News of North Korea’s Naegohyang women’s football club winning the AFC Women’s Champions League on South Korean soil has become a major talking point inside the country, with many North Koreans expressing more fascination with the fact that the team traveled to South Korea than with the victory itself.
A Daily NK source in North Hamgyong province reported on Wednesday that the win has been widely discussed among people in Hoeryong city. “Some people are paying particular attention to the fact that the matches were held in South Korea and that our players went there to compete,” the source said.
The reaction reflects a deeper tension. In late 2023, North Korean authorities redefined inter-Korean relations as those between two permanently hostile states, erasing all references to national unity and cutting off contact with the South. For many North Koreans, allowing the squad to travel to a country officially designated as an enemy did not square with that policy.
“People are asking why the players were sent there when South Korea is supposed to be a hostile state,” the source said of the mood in Hoeryong city.
Pride, cynicism, and curiosity about the prize money
Reactions have been mixed. Some expressed envy, saying the players were lucky to have had a chance to see South Korea for themselves. Others joked that it might be worth taking up football now, given that it offers both prestige and a trip to the South. The source noted that South Korean culture has remained a subject of persistent curiosity among North Koreans despite a sustained crackdown on South Korean media and content that intensified after 2020. “People showed more interest in the fact that the team went to South Korea than in the fact that they won,” the source said.
Not all reactions were admiring. Some took a more cynical view, saying that a football championship changes nothing about their daily lives and that more pressing concerns, like food and basic necessities, dwarf any sporting achievement.
Many expressed national pride in the team’s performance. Comments circulating in Hoeryong included remarks that North Korean women’s football is unmatched and that while the men’s game lacks competitiveness, the women’s team holds its own against anyone.
The prize money also generated considerable curiosity. Some people learned through those using Chinese mobile phones to communicate with contacts abroad that international sanctions complicate the direct transfer of prize funds to North Korea. Reactions ranged from sympathy for the players to the view that the money would never reach the athletes regardless, and that the team must have competed with that understanding. Others reasoned that even if the state could not receive the prize money, it sent the team anyway for the sake of national prestige, and that the players competed all the harder for that reason.
The Naegohyang women’s football club entered South Korea via Beijing on May 17, defeated Suwon FC Women on May 20 and Tokyo Verdy Beleza on May 23, and departed through Incheon Airport on May 24, the day after winning the final. It was the first time a North Korean women’s club team, as distinct from the national squad, had visited South Korea.
Reporting from inside North Korea
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May 29, 2026 at 07:03PM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)