VANCOUVER — Young-Pyo Lee is so not David Beckham, which is disappointing because we’d heard he was.

The David Beckham of Korea — that was the description for dummies being tossed about when the Vancouver Whitecaps signed Lee in December.

But he is not like Becks at all.

Lee isn’t married to a Spice Girl, hasn’t frosted his hair, sees Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes only when he goes to the movies and appears entirely unmarked by tattoo artists. Is it too much to ask to get some ink of his wife’s name, written in Hindi because that’s way cooler than English, on his neck or face of something?

And what about Lee’s contract?

Beckham came to Major League Soccer five years ago for an endorsement-laden deal worth nearly $250 million. Lee merely looked over the eight or nine offers he had last fall and chose the lowest one — signing a one-year contract believed to be worth about $300,000 to play for the Whitecaps. He wanted to learn about MLS, live in a beautiful city with open spaces where his kids would be happy and begin preparing for his next career in sports management.

What a rube. Beckham doesn’t bend it like that.

Near as we can tell, the only place Lee looks like Beckham is on the soccer field.

The 35-year-old South Korean has been arguably the best Whitecap this season, providing a tremendous upgrade in skill and class at right back, giving pace and refinement to a team that often lacked both in defence last season.

Lee is a vital part in the transformation orchestrated by new coach Martin Rennie, whose 4-2-2 team has blanked opponents six times in eight games and will be severely tested this afternoon at BC Place by the high-scoring San Jose Earthquakes.

“I knew a little bit about him from the past and obviously saw at what a high level he had played,” Rennie said after Friday’s practice. “What I didn’t know is whether he could still do that. And he can, which is nice. I was pretty sure with his character and his professionalism that he would want to be at his best and it was nice when we saw that everything we hoped for was there.”

Lee — YP to teammates — captained South Korea to World Cup semifinals in 2002 and has been a hero in his homeland ever since. But he hasn’t much played there.

That World Cup launched Lee to a career in Europe that included four years at PSV Eindhoven, three seasons with Tottenham Hotspur of the English Premiership and three more with Borussia Dortmund of the German Bundesliga.

The 5-9, 150-pound defender spent the last two years playing in Saudi Arabia, where, typically, players go for the money. Clearly, Lee had something else in mind when he came to Vancouver, spurning more lucrative deals that included a seven-figure salary offer from Tottenham.

“My philosophy in recruitment has always been to try to explain to people the philosophy of the club and find out the reasons why they might want to be here,” Rennie explained after Friday’s practice. “The last thing is the money. Unfortunately, a lot of times for people, the first thing is the money. But that’s not the way we do it and YP certainly has bought into that.”