Tavern 3.0

In the beginning…

Tavern 1.0 was the original Tavern that Roy Ghim started way back when (Jinseok says 2012). Tavern 1.0 didn’t really have a specific objective in mind other than to share the love of Korean football. Jinseok and I joined up in rapid succession and then Tim joined and rounded out the crew. As the Tavern grew, others who had a love for Korean football and writing pitched in guest articles and eventually the crew grew bigger.

Changes…

However, things started changing around the 2018 World Cup. Roy had gotten super busy with work, family, and personal projects. Jinseok and Tim were busy with school. I was also struggling to write consistently between work and family. For one reason or another, the group that had started the original Tavern began to step away one-by-one. Fortunately, Michael, Namu, and some others who had joined in later were prepared and willing to take over things.

Tavern 2.0

And so, Tavern 2.0 was born. The personal was different, but most of the rest was the same. Coverage of the national team and Korean players abroad were the focus with some love for the K League as well. Tavern 2.0 also took the fledgling podcast that had been started earlier and took it to another level and expanded the crew even more.

Fighting Stripes

However, another change was in the cards. The Tavern 2.0 crew decided that they wanted to expand on what they were writing about to include Korean culture and society. So, a significant “re-branding” was done. Content was shifted over to a new Substack and the name was changed to Fighting Stripes. However, the Tavern brand was still strong, so they maintained “Tavern of the Taegeuk Warriors” Twitter and other social media accounts.

Tavern 3.0 is born

Things had been cruising along, when suddenly Jinseok drops this message into our old group chat.

Were we really going to do it? Apparently, yes.

Jinseok interrupting here. Essentially, over the past decade Roy had shouldered costs of running the Tavern (the domain name, WordPress, etc.) on his own. With zero posts over the past 2 years, Roy was considering shutting down the Tavern. We looked into to ways to archive things without success. That’s why I decided to step in and take hosting matters into my own hands. The Tavern, to me, is a beautiful archive of Korean football matters since 2012, and I was not going to let it all go to waste. I already secured the next 6 years of the Tavern financially, and plan to continue doing for even longer.

What will we write about?

First off, this restart will be primarily led by Jinseok. Roy, Tim, and I will contribute as we can, but for us, available time to write the things we want to write remains an issue.

We will largely stick to the things that we wrote about before and feel most comfortable writing about. We’ll continue to focus primarily on the senior men’s national team with updates on the youth national teams as well. I hope (this is Jae) to also occasionally be able to provide some updates on the various women’s national teams as well. Updates on the various Koreans in European leagues will happen as well as the occasional K League update. 

That being said, some things that we did before, like the weekend roundups of KPAs (Korean Players Abroad) will likely be shuttered. I also don’t think we will do things like transfer rumors or confirmed transfers unless they are absolutely massive and significant. There are other places and people who know better than us to find that kind of stuff.

Tavern podcast?

The podcast? Probably not. Just because I don’t think anyone has the time to do the editing, plus I imagine the Fighting Stripes team will probably continue theirs, so… you should just check that out. Speaking of Fighting Stripes…

What’s the difference between Tavern 3.0 and Fighting Stripes?

This is a conversation that continues to be ongoing between the Tavern crew and Fighting Stripes team. On the surface the main difference will, of course, primarily be the writers – although there may occasionally be times when people write a piece for both. The other big difference will be the range of content. Fighting Stripes – while focusing on Korean football things – does also touch on other Korean culture and society things as well as I mentioned before. Those are things that will not appear on the Tavern. 

Social media?

Everyone does have Twitter accounts. However, really only Roy and I are particularly active on it, and even that is spotty at times.

• Roy – @taeguk_warrior
• Jinseok – @HangukChukgu
• Jae – @jaec0113
• Tim – @tim_gulliver

Beware, these are personal accounts, so if you follow can expect to also get tweets that are not related to Korean football. I particularly tweet quite frequently about Texas politics and Korean politics.

TMI time. The original Tavern Twitter account is actually Roy’s current account. When Tavern 2.0 began, they created a new account that bears the Tavern name (@taegeuktavern). How to share on a main Twitter SNS account is still in discussion.

As far as other social media accounts go, I don’t think there’s any interest in starting/maintaining a Facebook or Instagram, so it will likely just be the Twitter accounts for the time being.

Cover image credits – Photo by Clint Patterson on Unsplash