The Forgotten Assistant Coach Who Became Vietnam's National Hero

[The Forgotten Assistant Coach Who Became Vietnam's National Hero]

01 | June 12: Two Wins, Half a World Apart

On June 12, Hanoi time, South Korea came from behind to beat the Czech Republic 2-1 in their World Cup Group A opener at Estadio Guadalajara in Mexico. In-Beom Hwang equalized in the 67th minute; substitute striker Hyeon-Gyu Oh struck the winner in the 80th. Up in the stands sat a 66-year-old Korean man who had joined the squad just three days earlier as part of the official delegation, posting a photo with PSG star Lee Kang-in on social media.

After the match, he wrote: "I am truly happy and honored to return to the World Cup to serve the Korean national team. Congratulations to the Taeguk Warriors on their first win of this tournament." One comment under the post quickly racked up likes. It came from Vietnamese center-back Quế Ngọc Hải: "Papa is world-class!" — followed by a heart.

That same day, at Hà Tĩnh Stadium in Vietnam, a match with no connection to the World Cup reached its own climax. In the V.League promotion play-off, Bắc Ninh FC drew 1-1 with PVF-CAND, then won the penalty shootout 5-4 to reach Vietnam's top flight — their second promotion in two years. Bắc Ninh's sporting advisor is the same man who sat in the stands in Guadalajara.

Both of Park Hang-seo's worlds won on the same day. To understand why Vietnamese players call him "Papa," you have to go back many years.

02 | The Nameless Man Beside Hiddink

Park Hang-seo was born in 1959 in Sancheong County, South Gyeongsang Province. His playing career was unremarkable: he spent 1984 to 1988 with Lucky-Goldstar Hwangso — the company later known as LG — and was part of the squad that won the 1985 K League title before moving into coaching.

His first brush with the spotlight came at the 2002 World Cup, co-hosted by South Korea and Japan. He was one of two assistant coaches under Dutch manager Guus Hiddink as South Korea stormed into the semifinals and the whole country erupted. But the glory belonged to Hiddink; nobody remembered the assistant's name. Later that year, Park led South Korea's U23 side to a bronze medal at the Busan Asian Games — and was promptly sacked.

03 | Fifteen Years in the Wilderness, Then a Decision at 58

For the next fifteen years, he drifted around the margins of Korean football. From 2012 to 2015 he managed the military club Sangju Sangmu, winning two second-division titles in 2013 and 2015. By 2017 he was coaching Changwon City in the third tier. He won that division's championship and was named best manager, but in the geography of Korean football, the job amounted to being forgotten.

On September 29, 2017, the Vietnam Football Federation announced him as the new head coach of the national team. He was 58 that year. Vietnam's last AFF Championship — Southeast Asia's regional title — dated back to 2008. A coach from his country's third division was taking over a team that hadn't won the regional crown in nine years.

04 | Five Golden Years

In January 2018, barely three months into the job, he took Vietnam's U23 side all the way to the final of the AFC U23 Championship — the first time any Vietnamese team had reached the final of an official AFC competition. They lost 1-2 to Uzbekistan in extra time, but the country had already fallen for the team.

In mid-December that year, at Mỹ Đình Stadium in Hanoi, Nguyễn Anh Đức volleyed home in the sixth minute of the AFF Cup final's second leg. Vietnam beat Malaysia 1-0, winning 3-2 on aggregate — their first regional title in a decade.

The records kept falling. Fourth place at the 2018 Asian Games. A quarterfinal run at the 2019 Asian Cup, ending in a 0-1 loss to Japan on a VAR-awarded penalty. Back-to-back SEA Games gold medals in 2019 and 2021.

In World Cup qualifying, Vietnam reached the final round of Asian qualifiers for the first time in its history. They lost eight of ten matches there. Then, on February 1, 2022 — the first day of the Lunar New Year — they beat China 3-1 at Mỹ Đình, Vietnam's first-ever victory over the Chinese.

The numbers tell the rest: Vietnam climbed to 93rd in the FIFA rankings in November 2020, and according to Wikipedia's tally, Park's Vietnam sides across all levels played 104 matches and won 58.

05 | The Man They Call Papa

Trophies alone don't explain why Vietnam loves him.

On the night of the 2018 AFF Cup final, the whole country stayed up. Fans packed Nguyen Hue Walking Street in Saigon and the area around Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi, waving flags, singing and setting off fireworks until dawn. Vietnamese call this kind of mass motorbike street party "đi bão" — riding the storm — and the phrase has become shorthand for football victories. The team that kept bringing the storm back was Park's.

The players' reasons are more concrete. Vietnamese media have catalogued the small things: he massaged players' feet and gave up his own plane seat to injured players. When the squad soaked him with water at the post-victory press conference, he laughed, hugged them, and handed all the credit to the players and his staff. At a celebration event, Thaco founder Trần Bá Dương announced a US$100,000 reward for Park; the coach said on the spot that the money would go toward developing Vietnamese football and helping the poor.

A lecturer at RMIT Vietnam analyzed this approach, which has been dubbed "papa leadership." Vietnam and Korea share Confucian roots, and people in both cultures tend to expect their leaders to act like fathers. But Park was never just a soft touch. What he saw up close beside Hiddink in 2002 was how to break a culture that put relationships above performance — and when he ran his own teams, he picked players on facts and fairness. That is why, under a World Cup post in June 2026, Quế Ngọc Hải still calls him Papa.

06 | A National Hero Beyond Football

Korea's own government site korea.net used the words "national hero" as early as January 2018, after the U23 side reached the Asian final. Vietnam's response was more tangible. He actually received Vietnam's Labor Order twice — something we only confirmed by cross-checking Korea Times reports against Wikipedia: a third-class medal after the 2018 U23 run, then a second-class one in August 2020, making him the first foreigner in Vietnamese football to receive the honor. South Korea answered in December 2022 with the Heungin Medal, a second-class Order of Diplomatic Service Merit, for his contribution to Korea-Vietnam relations.

Before he stepped down, Vietnam Airlines gave him and his wife lifetime business-class tickets on all routes between South Korea and Vietnam. Public sentiment shifted too. A survey published by the Hankook Ilbo group in early 2019 found 73.8 percent of Vietnamese respondents viewed South Korea positively, up from 61 percent the year before; among people in their forties, the figure jumped from 48 to 70 percent. Polls move for many reasons, and no single coach deserves all the credit. But in October 2024, FIFA's own homepage called him "a legend of Vietnamese football."

07 | A Departure That Wasn't Goodbye

January 2023, Bangkok. In the second leg of the AFF Cup final, Vietnam lost 0-1 to Thailand. It was Park's last match in charge; his contract expired at the end of the month, and a five-year journey ended in heartbreak.

But he never really left Vietnam. In August 2023, he opened an international football academy bearing his name in Hanoi, saying at the launch that developing Vietnamese football had been his mission as national coach, and this was the right time to repay the fans' love. The academy delivered its first result in 2025: graduate Nguyễn Thành Lợi joined V.League club Hoàng Anh Gia Lai at 15, the youngest professional signing in the history of Vietnam's top flight.

Before the 2024 season, he took on another role: sporting advisor to Bắc Ninh FC, then a third-division club. Two years later the team reached V.League — the scene at Hà Tĩnh Stadium that opened this story. Vietnamese media had billed the play-off as the club's shot at a "miracle of two promotions in two years." For Park, it also closed the chapter on his work in Vietnamese club football.

08 | The Third Act Isn't Over

In April 2025, the Korea Football Association named Park one of its five vice presidents and put him in charge of its 2026 World Cup support committee. South Korea's only World Cup quarterfinal came in 2002 — when Park was the assistant at Hiddink's side. Twenty-four years later, he has returned to the World Cup in a different role, chasing the quarterfinals again.

And after the World Cup, there is a next stop. In late May, Kanchanaburi Power of Thailand's second division announced that Park had turned down multiple offers to become their head coach on a two-year contract, starting in July. The club, based in Kanchanaburi province, spent the season fighting relegation from the Thai top flight and had just gone down. The job description pulls no punches: return to the top division within a year, become one of Thailand's elite clubs within five, build a squad that can challenge powerhouse Buriram United, and qualify for the AFC Champions League Elite, Asia's top club competition.

His last match for Vietnam was a loss to Thailand; three years later, he is taking his next battle to Thailand. In July, the 66-year-old will walk onto a training ground in Kanchanaburi and start a new two-year job.

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Maggie of "Maggie's Lonely Planet" has lived in Vietnam since 2017 and traveled to more than 40 provinces. In this online talk she opens up the full ledger of buying her Hanoi apartment: location, pricing, cross-border transfers, renovation, and the legal rules for foreign buyers — all the hidden costs nobody warns you about.

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Time: Tuesday, June 23, 2026 — 9 pm Taiwan / 8 pm Vietnam

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