YONko Games & Festivities

The Yon-Ko (or YonKo) Games is a two-day long sports competition that happens in the Fall between Yonsei University and Korea University, which are known to be historic and competitive rivals. They compete in baseball, ice hockey, basketball, soccer (known as football in Korea), and rugby. Although, rugby was cancelled this year. In addition to sports, they also show intense school spirit through cheering! Sinchon (the area where Yonsei is) was covered in banners that "trash talked" KU, and vice versa, KU had banners against Yonsei. Despite all this, it's healthy competition and rivalry!

Joint Cheering Event

During the past few weeks, we had a few festivities to get hyped up for Yon-ko weekend. Our first event was a joint cheering event between the two universities. Each school has their own set of cheers, songs, dances, and cheerleaders and they took turns in showing who had more spirit. This day, it was unfortunately raining, so Yonsei students were given blue ponchos, whereas KU students had red ones, which I thought was funny. Although it was raining, the event ran for about 3 hours and it was still extremely fun!

YonKo Games Eve Festival

This is something new that Yonsei did this semester! They had food trucks and performances during the evening, and it's like a mini-Akaraka (which is a festival that usually happens in the Spring semester).

The lineup for this semester:

• Car, the Garden

• Silica Gel

• Davichi

• YB Kim Dohyun Band

Although I only knew Davichi initially, I still enjoyed all of the performances. I knew a song or two from Car, the Garden and YB, but I just didn't know it was sung by them. My favorite songs from this night were "This Love" (Descendants of the Sun OST) by Davichi, "Romantic Sunday" (Hometown Cha Cha Cha OST) by Car, the Garden, as well as "A Flying Butterfly" by YB!

The Actual YONko Games

Day 1 - September 27th

The first day was baseball, ice hockey, and basketball. Exchange students were only allowed to attend the baseball and soccer games, whereas the other games required tickets.

For the baseball game, it was held at Jamsil Baseball Stadium, which was about an hour away on bus from the dorm. My friends and I decided to go early in order to get good seats, so we arrived around 8am, but we quickly realized we absolutely did not need to go that early since seats didn't start to fill up until 10am or so. Once we arrived, we were given a lot of freebies! We got bread, juice, water, hat, fans, and slapping sticks (used to cheer).

This day was severely HOT. I thought we would be watching the game while sitting down, but we stood and cheered for a majority of the game. I was a bit overstimulated because I couldn't multitask between watching the game and watching the cheerleaders to figure out the dance moves. We were also in the sun during the entire game, so wear your hat, apply face and body sunscreen, and hydrate when you can. Yonsei ended up losing the baseball game, as well as ice hockey, but they won basketball on Day 1!

Later in the evening, we went to Sogang University because they had a festival where we saw Le Sserafim and 10cm! We were sitting far away, but it still felt crazy that they were there live.

Day 2 - September 28th

Soccer day! We arrived to Goyang Sports Complex about an hour before the game started. Unlike the first day, it was much much cooler in the stadium and we were in the shade for a majority of the game. I tried to pay more attention to the game while cheering at some points, but soccer was really fun to watch. We ended up winning against KU, 2-1! Because rugby was cancelled, the overall Yonko Games ended up being a draw (2-2).

After the games, the streets in Sinchon and Anam (where KU is) were filled with people continuously cheering in multiple circles. We had an after-party in Anam and I was told that people were still cheering up until 4-5am!