A couple of hours after scoring the goal that inflicted the first defeat of the season for European champions Manchester City, Hwang Hee-chan was still at Molineux, posing for selfies and signing autographs.
Most of his team-mates had left for home, but Hwang was still meeting and greeting a group of South Koreans who are based in the UK, and for whom he had covered the cost of match tickets and Wolves shirts.
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Hwang is a big deal among Koreans. “Park Ji-sung and Son Heung-min are the two best footballers in South Korea’s entire history, so no one could be compared to them really,” says Korean football journalist Sungmo Lee.
“However, Hwang is definitely one of the most loved Korean players after Son, and he still has great potential to make his performance and followership bigger in the future.”
🎟 Invites South Korean families to Molineux
⚽️ Scores the winner
✍️ Autographs and photos
🇰🇷👑 pic.twitter.com/4FJUn6fI9v
— Wolves (@Wolves) October 1, 2023
For example, online marketing. When the forward signed on loan from RB Leipzig in 2021, Wolves created an account on Naver, a platform popular in South Korea, and started uploading Wolves content.
In July this year, Wolves ranked eighth in a list of football organisations on Naver — behind six clubs and FIFA — for cumulative video views, with a figure of 4.1million.
They had a lot of ground to make up to match the 62million views of Son’s Tottenham Hotspur, but after Hwang’s flying start to the season, Wolves have since increased their cumulative views to six million.
On social media, Wolves’ followers in South Korea rose by more than 5,000 per cent last season compared to 2021-22, to a total of 113,785. Social media impressions increased by 709 per cent to 7.3million, while engagements went up to 33,961, a rise of 370 per cent.
South Koreans had accounted for around 10 per cent of Wolves’ total views on YouTube until last month, when that rose to 15 per cent. On Saturday, the day Hwang netted against City, there were 250,000 South Korean views compared to just 950 the previous day.
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Then there is the traditional media. Gun Lee, a journalist with the Korean newspaper Sports Chosun, attends most Wolves games and relays Hwang’s achievements back home.
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After every game, Hwang stops for interviews with Gun Lee and other Korean reporters present, even when he has not been on the field — a practice almost unheard of for European players.
Hwang is eager to please when it comes to fans (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)“Hee-chan is always cheerful,” says Gun Lee. “He is a person who makes you feel good. He is humble and focuses 100 per cent on his work.
“Even when he had a difficult time due to injury last year, he did not waver and focused on his work. He focused only on his work with the belief that the results would show.”
Lee explains the foundations of Hwang’s profile back home: “When he was a child, he was very famous in youth football society. In 2008, he helped his team, Singok Elementary School, become national champions and in another competition, he won the Golden Boot.
“He won a lot of awards when he was a child and teenager. In 2009, he was awarded the Cha Bum-kun Football Award (an accolade given to the best youth footballer in South Korea, started and named after the Bundesliga legend).
“A lot of famous Korean footballers were awarded this when they were teenagers, such as Park Ji-sung and Ki Sung-yueng. Due to his good performance, lots of European teams watched him and he moved to (Red Bull) Salzburg.”
Hwang joined Salzburg in 2014, just short of his 19th birthday, having rejected advances from clubs in his homeland. “At the beginning, with the language, he didn’t speak much,” recalls Oscar Garcia, who managed Hwang at Salzburg, “but he was very attentive and worked really hard in German lessons to improve.
“He was popular because he was always smiling. We knew some of the time that he didn’t understand but he wanted to be integrated with his team-mates.”
Hwang after scoring against Manchester City (Michael Regan via Getty Images)He brought the same positive attitude to Wolves. Four goals by mid-October meant a promising start to his season on loan, but a decline in form for the player and club, plus four separate injury lay-offs with hamstring and adductor issues, checked his progress and led to criticism from a section of Wolves supporters.
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Yet three Wolves managers — Bruno Lage, Julen Lopetegui and now Gary O’Neil — have used the Korean whenever he is fit, and his loan move was made permanent in a £13million ($15.8m) deal last summer.
“The main thing is his goals,” says O’Neil. “But the second thing is his understanding of the game and the structure and how we try to do things. He has a really good intelligence around what we ask him to do, which is helpful when you’re trying to implement something new.”
Now that Hwang is in a good place when it comes to football, he is likely to get more opportunities. In the last two years, Wolves already helped with two major projects led by Korean television companies.
The first charted a “day in the life” of Hwang, which included filming the forward waking up in bed, while the second was a reality TV cooking show, featuring Korean celebrities cooking for major organisations in the UK.
Hwang was one of the staff members at Wolves’ training ground who tasted the food.
His profile has also been boosted by his increased importance for South Korea’s national team, now led by Germany legend Jurgen Klinsmann. “Hee-chan is obviously one of the most important attacking options for Korea with Son and Lee Kang-in (the Paris Saint-Germain winger),” says Sungmo Lee.
With goals flowing and his importance to club and country higher than ever, Hwang’s stock has never been higher, which Wolves could benefit from. Wolves matches were watched 2.56million times in Korea last season — an increase of 184 per cent on the previous campaign.
This summer, in terms of merchandise, a Korean wholesaler ordered 1,500 Wolves shirts from the club, all of which had “Hee Chan” and the No 11 on the back.
Wolves have seen revenue from South Korean online orders increase by 1,264 per cent in the two years since his signing, with 2,276 orders in his two years at Wolves compared to 189 in the previous two seasons.
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“Since Hwang joined Wolves, obviously many more fans are interested in the club,” says Sungmo Lee. “But also we need to note there were changes of managers and injuries for Hwang that stopped the fans from getting a close relationship with Wolves.
“If Hwang stays injury-free, and if he starts regularly in the games, then naturally, more Korean fans would follow Wolves.”
With four goals from the first seven games of the Premier League season, only Erling Haaland, countryman Son and West Ham’s Jarrod Bowen have netted more. Add in a goal in the Carabao Cup defeat at Ipswich, and Hwang looks like the best finisher at Wolves.
The potential for commercial gains in the Korean market is obvious but, to fully maximise the opportunities, Wolves need the man himself to maintain his excellent form.
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(Top photo: Tom Dulat via Getty Images)
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