Mick Hartley

Further to my post on the grim Korea football derby last week, here's an editorial in South Korea's Chosun Ilbo:

South Korea's national football team returned to Seoul on Thursday from what one official called a "nightmarish" five-day trip to Pyongyang for a World Cup qualifier in an empty stadium. Son Heung-min told reporters, "Our opponents were too rough and even swore at us. I'm just glad we all got home without any major injuries." The Korea Football Association said some North Korean players "shoved elbows and used their knees" to attack South Korean players and added "I've never seen that kind of football played before." Choi described the match as "like a war."

Before that, the South Korean players had to endure harassment on arrival at Pyongyang Sunan International Airport. They were told to list every item in their bags, some having to rewrite their list several times when airport officials pointed out things they had missed. As a result, it took almost three hours for them to leave the airport to head to their hotel. The KFA had brought three boxes of meat and seafood to feed the players, but those were confiscated. The aim was obviously to tire the players and weaken them psychologically. They were prevented from leaving their hotel and were not even allowed to visit a gift shop in the lobby. When the time for the match finally came the stadium was completely empty surrounded by soldiers.

The source of their ordeal was a totalitarian regime under a little fat murderous dictator who is revered as a god in his basket case of a country. North Korea's national football team suffered a pathetic 0-6 loss against Qatar early this year, and it seems Kim Jong-un did not want to see something quite so humiliating on his own home turf, and more to the point did not want his people to see it. "A defeat of the North Korean team would have been like rubbing shit on the leader's face," ex-North Korean diplomat Thae Yong-ho said. "If South Korea had won, Son Heung-min would have had his legs broken or something."

Sport in North Korea is only a propaganda tool. "I think a lot of people's lives were spared because the match ended in a tie," Thae said, meaning that the North Korean footballers were literally playing for their lives. This is hardly "ping-pong diplomacy" of the kind used to bring the U.S. and China closer during the Cold War, which showed that sports can be an excellent way to promote peace and dialogue. There are growing accusations around the world now that North Korea was violating the spirit of sport by implicating athletes in their politics, and calls for it to be punished. What can the South Korean government be thinking when it proposes to co-host the Olympics with North Korea? It should be banned from any sporting event until it cleans up its act.