How Leeds United star’s Manchester United transfer spawned Korean phrase

As Leeds United prepare to face Manchester United this weekend, among some fans it might bring up memories of one player’s controversial transfer from Elland Road to Old Trafford in the early years of this century.

It was in the summer of 2004 that Leeds United’s Alan Smith did the unthinkable and moved across the Pennines to the club’s bitter rivals, Manchester United – little knowing it would spark a linguistic phenomenon thousands of miles away in South Korea which still lives on today.

In the three years Smith spent at Old Trafford following his £7m switch, his performances never hit the heights of those at his previous club, where the homegrown striker had been a local hero.

But in South Korea, Smith’s loss of form gave rise to an initially obscure phrase which effectively means one’s prime or the peak of one’s life.

“Leeds days” is now an everyday term among the nation’s 52 million speakers, even though it seems a large chunk of the population there have never even heard of the city, less the player.

“Most people there don’t know the etymology of it, so I find myself explaining it,” says Josh Wileman, who was Leeds United’s South Korean supporter group contact.

Mr Wileman, originally from Hemsworth in West Yorkshire, moved 5,000 miles away to South Korea in 2017, where he spent most of the next eight years as an English teacher, before returning home last month.

He says that when he was 12 years old, Smith’s trans-Pennine transfer was his first footballing “heartbreak”.

“It wasn’t nice to be reminded of that, I suppose, when I first heard the phrase,” Mr Wileman laughs.

“It was in my first year out there. I’d never heard it before I went.

“The first person I was working with was from Barnsley and he was really into his football, so he was the one who explained it to me.”

“Leeds days” is believed to have first sprung up on Korean online forums in the 2000s, after one of the country’s best players – Park Ji-sung – joined Manchester United a year after Smith.

With the internet and interest in English football booming in South Korea, the conditions for the phrase to spread were ripe.

“At first it was just used by football fans, but later on it was used more and more widely by other people,” Dr Ciue Xu, a lecturer in Korean at the University of Leeds, says.

The meaning of “Leeds days” has “evolved” over time, she adds.

“When it started, the meaning was actually ‘a bygone era’, but now it is used more to refer to somebody’s youth or their peak time.

“It could also refer to your popularity as a superstar or singer, your popularity with your audience or your wealth.”

More recently, the “days” part of the phrase has been dropped by the younger generation, Dr Xu says, with simply “Leeds” now used.

A new Korean restaurant in the centre of Leeds, opened by Hyung Joon Kim and his wife Yun Seung Pang in April, uses the phrase in full, however.

“I will be honest, I didn’t know the origin at first,” 54-year-old Joon, who first moved to the UK from Korea in 2001, admits. “Then when I looked into it it sort of clicked.”

“Around 15 or 20 years ago, I started to see celebrities posting photos on social media of themselves in their youth, or their ‘Leeds days’,” he explains.

“It is a term that Korean people know, but it’s not really known by people outside the country.

“So we used it because we wanted people to know we’re serving authentic Korean food.”

Mr Wileman, who co-hosts a podcast about South Korean culture for those who have emigrated there, says one of his own students was even called Leeds.

He has also come across a dermatology clinic and a bar named after the city, with the latter hosting a dozen or so Leeds United fans for a promotion party a few years ago.

However, far from being a bustling sports bar with large TVs, Mr Wileman says it was actually “quite a posh little expensive whisky bar, which wasn’t the best set-up for a dozen people to watch a football match”.

“I don’t think the owner was too pleased,” he adds.

While the phrase was initially jarring for the 33-year-old (who is 35 in South Korea due to a cultural difference in how age is calculated) because of Smith’s much maligned move, he quickly came to enjoy it as a reminder of home.

“If I’d see it on a restaurant, I’d take a picture and send it to everyone – ‘look at this, we’re famous’,” he explains.

“Any connection I could draw between Korea and Leeds was nice, even if most people there don’t know what it means.”