Stephen Chow’s ‘Kung Fu Women’s Soccer’ Follow-Up Sparks Controversy for Mocking South Korea’s Women’s Team

‘Forced laughs from the mainland, or hate that went too far?’ … The bitter comic episode left behind by a return after 25 years

Hong Kong comedy film master ‘Stephen Chow’ wrapped his ambitions after 25 years in a project that has been swept up in an over-the-line “hate Korea” controversy. The new film ‘Kung Fu Women’s Soccer (功夫女足)’, which was introduced with the goal of recreating the glory of ‘Shaolin Soccer’ that had electrified the world in 2001, has come to light for openly mocking and belittling South Korea’s women’s soccer teams.

Professor Seo Kyung-duk of Sungshin Women’s University on the 16th criticized the film’s malicious depiction in strong terms through his social networking service (SNS). In the script, the Korean team appears under the name ‘Ewha Women’s Soccer Team’, and sportsmanship is portrayed as a group of cowards who commit underhanded fouls with impunity. The film also takes aim at Korea at every turn, including a grotesque scene in which the team wears ‘Circle Lenses’ even during matches and fixates only on ‘makeup’, along with clumsy Korean dialogue. This goes beyond a simple B-movie comedy cliché—it is an intentionally malicious put-down.

Ironically, amid this controversy, reactions inside China are intense. According to Chinese media outlets including the Pengpai Daily, the work released on the 11th has been surging at the box office, crossing cumulative ‘600 million yuan’ (about 132.3 billion won) in just three days. While the storyline in which a ragtag women’s soccer team grows through martial arts taps into nostalgia for the previous film, the mindless mockery of another country on the other side lowers the work’s stature.

The Chinese video media’s “mockery of Korean sports” is not something that happened just yesterday or today. During the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, in the short-track film ‘Fly on the Ice: Light on the Rink’, Korean athletes were also consumed as villains who do not hesitate to commit intentional fouls.

Professor Seo said, “No matter how fictional the movie is, the behavior of continuously insulting Korea using sports as the subject can never be tolerated,” and added, “Before the overseas release scheduled for August, the wrong parts must be corrected so that we stop this embarrassing skit that gives discomfort to neighboring countries.” He urged the changes forcefully.