Editor’s Note: Omar is currently in Daegu, Korea, where he is experiencing the World Cup soccer tournament.

See Thursday’s Daily for his column about the United States vs. South Korea game.

It’s a blur of black and white faces both painted in the South African colors, the Korean fans in their bright-red T-shirts munching on dried squid snacks, the loony Slovenians with their mountain hats and stadium-rattling chants.

This is none other than the World Cup.

The atmosphere surrounding past World Cup matches in Europe and North America was famed for the madness and partying. But this World Cup is unique. It is Asia’s first time hosting the tournament and the first time it is shared between two countries, Korea and Japan. There are ten cities in each country, hosting the thirty-two best national soccer teams in the world.

We are set up in Daegu, Korea in the southeast of the peninsula. The city is a large one, famous for its fashion and textile industry. We have been staying with a very welcoming and generous host family in our time here. We came for soccer, but also have experienced a beautiful and warm country that is simply thrilled to be hosting the world’s most-watched sporting event.

Unknown to most of us Americans, the World Cup puts the planet on hold every four years for the month-long tournament. The South Korean organizing committee estimated a worldwide television audience of as many as two billion for the opening game two weeks ago. That’s one third of the planet’s population.

For the championship match in France in 1998 the television viewing audience was estimated at more than one billion people in 196 countries. Cumulatively, the tournament in 1998 drew a TV viewership of 33.4 billion.

This year’s World Cup is followed with fanaticism here in Korea, for obvious reasons. We arrived at Seoul’s sparkling new airport at Incheon on the same night that Korea was playing its opening match against Poland. Every 100 yards or so, people swarmed around high-tech flat-screen monitors, religiously following every movement of the players.

As we wandered about between the information desk and train ticket booth, we caught glimpses of the atmosphere of the stadium on TV – a sea of roaring, entranced Korea fans all clad in bright red. As we stood there, we heard the crowds erupt and wondered if a goal had been scored. When I went to look over the shoulders of the men standing in the back of the group, I realized that a Korean player had only taken the ball and started moving downfield.

That’s it. Just a steal.

Every five or 10 minutes, a scream would echo through the airport from the crowds and by now I had realized that the crowd was so high-strung that even the slightest chance of a goal being scored had them jumping.

Move over, Europe: this is Korea, where soccer reigns king for an entire month.

An hour later, we arrived at the train station in downtown Seoul to an identical scene. At every turn there the game was on, and a crowd of people surrounded each TV. Every person in the station was either engrossed in the game, or rushing off to catch a train. Those were the only two options. This was my introduction to the fever that has gripped this country.

The cultural diversity has struck me most about the tournament. Only at the World Cup do people from such varying backgrounds meet. The teams at this year’s tournament range from Paraguay to Slovenia to China. The powerhouse teams like Argentina, Brazil, France, Italy and Germany are here, along with their devoted fans. Others have come from every corner of the world. They have arrived from Senegal, Croatia and many others. The mix that is produced is one of a kind.

My first game is a prime example. Here we are in beautiful, mountainous Daegu, Korea and we’re here to watch national teams from Senegal and Denmark play soccer. That’s right, a small West African country going head-to-head with a small Scandinavian country in none other than East Asia.

The crowd of 44,000 consisted mostly of Koreans, but there was also a sizable group of Danish and Senegalese fans. Only at the World Cup will a group of shirtless and quite enormous Danes, their beer in tow, covered head-to-toe in red and white paint and capped with red Viking horns, pose for photos with giggling young Koreans. The West Africans were not spared from photos with locals either.

As I baked under the Daegu sun in my stadium seat, a group of loud Australians all dressed in matching, brilliantly colored jungle-print jumpsuits showed up to join the Canadians in front of me and English fans behind me. The beer flowed and the swearing, chanting and dancing went on throughout the game. For reasons I have yet to understand, the English fans behind us were mad for the Senegalese team and jeered the Danes with a ruthless wit.

The joke of the day among them was to ask each other loudly which part of Senegal the other was from, and then burst out laughing and making references to their “obviously” African appearance. They would then turn to their fellow Europeans on the field with a run of brash taunts.

For the second match in Daegu, we watched Slovenia play South Africa. Before the game there was a sizable contingent from Slovenia milling around after somehow stumbling into Korea from their tiny Alpine country wedged between Italy and Croatia. One very round and frenzied Slovenian chap told us he was concerned that his Alpine boys’ play would suffer in the pounding sun and heat. I think this particular mountain man was a bit tipsy, but in his wisdom he promised, “we may be a small group, but you will hear us during the game.”

We continued toward the gate to find Slovenians jumping in groups, toasting their beers and chanting. Then a group of the happy Europeans joined a small, interracial group of South Africans, and danced and sang the “ol‚” chant arm-in-arm. The Korean fans converged on them, snapping photos and singing along. After a couple of minutes, the group had swelled to more than a hundred people massed near this gate of the stadium, all chanting and watching the Slovenians and South Africans dance and sing.

As we watched the game from the middle deck of the stadium, the chanting started again. Across the stadium, the group of only one or two thousand rabid Slovenians managed to take over the stadium with their well-rehearsed chants and songs. They made up a tiny percentage of the more than 47,000 people in the stadium, but they danced and yelled their way through the entire game despite their team’s 1-0 loss.

At this truly international event, people of every background and walk of life join to party and cheer their national team toward a coveted second-round spot and maybe further.

Indeed, the vibrant colors of the Senegalese and South Africans, Danes and Slovenians, along with the bright red masses of Korea, have come together in the beautiful Daegu, Korea mountains in the common rhythm that is the “beautiful game.”

Omar Tesdell is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Slater.