South Korea president blames favoritism after World Cup exit
South Korea’s president turned a World Cup exit into a probe of football hiring, blaming favoritism and ordering an inquiry hours before the coach quit.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung turned his country’s World Cup elimination into a direct challenge to the way football leadership is chosen, saying he was “utterly baffled” and accusing personnel decisions of favoring loyalty over competence. He ordered the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to examine what went wrong and propose steps to keep the failure from happening again.
The comments landed after South Korea finished third in Group A with three points from three matches and missed the Round of 32. Hong Myung-bo’s team opened with a 2-1 win over the Czech Republic, then lost 1-0 to Mexico and 1-0 to South Africa, leaving qualification dependent on the best third-place tiebreakers. Mexico topped the group on nine points, while South Africa advanced to the knockout stage for the first time in its World Cup history.
Lee framed the result as more than a bad tournament. In a post on X on June 28, he argued that when competence is pushed aside in favor of “us versus them” thinking, the outcome is predictable. The president’s intervention shifted the public debate from tactics and results to governance, accountability and the way the Korea Football Association handles appointments.
Hong’s position had already been under pressure long before the final whistle. The Korea Football Association finalized his hiring on July 13, 2024, by a 21-0 board vote after a five-month search that began when Jürgen Klinsmann was dismissed in February 2024. In October 2024, South Korea’s sports ministry said the association violated several hiring rules in the process and suggested the dispute might have been avoided if the KFA chief had not ordered interviews with other candidates first.
That backdrop gave Lee’s latest order extra force. What began as a football failure quickly became a test of whether South Korea’s sporting institutions can withstand scrutiny when presidential power is brought to bear on them. Hours after the elimination was confirmed, Hong resigned on June 29, 2026, closing a chapter that had been disputed since his appointment and now sits inside a broader argument over favoritism, transparency and public trust.
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