North Korean women's soccer team arrives in South Korea for regional tournament
North Korea's women's soccer team arrived in South Korea on Sunday for a regional tournament, marking the first visit by North Korean athletes in eight years despite ongoing political tensions between the nations.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A North Korean women's soccer team arrived in South Korea on Sunday to compete in a regional tournament, the first visit by North Korean athletes in eight years amid political tensions between the two nations.
A total of 39 players and staff with North Korea's Naegohyang Women's FC arrived at Incheon International Airport, just west of Seoul, aboard a plane from China. They didn't make any comments, though some activists shouted "Welcome! Welcome!" and citizens used their mobile phones to film their arrival.
The North Korean team will face South Korea's Suwon FC Women on Wednesday in the semifinals of the Asian Football Confederation Women's Champions League in Suwon, a city south of Seoul.
The two Koreas have occasionally used sports events to create feel-good moments when relations were amicable. But the latest soccer event won't likely signal any thaw in their long-strained ties, with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un maintaining his confrontational stance against South Korea.
"We should be cautious about interpreting their visit to South Korea as a sign of an improvement in South-North relations," said Lee Wootae, a senior research fellow at Seoul's Korea Institute for National Unification. "It would be more accurate to view this as a limited South-North Korean contact within the framework of international sports."
In recent years, Kim has repeatedly called South Korea his country's principal enemy and taken steps to eliminate the idea of shared statehood and establish a hostile "two-state" system on the Korean Peninsula. Observers say such a move likely stems from Kim's wariness of South Korea's cultural influence and his purported perception that South Korea is no longer useful in dealings with the U.S.
North Korea last sent its athletes to South Korea in December 2018 for a table tennis event. At the time, North and South Korea were engaged in a flurry of exchange and cooperation programs following the North's participation in the Pyeongchang Olympics in South Korea earlier in 2018.
The brief period of inter-Korean detente came to an end after U.S.-led diplomacy on ending North Korea's nuclear program collapsed in 2019 due to disputes over international sanctions on the North. North Korea has since performed a provocative run of weapons tests to expand its nuclear arsenal and rebuffed South Korean and U.S. offers to restore diplomacy.
South Korea's current liberal government, led by President Lee Jae Myung, espouses rapprochement with North Korea.
