North Korean coach 'focused only on winning' ahead of historic South Korea soccer game

Naegohyang are the first North Korean soccer side to play on southern soil since 2014 JUNG YEON-JE / POOL / AFP via Getty Images Share articleThe head coach of a North Korean soccer team has said his side are “focused only on winning” as they become the first sports team from the nation to play in South Korea since 2018. Ri Yu-il was speaking ahead of Wednesday’s AFC Champions League semi-final between Naegohyang Women, from North Korea capital Pyongyang, and hosts Suwon, based 40 kilometers south of South Korean capital Seoul. No North Korean sports delegation has competed on southern soil since December 2018, when a unified Korean table tennis team competed at a tournament in Incheon. South Korea has not hosted a North Korean women’s soccer team since the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon. “We came here strictly to play the match,” Ri said ahead of the game, in quotes carried by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. “We ​are focused solely on tomorrow’s match and the matches ​ahead.” The AFC Women’s Champions League is the top-tier women’s football club competition in Asia and is in its second season having replaced the AFC Women’s Club Championship in 2024. Naegohyang defeated Suwon 3-0 in a November group stage meeting staged in Yangon, Myanmar. The North Korean side’s captain Kim Kyong Yong ​said the ​team would “give everything” in a bid to “repay the trust and expectations of our families”. Suwon head coach Park Kil-young said his players seemed “too intimidated” by their opponents in that match, and said, as per Yonhap: “I tore into my players in the locker room at half time.” Suwon captain Ji So-yun, 35, who has scored 75 goals for South Korea’s national team across a 20-year career, said her team would not “back down” during the game: “If they kick us, then we will kick right back in response.” The winners of Wednesday’s match will remain in Suwon for Saturday’s final, which will also take place at the Suwon Sports Complex. The other semi-final match sees Melbourne City of Australia play Japan’s Tokyo Verdy Beleza. Seoul’s Unification Ministry’s spokesperson Yoon Min Ho said in a press briefing this week that the department “will continue coordinating with the AFC, the Korean Football Association (KFA), and other relevant organizations to help ensure that the tournament proceeds safely and smoothly in keeping with the spirit and purpose of an international competition”. The ministry added: “The government may take necessary support measures to help ensure that the tournament is conducted in a safe and orderly manner.” It added that minister Chung Dongyoung was considering attending the match. The Unification Ministry confirmed a delegation of 39, consisting of 27 players and 12 staff, from Naegohyang had been welcomed in South Korea. Korea split into two nations at the end of World War II when the Soviet Union and the United States temporarily divided the peninsula at the 38th parallel to disarm occupying Japanese forces. The two zones developed separate governments, named the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). The situation culminated in the 1950-1953 Korean War. In 2024, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un formally abandoned his nation’s attempts to reunify the two Koreas, saying his state no longer saw the South as “the partner of reconciliation and reunification” but instead as an enemy that must be subjugated, if necessary, through a nuclear war. North Korea’s leader ordered the revision of the national constitution, as well as its propaganda guidelines, to remove references to “peaceful reunification”, “great national unity” or to South Koreans as “fellow countrymen” and to instill in his people the view that the South was “a foreign country” and “the most hostile state”. However, South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, who took office in June 2025, has attempted to improve inter-Korean relations. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms