There are more women than men in South Korea's sports stadiums

Every time the South Korean men's soccer team scored against Singapore in a recent 5-0 defeat in a World Cup qualifier, the roar from the home crowd came largely from the women, who held nearly two-thirds of the match's tickets.

In the Seoul stadium that day in November, a billboard-sized banner had been made for star striker Son Heung-min by an all-women group. A banner for one of his teammates – “Cho Gue-sung wins the day” – was signed by a club called “Women Rooting for Cho Gue-sung's Pursuit of Happiness.”

The scene illustrated a fact that has puzzled experts in one of the world's most patriarchal societies: In sports, South Korean women typically outnumber men in the stands.

Women here make up 55 percent of fans at professional sporting events, including baseball, basketball, football and volleyball, according to a 2022 estimate from the Korea Professional Sports Association. Similar estimates for major sports in the United States put the figure at less than half for women. In Britain and Australia that number drops to a quarter or less.

Fans and sports experts attribute the high percentage of female fandom in South Korea in part to the sense of security in the country's sporting venues. Others say it's influenced by a national fan culture driven by the intense adoration of stars, which in some cases is heartbreaking.

“People don't look at the players as athletes, but as celebrities,” said Yim Subin, 24, who attends games and fan meetings and watches baseball on TV every day of the season. “It's not much different from the way K-pop fans follow their idols.”

In South Korea, where modern sports such as baseball and football were introduced in the late 19th century, professional leagues were a product of the vibrant economic growth that began in the 1960s and created a large middle class. The competitions grew in parallel with the hosting of major international competitions, including the 1988 Summer Olympics and the 2002 Men's World Cup.

Women have long been part of a South Korean fan base that views playing sports as a national pastime, glorifying elite (and mostly male) athletes who compete abroad. In the 1970s, Cha Bum-kun was the man of the moment, scoring 98 goals for two clubs in Germany's top football league. Now the sports idol is Son, a striker for Tottenham Hotspur in the English Premier League.

Female fans have been attending domestic competitions for just as long. In the 1990s, young women packed college basketball hoops, says Dae Hee Kwak, an associate professor of sports management at the University of Michigan. He said they were known as “oppa budae,” or armies cheering on male stars who called them “oppa,” an affectionate term Korean women use for an older man.

One explanation for the high percentage of female fandom in South Korea is that the arenas are safe places to watch a match. A growing number of locations now offer family-friendly facilities, including children's playrooms.

In that atmosphere, fights and other expressions of hooliganism are becoming increasingly rare, said Cho Yijin, a postdoctoral researcher at Yonsei University in Seoul.

“There is less smoking, drinking and cursing than before,” she said. “There is a friendlier atmosphere.”

Another factor, experts say, is the intense domestic fan culture that permeates the country's entertainment culture.

The rapid rise of global interest in South Korean films, dramas and music over the past decade has created a passionate fan base around celebrities whose success is seen as a sign of national pride.

Now the same jargon describing how superfans worship such idols – “deok-jil” or “fangirling” – is widely used in sports. Fan girls travel around the country to attend games, send coffee trucks to practice as a show of support, and take photos of players with high-powered zooms from front-row seats.

The teams' marketing departments have noticed. There's no shortage of merchandise for women, including sweaters and headbands. And in the country's top football league, the Daejeon Hana Citizen team organizes an amateur “Queen's Cup” for its female fans.

Eunji Shin, 43, who attends several baseball games a week and takes copious notes on on-field strategy, once followed her favorite team, the Doosan Bears of Seoul, to their spring training camp in Japan. She also helped place a newspaper advertisement with a thank-you note for a retiring pitcher.

Shin said there was a “lower barrier to entry” for following baseball players than for entertainment celebrities, for a simple reason: It's easier to get physically closer to them.

In her experience, women are the only people who bring cameras to games. “Men don't do that,” she added, “except for the few who want to photograph the cheerleaders.”

The rise of women as sports fans in South Korea has not led to gender equality on courts or fields, or in coaching rooms. Sports experts say this is partly because South Korea has no anti-discrimination law, let alone legislation like Title IX, the landmark 1972 U.S. law that significantly expanded girls' access to sports.

For many female fans, seeing other women in the stands gives them a sense of connection and solidarity, says NaRi Shin, an assistant professor of sports management at the University of Michigan and a freestyle snowboarder.

Several female fans said that while male players had been their gateway into the sport, they eventually developed a deeper appreciation for the game itself.

Celine Lim, 39, said she started watching Kim Byung-hyun, a Korean pitcher, play for the Boston Red Sox when she lived in the United States, partly because she was attracted to his “bad boy” personality. She continued to watch his Korean team, the Kiwoom Heroes, play almost every game even after he retired.

Han Nagyeong, 26, said her interest in football deepened when she saw Son play for Tottenham Hotspur. Now, even as a busy college student, she makes time to follow every player on the team. She said she has several friends whose fandom has taken a similar turn.

“Gradually they became more sincere about the sport itself than anyone else,” she said.