‘Sexiest football player in the world’ Cho Gue-sung: ‘Now I’m being chased across the street in Korea’

There can’t be many footballers who have gone from playing for a military team to the cover of Vogue in just a few months.

But that’s just one of the ways South Korean striker Cho Gue-sung’s life has changed in the past year.

Last year was quite a year for Cho. He joined Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, one of Korea’s top teams, in 2020, but it took some time for him to find his feet. He had been a defensive midfielder until a few years earlier, moving forward to take better advantage of his 188cm height and pace, but he was still relatively young in this position.

As Korean players sometimes do, he used his mandatory military service as a kind of reset and to help improve his physical condition. He joined Gimcheon Sangmu – a team made up of military service players who were in the second tier at the time – on loan from Jeonbuk, where he rediscovered his form and started scoring goals again, helping them gain promotion.

He also earned a call-up to the national team and by the second half of the year he had returned to his parent club, finishing as co-top scorer in the K League 1 (level with Joo Min-kyu) and establishing himself as one of the key strikers for South Korea as the World Cup in Qatar approached.

But even then, he was relatively understated – “insignificant,” in his own words, known mostly to Korean football fans but not to many outside of it.

But then the World Cup came and everything was different.

“There have been so many changes in the past year,” says Cho, 25 The Athletics now with much understatement. “But I enjoyed it.”

In Qatar, Cho was included in the South Korean squad for their second match, against Ghana, and scored twice despite his team losing 3–2. But it was during the first match against Uruguay – in which he played just 16 minutes as a substitute – when the madness began.

Then people started noticing that he was, for lack of a more elegant expression, smoking hot. Images of him sitting on the sidelines and warming up have been circulating rapidly on social media, proving that even if the internet isn’t good at anything else, it spreads images of very attractive people.

TikTok was flooded with clips celebrating his beauty, videos of Cho doing such insanely challenging things as walking along the edge of a football field and sitting with his arms crossed. It didn’t seem to matter what he did; the internet seemed to find even its most banal activities devastatingly sexy.

Before the tournament, he had about 20,000 Instagram followers. That rose to around 1.6 million during the World Cup, and then peaked at around 2.7 million. It didn’t seem to matter that he barely posted on it; all the images of his broad shoulders and razor cheekbones were worth following.

The story was that he had to turn off his phone for most of the tournament because handling notifications had become a full-time job, although Cho downplays that. “It’s a bit of an exaggeration,” he says. “I already turned off my notifications (before the World Cup) so I could concentrate on the tournament.”

There was a danger that sudden celebrity and sex symbol status could disrupt his focus, but Cho claims that the only pressure was self-imposed.

“There were no obstacles during the World Cup. I just focused on football. I usually don’t care about people’s high expectations, but I put a lot of pressure on myself, which became a bit of a burden.”

Cho further enamored the watching crowd by curtly telling Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo that he didn’t leave the pitch quickly enough when he was substituted in their final group match.

South Korea advanced through the groups, but was eliminated in the eighth finals, losing 4-1 to Brazil. Their World Cup was over, but things were just getting started for Cho.

He became only the fifth man and the second athlete to ever appear on the cover of Vogue Korea, photographed in moody black and white, with a football in his hand, but carelessly forgetting to put on a shirt. His celebrity skyrocketed.

He was sought out for TV appearances and was a guest on a Korean show called I Live Alone, which is designed to look behind the scenes of a celebrity’s life and is apparently not as bleak as the title suggests, and also in the popular quiz show You Quiz on the Blok.

He reached the level of celebrity where his personal grooming choices made waves. In September, photos of his hair in cornrows sparked a lengthy internet debate. A poll ranked him as the second most sought-after Korean male celebrity after actor Song Kang. And of course, speculation about his personal life increased, with a spike in stories linking him to various models and celebrities during and after the World Cup.

Cho seemed to handle this relatively well, even if he found it quite alarming at times. South Korea played a number of matches in Great Britain in September and he could not escape the attention there either.

“Since I became more famous, many people have recognized me. People even recognized me when I traveled to London with the national team – that was really surprising.”

It’s not surprising that he’s being spotted around the house, but it sounds like he’s “causing a small riot in the area of ​​a local coffee shop” even when he tries to go out in disguise. “When I’m back in Korea, I wear a hat and a mask, but people still recognize me,” he says. “One time people started chasing me on the street. That was crazy.”

Thirsty citizens weren’t the only people chasing him. After his goals for Jeonbuk and his performances in Qatar, offers poured in from people who wanted him for his goals and not his looks.

However, Cho took his time. “In the winter transfer period there were many offers from many different clubs, but I waited until the summer. There were several unofficial offers, from England and Scotland. But once I made my decision, I stuck with it.”

Leicester City, Watford and Celtic were said to be among the many interested teams, but ultimately he made the perhaps somewhat surprising choice to sign for Midtjylland in Denmark, who picked him up for a relatively modest £2.6 million ($3.27 million) . .

It’s tempting to wonder if he chose Denmark because, after his explosion of celebrity and his inability to walk down the street without causing an incident at home, it’s a little more subdued in terms of attention.

However, he says that wasn’t a factor. “I wasn’t afraid of the media attention, but I just wanted to concentrate on football. I wanted a club where I would start in every match. I was sure that Midtjylland could offer me that. Midtjylland was the most interested, that’s why I chose them.”

Luckily, he knows a few people who have been in similar situations and can give him advice on how to deal with the sudden fame. No matter how famous Cho becomes for his looks, he is unlikely to achieve the godlike status of his international captain Son Heung-min.

Cho has also benefited from a mentor: another compatriot who became an icon in South Korea and faced the delicate decision of choosing the right club when he moved to Europe.

“Park Ji-sung is the director of Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, my old club,” says Cho. “He didn’t give me advice on how to deal with fame, but he gave me a lot of advice about moving to Europe, about building a new life there. He told me to choose a team where I knew I would play, because that’s what he did when he moved to PSV.”

It looks like Cho made a smart choice. Midtjylland are top of the Danish Superliga as it continues through the winter, having scored eight goals in 16 league games.

Who knows if his football achievements will ever fully match his level of fame, but Cho doesn’t seem to think about it too much.

“I think about how I live my daily life and how I am happy now, instead of looking to the future. I haven’t thought about that yet.”

(Top photo: Eric Verhoeven/Socrates/Getty Images)