Coreano Hermano: Love leads Mexico-South Korea showdown

Coreano Hermano – Ahead of Mexico vs. South Korea at the 2026 World Cup on Thursday, fans in Los Angeles and beyond are leaning into a shared identity that traces back to the 2018 tournament—captured in a chant that turns “Korean, brother” into a kind of family bond.

When Fernando Delgado steps outside with the fake trophy he’s been carrying around Koreatown, it’s not because he thinks a miracle is coming in the score line. It’s because the feeling around Thursday’s Mexico vs. South Korea match is bigger than winning.

Delgado and his best friend. Josh Lee. are still riding the high of watching both their homelands win their opening matches at the 2026 World Cup. Now those same teams face each other. Delgado talks about what he wants in one simple. careful phrase: “A draw would be the ideal case.” He explains why with a grin that lands somewhere between hope and realism: “Because I think other than that. it’s gonna be like. ‘Oh man.’”.

For many fans, though, the tension isn’t about bad blood. It’s about whether the “Coreano Hermano” connection keeps spreading.

The warm welcome in Guadalajara set the tone. Earlier this month. when South Korea’s squad arrived at their hotel in Guadalajara. Mexico. they were met by hundreds of Mexican supporters. On social media. videos circulated of South Korean tourists celebrating and partying with locals during World Cup festivities—often paired with the chant. “Coreano. hermano ya eres Mexicano. ” which translates to “Korean. brother. you are Mexican now.”.

The chant is a callback to the 2018 World Cup, the last time the two nations played each other on the global stage. Eight years later, as El Tri and the Taegeuk Warriors meet again, fans on both sides are trying to rebuild something familiar—an affinity that feels older than any single match.

“Since then, this idea of Coreano Hermano has really persisted,” Lee says. He credits it with “led to this greater appreciation for both national teams and both peoples.”

That story begins after the final matches of the group stage in 2018, in Russia. Mexico’s advancement depended on South Korea beating Germany after Mexico’s shocking loss to Sweden. South Korea did it—an upset that flipped the script when Mexico needed it most.

South Korea didn’t move forward after that, but Mexican fans responded anyway. In Mexico City, supporters marched to the South Korean Embassy and hoisted the consul general, Han Byoung-jin, onto their shoulders.

Ray An, a Korean American from Fresno, California, was in Russia for the tournament. He remembers being surrounded by hugs, cheers, and tequila. He also remembers the disappointment of South Korea’s early exit—then how those moments reshaped what the World Cup could mean.

“This is so much more than football. This is just so much more than winning and losing,” An says. “This is what it’s really about, right? Creating core memories with strangers in a foreign land.”

Even years later, An says 2018 remains a point of connection whenever he meets someone from Mexico. “Looking back, I mean maybe in the long run, this is actually a better thing for us to have happened,” he says, pointing to the unexpected bond that followed the loss.

While the chants and embraces play out in stadiums and city streets, the relationship between the countries goes well beyond soccer.

When diplomatic relations between South Korea and Mexico formally began in 1962. friendship was “a slow burn. ” according to José Luis León-Manríquez. who teaches East Asian studies at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. León-Manríquez says Mexico’s strong nationalist sentiment at the time made the country cautious about building ties with U.S. allies such as South Korea. He adds that progress didn’t really come until the late 1980s—driven largely by trade and the arrival of Korean factories in Mexico. followed by a wave of Korean migration.

“After that, links between both countries have increased a lot. Both in political, but especially in cultural and economic terms,” León-Manríquez says.

Today, South Korea is one of Mexico’s top trading partners. There’s also a sizable Koreatown in Mexico City. Further north, the city of Pesquería—home to a Kia Motors manufacturing plant—is nicknamed “Pescorea” for its large Korean community.

Culture has followed economics and migration. Mexico, León-Manríquez says, has been swept up in the K-wave. In 2025, Mexico ranked fifth among countries that play the most K-pop, according to Spotify.

The match itself becomes a kind of overlay, with fans filling the gaps between “rivals” and “neighbors” using the stories they already share.

Jean Lim Flores, a Korean American from Los Angeles, points to a theory rooted in history and underdog status. Neither country has advanced past the round of 16 in over 20 years. Mexico’s last quarterfinal appearance was in 1986. South Korea’s deepest run was in 2002, when it reached the semifinals and placed fourth.

“Neither of our countries have won the World Cup,” Flores says. “It would be exciting to see either Korea or Mexico win.”

Her husband, Shon Flores, who is Mexican American, frames it differently: both teams have other rivals—Japan for South Korea, Brazil and the U.S. for Mexico. “I can see a lot of this coming together and closeness between some of the other teams, but I don’t know about U.S. vs. Mexico,” he says.

Others say the warmth is simply what happens when communities grow closer in places like Los Angeles, where the largest Korean and Mexican populations live alongside each other.

That dynamic is embodied by two people who don’t just watch soccer—they organize around it. Carlos González Gutiérrez and Youngwan Kim are the consul generals of Mexico and South Korea based in Los Angeles. They are also friends, tied in part by shared soccer love.

Months ago, they made a friendly bet over Thursday’s match, which kicks off at 9 p.m. ET. If Mexico loses, González Gutiérrez will gift Kim a bottle of tequila. If the opposite happens, Kim will send over some soju.

“It’s not (entirely) about bragging rights,” the bet’s spirit makes clear. González Gutiérrez told NPR recently that it is “a sign of friendship between our two countries,” adding that it’s “a reflection of what already happens in this city on a daily basis.”

In Koreatown. where Latino and Asian Americans make up the majority of the neighborhood. the bond has also taken on urgency in recent times. as many residents have come together against immigration raids. Paul “PK” Kim says he hopes the World Cup watch party can become a chance to unite through something lighter—fun and relief.

Kim is the marketing director at the Los Angeles Korean Festival Foundation, which is organizing a watch party in the heart of Koreatown on Thursday. “There’s always some awkward tension because everybody’s competitive,” he says. “ The more important thing is being together.”

That’s the atmosphere Lee and Delgado want to carry into the evening.

Lee and Delgado met at a watch party for a Los Angeles Football Club game in 2018. Now they help lead one of the MLS club’s supporters groups, Tigers. Lee says the group often sings a song that goes. “En las buenas y en las malas.” Thursday’s match becomes an extension of that idea. “In the good and the bad, we’re celebrating together,” Lee says.

He admits he’d still like to see South Korea beat Mexico once on the global stage. But he’s also comfortable with what the moment is asking fans to do: hold the rivalry without letting it erase the relationship.

Bonyub Koo and Mirella Vargas, a Korean American and Mexican American married couple in Los Angeles, will root for opposing sides. For them, that split doesn’t ruin the shared joy—it sharpens it.

“Once we found out that they were going to play against each other, we were super happy,” she says, calling it “a friendly competition.”

When Koo and Vargas started dating in 2019, soccer was one of the first things that brought them together. Now married, Koo says he’s more excited to watch Mexico vs. South Korea than the World Cup final. He can’t picture walking away disappointed.

“ Whoever wins, that’s my team,” Koo says.

The past offers at least one reason to imagine that kind of compromise on the scoreboard. The two squads last faced each other in a friendly in Nashville, Tennessee, last year. The final score was 2-2.

Emanuel Hahn, a Korean American photographer based in New York, says he wouldn’t be mad if history repeats itself. Hahn, Lee, and An are the creators behind the docuseries Korea, Away about the Korean diaspora and their fandom for South Korea’s soccer team.

“If we drew with Mexico, I think it would be the ultimate sort of handshake moment,” Hahn says. “It’s crazy because I don’t know if I would say that about any other country.”

Thursday’s kickoff won’t settle everything—no single match ever does. But for Delgado and Lee, and for the families and friends in Los Angeles who’ve been building “Coreano Hermano” into something tangible, the point may be simple: love doesn’t cancel competition.

It turns it into something you can share.

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