Mick Hartley

With that sure feel for a cock-up that characterises regimes on their last legs, the North Koreans decided that Monday's World Cup match against Portugal was the right time finally to broadcast a game live, as it happened:

The authoritarian regime was so proud of its soccer team in the World Cup that it allowed an unprecedented live broadcast back home of the match against Portugal — a rarity for the communist nation that normally exerts strict control over the media.

What ensued was a different sort of history: North Koreans, used to seeing only positive news about their reclusive country, watched as their soccer team received the worst drubbing so far in this year's tournament and was prevented from advancing to the next round.

As the 7-0 loss to Portugal concluded, the North Koreans quickly halted Monday's coverage. "The Portuguese won the game and now have four points," the Korean Central Broadcasting commentator said. "We are ending our live broadcast now."

It then cut to factory workers and engineers praising North Korean leader Kim Jong Il….

After showing the team's 2-1 loss to Brazil last week nearly a day later, Pyongyang's state TV said the much-anticipated match against Portugal — the nation that ended the team's World Cup dreams in 1966 — would be shown live.

The broadcast was the first North Korean overseas match to air live back home, a small but significant milestone for a country that filters what North Koreans see of the outside world — and a gamble for a regime hoping sports success will spur national pride.

Oh dear: a spectacular own goal. So….will the players pay for their poor performance?

Moon Ki-nam, a former national-level North Korea coach who defected to South Korea in 2004, said players are handsomely rewarded with coveted apartments if they win internationally but are punished, some sent to coal mines, if they lose.

Even some of the feted players from the 1966 team were said to have been sent to one of North Korea's infamous labor camps for squandering a promising 3-0 lead to lose to a Eusebio-led Portugal in the quarterfinals. 

Here, though, is an interesting twist:

And with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il personally giving the current team guidance, according to state media, success or failure is a state matter of the highest order.

"We will achieve a good success in this World Cup, therefore giving pleasure to our great General (Kim Jong Il) and proving ourselves worthy of the expectations of the Korean people," the coach told APTN as the team departed Pyongyang last month to the cheers and applause of well-wishers.

As we've seen, the feelings of reverence for the Dear Leader shown by the people of North Korea have become, since the fiasco of the currency revaluation last year, somewhat less pronounced. Chinks have appeared. Criticisms have, unprecedentedly, been voiced. This, therefore, is perhaps inevitable:

After the complete rout of North Korea by Portugal on Monday in their second match of the World Cup, some observers have seized on the opportunity to blame North Korean leader Kim Jong-il personally.

The license was provided by a claim by the team's coach Kim Jong-hun that the dictator "gives regular tactical advice during matches using mobile phones that are not visible to the naked eye." The coach added the fantasy device was invented by Kim Jong-il himself.

"Given the way the North Korean regime works, a football coach can't just mention Kim Jong-il's name and talk about him as he likes," a South Korean official said. "The invisible-mobile-phone part may be silly, but it's probably true that Kim Jong-il's orders are delivered to the coach."

A source who knows Kim Jong-hun's playing style very well said that the match against Portugal was not played in a way the North Korean coach wanted and that he must have been pressured from someone outside. "Kim Jong-hun, who is composed and laid-back, adheres to defense-oriented tactics since he was formerly a defender, but North Korea played an unreasonable offense-oriented tactics at the time when the gap was widening," the source said.  

It appears that North Korea had high hopes of the game, which it broadcast live for the first time in its history. Kim Yong-hyun, a professor at Dongguk University, said, "The North Korean leadership seems to have wanted to consolidate its hold and look for ways to turn the tables through a victory in the World Cup as it is struggling both economically and diplomatically." Another government official said, "The brave display of discipline against Brazil on June 16 raised the bar for the North Korean team and instilled extravagant hopes in people."

The atmosphere in the North is said to be subdued after the rout. Kim Sung-min, who heads radio channel Free North Korea Radio, said, "We contacted North Koreans, and they said that they feel let down and upset. There are people who said they were so upset that they drank themselves senseless and that they can never forgive the players."

The Dear Leader would seem to have lost his mojo.