said it will open a separate investigation to discipline the player.

“Sending an apology to the Japan Football Association (JFA) was completely unnecessary. From the title, they used wrong and poor word choices to describe the situation,” said An in an interview with The Korea Times. “Looking at the past, the claim to deprive Park of the bronze medal is groundless. I don’t understand why the KFA is acting like he made a major mistake because he didn’t.” <The Korea Times/Jung Min-ho>

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