SUWON, South Korea — The North Korean soccer players arrived in South Korea this week for their first game on southern soil in eight years. But for a history-making bunch, the delegation appeared wholly indifferent to the weight of the moment.
The stone-faced team walked through the airport arrivals area in silence, ignoring a crowd of cheering South Koreans.
It was a stark contrast to the last visit by North Korean athletes in 2018, when they smiled as they received flowers at the airport. This time, there were no such signs of camaraderie.
Such are the limits of sports diplomacy at one of the lowest points in inter-Korean relations. In recent years, North Korea abandoned its long-standing goal of unifying with the South, declaring South Korea an enemy state and shutting the door to dialogue.
That message could not have been clearer during the team’s trip.
Sports events have often been used as a vehicle for diplomatic exchanges between the Koreas, which have been separated since a 1953 armistice halted the Korean War and divided the peninsula.
Koreans cannot freely visit each other across the border, but special exceptions have been made for political, business and sports trips.
There have been more than 30 inter-Korean sports appearances, including when the Koreas competed jointly or against each other in bilateral matches, according to a tally by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Notably, the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, was a major diplomatic milestone between the two Koreas that eventually helped quell the “fire and fury” threatened by President Donald Trump over North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile testing during his first administration.
At the time, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, made history when she attended the Opening Ceremonies, watching athletes from both countries marching under one flag.
Those days are long gone.
Wednesday’s match between women’s club soccer teams from both ends of the Korean Peninsula marked the first visit by North Korean athletes since 2018 and the first women’s club soccer match ever between the two Koreas.
Yet with North Korea’s new policy toward the south, it wasn’t clear at first if the athletes would show up at all.
The 27 players and 12 staff members of North Korean women’s club soccer team, Naegohyang, arrived at South Korea’s Incheon Airport on Sunday via an Air China flight connecting through Beijing, because there is no direct travel available between the two Koreas.
North Korea is a formidable competitor in women’s soccer in Asia — in particular Naegohyang (meaning “my homeland”), the team based in Pyongyang, the capital, and sponsored by a consumer goods company of the same name.
North Korea — including its leader, Kim — adores the women’s team. The Koreas were set to face off in the Asian Football Confederation semifinal game.
South Koreans were abuzz over the rare visit, and the roughly 7,000 seats at the venue, located in the city of Suwon, south of Seoul, sold out within a day.
Pro-unification groups held banners welcoming the North Korean team at the airport and Suwon mobilized city officials to create a path of flowers along the team’s bus route as a welcome gesture, according to South Korean newspaper Joongang Ilbo.
People pored over live feeds of the players at an open practice, fascinated by the North Koreans wearing Nike and Adidas cleats because international sanctions against North Korea are supposed to ban foreign brands from being sold there.
Civic groups formed an inter-Korean cheering section, since no one from the North would be able to travel here to support Naegohyang.
The South Korean players, for their part, vowed to put up a fight: “If the North Korean players swear, we will swear back; if they kick us, we will kick them back,” Suwon FC captain Ji So-yun said before the game.
The visiting team, meanwhile, was markedly cool. The delegation, wearing matching skirt suits and a red pin on their left lapel depicting the faces of the first two Kim family leaders, did not glance at the South Korean groups welcoming them at the airport.
Although the teams competing in the semifinals must stay at the same hotel under AFC regulations, Naegohyang successfully requested the South Korean team be moved to a different hotel.
And at a pregame news conference, head coach Ri Yu Il and one of his players sat expressionless and gave curt answers to questions about South Koreans’ response to their arrival.
“We came here strictly to play the game. We will focus solely on tomorrow’s match and the upcoming games,” Ri said. “Therefore, the issue of the cheering squad is not something I, as the coach, nor our players need to think about. We will focus only on the game.”
In other words, for the North Koreans, this visit was strictly about the business at hand: winning. The venue, in South Korea, was a logistical side note. (Plus, if they failed to participate in the league’s championship games, they would have faced a fine.)
A heavy downpour and winds on Wednesday deterred many fans, but thousands of South Koreans still showed up in raincoats and ponchos.
“It’s been almost 10 years since we’ve come together like this,” said Park Jeong-hee, director of the Committee of Ten Million Displaced Families, one of the civic groups organizing the cheering section. “So we wanted to enjoy the experience as much as possible despite the rain.”
In the inter-Korean cheering section were descendants of families separated or displaced by the war and North Korean escapees, waving flags representing both teams and singing old North Korean songs.
“We don’t know when or if they’ll ever be back. But to the displaced families, those players were like their own granddaughters,” Park said. “We just wish they wouldn’t have looked so gloomy during their trip. They were frozen like they were in a strange land. We’re one family.”
None of this seemed to faze the North Koreans, who showed no reaction to the cheering crowd.
The North Koreans won, 2-1. And at last, they were all smiles.
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