[WHY] Son Heung-min's journey from simple sportsman to Korea's biggest superstar

"Korea's David Beckham," "a genuine footballing superstar," "unbelievable player" and "Tottenham legend" — these are just some of the ways newspapers around the world have described 30-year-old Tottenham Hotspur forward Son Heung-min.

Tottenham's Son Heung-min celebrates after scoring against Arsenal during a Premier League match at Tottenham Hotspur stadium in London on May 12. [AP/YONHAP]

“Korea’s David Beckham,” “a genuine footballing superstar,” “unbelievable player” and “Tottenham legend” — these are just some of the ways newspapers around the world have described 30-year-old Tottenham Hotspur forward Son Heung-min.

Son became the first Asian footballer ever to win the Premier League's Golden Boot this year and the second to receive the Puskas Award in 2020. Most recently, he became the only Asian to be nominated for the 2022 Ballon d’Or, the highest honor in football.

But it’s not just his actions on the field that have set Son apart in the pantheon of Korean sporting legends.

His popularity in Korea goes well beyond simple respect for his sporting abilities, making him a household name even for people who have never watched a game of football in their lives. Few athletes reach that level of superstardom, and while Korea has seen its fair share — figure skater Kim Yuna and volleyball player Kim Yeon-koung, to name a couple — Son's popularity seems to have ascended to another level.

Son now gets the same treatment as the biggest K-pop stars. While there are a number of official Tottenham Hotspur supporters' clubs in Korea, there are also Son-specific fan clubs with tens of thousands of members. When Spurs came to Korea in July, tickets to the two games sold out in minutes. Son's uniform has even become so ubiquitous that it can be spotted at practically any sporting event in Korea, even if its not a football match.

Statistically, Son is the best Korean footballer ever to play for a European club. He has more goals, more personal achievements and has reached the very highest levels of the game. But are those achievements alone enough to explain how Son became quite possibly the biggest sporting obsession Korea has ever seen?

A Korean Spurs fans wears a Son Heung-min themed head band ahead of the Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and Wolverhampton Wanderers at Wembley Stadium in London, Britain on Dec. 29, 2018. [EPA/YONHAP]

A young fan wears a shirt with the name and number of Tottenham Hotspur's Son Heung-min outside the stadium before a match between Tottenham Hotspur and Norwich City at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London on Dec. 5, 2021. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

Just how popular is Son?

Popularity isn't exactly quantifiable, but let’s just say that Son’s face seems to be plastered on every billboard in Seoul, advertising every major brand from cars, food and fashion to healthcare, medicine and even financial products.

Local food company Binggrae saw its annual revenue rise by 80 percent in 2019 after recruiting Son to advertise its Super Cone ice cream, and TS Shampoo’s website crashed due to a traffic overload when it opened a promotional event with prizes that included tickets to a Tottenham match in 2019.

This image, provided by the culture ministry on Oct. 17, 2021, shows a British double-decker bus covered with a promotional image for Korea as a tourist destination featuring football star Son Heung-min. [NEWS1]

The value of the Son economy — that is the value of sales of Son-related products — was estimated at around 2 trillion won ($1.5 billion) in 2020, according to a study by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. Son’s net worth is reported to be around $31.6 million, including his roughly $9 million salary from Spurs.

He was ranked at No. 3 on Forbes Korea’s 2022 Power Celebrity Index, after BTS and Blackpink.

Basically, anything with Son’s face on it sells like hotcakes.

Like many celebrities, Son gets the airport treatment. Thousands of fans gathered at Incheon International Airport when Son arrived back at the start of the summer carrying his Golden Boot. Even more gathered when he returned to meet his Tottenham Hotspur teammates in July, and again when he left with them a week later.

And while Son's popularity extends well beyond football, that doesn't mean there are plenty of fans still interested in watching him play. Despite the majority of Tottenham games taking place in the middle of the night in Korea, every single fixture still gets a big audience of supporters staying up to watch.

Has Son's success made Spurs more popular?

Son's success with Tottenham certainly seems to have elevated Korea's interest in European football.

Just last month, Tottenham visited Korea to play two friendlies against an all-star squad of K-league players and Spanish side Sevilla, arranged and broadcast by Coupang’s online streaming service Coupang Play.

The number of monthly active users for the service surged when tickets opened for the two friendlies in June, increasing 30 percent from 3.73 million at the beginning of the month to 4.81 million at the start of July, according to mobile big data platform Mobile Index.

It took only 25 minutes for all 66,000 tickets to sell out for the Team K League match, while it took only 20 minutes for the 42,000 tickets to sell out for the Sevilla game.

The number of daily users of the Coupang Play app also skyrocketed a whopping 195 percent on the day of the friendly between Tottenham and Team K-league. More than 3 million people watched the friendlies through Coupang Play.

Son’s popularity was clear at Seoul World Cup Stadium on the day of the first friendly, where there seemed to be at least 1,000 Son shirts for every other Tottenham shirt. According to The Athletic, Korea became Tottenham’s second biggest e-commerce market at the start of July, after the UK.

Choe Hyeon-hui's collection of Son Heung-min shirts. [CHOE HYEON-HUI]

“I was very lucky to have bought Son’s 2021-22 season shirt before he won the Golden Boot last season,” said Choe Hyeon-hui, a Son fan for over a decade.

“I always order Son’s home and away kits, sometimes even the alternate kit, online before the start of the season. It's part of my bucket list to collect all his shirts from each season. I bought the ones I couldn’t get online through a second-hand market.”

So what makes Son so special? From a football perspective, Korea has simply never seen a goal scorer like Son.

Korean fans take pride in the fact that a Korean footballer has reached the highest levels of a field that very few Asians see success in.

Son's success is such that he has risen above the "first Asian" accolades and just started to rack up a list of pure "firsts." For Tottenham, he was the first player to score a goal under Jose Mourinho, the first player to score a goal under Nuno Espirito Santo, the first player to score a goal under Antonio Conte, the first player to score a goal in Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and the first player to score a Champions League goal in Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

He has been Tottenham Hotspur Player of the Year on three occasions and scored the Tottenham Hotspur Goal of the Year on three occasions. He's won Premier League Goal of the Month and Player of the Month on multiple occasions and Goal of the Year once.

The meaning is clear: Son is no longer the best Asian footballer, he's one of the best footballers, period.

Son’s 135 league goals in 374 appearances as of Aug. 19 is unmatched even by Cha Bum-kun, the Korean Bundesliga legend known as “Tscha Bum,” or Park Ji-sung, who joined Manchester United in 2005 to become the first Korean to play in the Premier League.

Though Cha and Park were both superstars in their own time, Son has quite simply outclassed them both. Cha held the record for the most European league goals for a long time, at 98 in 308 appearances, a record Son left behind some time ago. Park, who was more of a playmaker than a goal scorer, had 45 goals in 318 appearances, but ultimately people remember the goals and that's where Son's talents lie.

“Looking back at Korean footballers who played in the European Big Leagues, there isn’t any player like Son except maybe Cha,” said football commentator Kim Dae-gil.

“Of course there was Park Ji-sung and Lee Young-pyo, but they weren’t strikers. That one of the best footballers in the world is Korean is a big deal not only for Korea, but globally, and definitely an attraction for fans.”

But unlike Cha, Son's rise came in the age of high-speed internet and social media, when hyper-connected Korean football fans can watch Son's games on the other side of the world in real time, and then share clips and gifs on social media and read countless news stories online.

Son's achievements go viral as soon as they happen, and his signature camera goal celebration is now well-known around the world. Social media also means that fans today see far more behind the scenes content from football clubs than ever before, allowing candid snapshots into Son's life in London and his relationship with other players. That Son has very clearly — and very visibly — integrated into the Tottenham squad only adds fuel to the fire.

So was Son born with magic feet?

Tottenham Hotspur's Son Heung-min, left, attend a training session in London, Britain on April 29, 2019. [EPA/YONHAP]

Ask the man himself and he would definitely say no. Son's skill does not lie only in his feet — although he obviously does have serious natural talent — but also in his work ethic. Son works very, very hard at his craft, and regularly distances himself from any praise for his abilities.

According to Son, his father Son Woong-jung started training him to kick footballs "as soon as I started walking." His father started coaching him to professional football standards at the age of 10, and had him doing keepy-uppies for four hours straight.

His autobiography and a book by his father are long-running bestsellers at local bookstores, and both make it clear that not only was Son not born with magic feet, but he wasn't born with very much at all.

Son’s story is based on his modest childhood, mentioning that even in 2014 when he had already made himself a name in Korea and Germany as a rising star after signing with Hamburg, he and his family were actually still struggling financially and had just begun to make ends meet.

That Son has quietly toiled underneath all the spectacle of being a top Premier League player enamors him to even more people, with plenty of Korean parents seeing Son as the perfect role model for their children.

“Son’s ‘work hard and you will succeed’ stories are a bit of a double-edged sword,” said Kim. “Not everything about Son’s Spartan training in his childhood can be or should be applied these days, but one thing is for sure; the fact that he could succeed in the Premier League through hard work sends a hopeful message to young, aspiring footballers.”

What makes Son stand out in the Premier League? Statistically, Son is the best two-footed scorer in the Premier League.

Tottenham Hotspur's Son Heung-min shoots with his left foot during a match against Southampton on Aug. 6 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London, Britain. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

Despite being predominantly right-footed, Son is comfortable using both feet and regularly scores with his left. In fact, of Son's 93 Premier league goals as of Aug. 19, 89 were scored with his feet and 38 of those were with his left, meaning that 42 percent of his goals were scored with his left foot.

Son has the highest proportion of goals scored with his weaker foot of all players in the Premier League. Of Son’s total Premier League 93 goals, 89 were scored with his feet and 38 of those were with his left, meaning that 42 percent of his goals were scored with his left foot.

Son’s two-footedness comes from his formative years when he trained with his father. The elder Son, himself a former footballer, trained Son Heung-min and his brother Son Heung-yun to master their basic skills before joining any team. As well as the infamous keepy-uppies, the rigorous regimen involved hours of dribbling, passing, controlling and shooting, all with both feet.

To have a good command of both feet in football takes extra effort and is a big advantage for a forward like Son, because it can create more scoring opportunities. For a defender, it is difficult to predict where a two-footed forward will send the ball.

“Because Son can shoot with both feet, the angle from which he can shoot is so much wider,” said Kim. “If the shooting angle is wider it’s hard for a defender to guess where to block. Especially in front of the box, having good control of both feet is lethal.”

What about his personality?

Tottenham Hotspur's Son Heung-min poses for a photo with a young fan at JobServe Community Stadium, Colchester in Britain on Sept. 24, 2019. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

Tottenham Hotspur's Son Heung-min, right, gives his shirt to a young pitch invader after a Carabao Cup quarterfinal between Spurs and West Ham at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, on Dec. 22, 2021. [AFP/YONHAP]

Looking up images of Son on the internet reveals hundreds of photos where he’s smiling to children, giving his shirt to fans, shaking hands with people at the end of games — the list goes on. While elsewhere in the world this obsession with Son's character can sometimes look like it's straying into the "Asians are mild-mannered and friendly" stereotype, for Korean fans this side of Son's character is a real asset.

“Koreans traditionally do not separate skill from character,” said Lee Chi-eok, a Korean philosophy professor at Kongju National University. “Confucianism teaching says that studies and skills cannot be separated from how one lives their life. So, Koreans have come to focus on character as much as they do on skill.”

Son isn't the only Korean athlete that stays humble and kind despite his success, but he is the one with by far the most success.

“Humility has been an important virtue for Koreans for a long time,” said Lee. “Humility comes from Ye, one of the four traditional pillars of Confucianism, and so we seek humility as a core virtue in a person.”

Winning the Premier League Golden Boot and still staying humble takes that to a whole new level, Son’s fans say, and that alone is reason enough to become one.

“How is it that Son’s got all the goals and is still so humble about it?” said Choe. “Son pours his heart into playing football, scores, then attributes everything to his teammates and his fans.”

That character is a big part of what expands his fan base to people who weren’t interested in football before Son.

“Before Son, my mom and dad weren’t that into football,” said Choe. “But now, they call Son their ‘Son’-in-law.”

BY YUN SO-HYANG [yun.sohyang@joongang.co.kr]