{"id":498376,"date":"2026-02-23T07:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T07:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/498376\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T07:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T07:16:08","slug":"north-korea-worlds-most-secretive-nation-lands-in-spotlight-at-womens-asian-cup-womens-asian-cup-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/498376\/","title":{"rendered":"North Korea: world\u2019s most secretive nation lands in spotlight at Women\u2019s Asian Cup | Women’s Asian Cup 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1986, when Norwegian delegate Ellen Wille stood on stage at Fifa\u2019s annual congress in Mexico and demanded the creation of a World Cup for women, it sparked support from one of the room\u2019s unlikeliest allies. Delegates from North Korea<\/a>, so the story goes, were inspired by Wille\u2019s speech and returned to Pyongyang with a plan: to use women\u2019s football as a tool to reassert their collapsing power on the world stage.<\/p>\n

The plan was simple: starting in the late 1980s, the government would invest heavily in the women\u2019s game, inserting football programs into school curriculums, establishing women\u2019s teams in the military where players trained full-time, creating youth talent identification pathways, and constructing brand-new facilities across the country.<\/p>\n

As the nation became politically isolated, sport emerged as one of the only avenues through which North Korea could compete \u2013 and even succeed \u2013 internationally. So under Kim Jong-il, reportedly a football fan, the women\u2019s game became a proxy platform for spreading North Korea\u2019s political agenda.<\/p>\n

That is what makes the nation\u2019s progress at the upcoming Women\u2019s Asian Cup, starting with their opening game against Uzbekistan on 3 March in Sydney\u2019s west, all the more intriguing.<\/p>\n

The three-time champions have not participated in the tournament since losing the final to Australia in 2010, after which they all but disappeared from global competition. But North Korea is now back, invigorated by a new generation of youth World Cup winners, and hoping to return to the summit of Asian football.<\/p>\n

North Korea won the Under-20 Women\u2019s World Cup in 2024. Photograph: Luis Acosta\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

North Korea\u2019s women\u2019s national team debuted in 1989, two years before their nearest and biggest ally China \u2013 who they will meet in the final Group B match on 9 March \u2013 was due to host the first ever Women\u2019s World Cup in 1991.<\/p>\n

Following in the footsteps of their communist cousins, who had similarly invested in women\u2019s football as a geopolitical tool and became one of the sport\u2019s powerhouse nations as a result, North Korea\u2019s autocratic government saw an opportunity to stretch and strengthen their international profile as more traditional avenues of political influence collapsed.<\/p>\n

\u201cDue to North Korea\u2019s political isolation, women\u2019s football is one of the very few areas in which the country can display excellence to international audiences,\u201d wrote Jung Woo Lee<\/a>, a senior lecturer in sport and leisure policy at the University of Edinburgh. \u201cUnderstandably, the footballing triumph offers the North Korean regime an effective means of political propaganda to convey its exclusive nationalism and fortify its authoritarian domination.\u201d<\/p>\n

The missing decade<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s early investment into women\u2019s football paid off almost immediately. From the mid-1990s to the 2010s, North Korea became one of Asia\u2019s most dominant women\u2019s national teams, winning three Asian Cup titles between 2001 and 2008, and even more minor trophies across the continent.<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of people would attend their home games \u2013 at venues such as the 150,000-seater Rungrado 1st of May Stadium \u2013 at a time when crowds were minuscule elsewhere in the world, with state departments developing stamps, posters, and even a multi-part television drama series about women footballers<\/a> to inspire the nation.<\/p>\n

People line the streets in Pyongyang to welcome home players after their Under-17 World Cup victory in 2024. Photograph: Kim Won Jin\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

In exchange for success, players were gifted apartments, controlled travel opportunities, public celebrations, and residence certificates for themselves and their families in Pyongyang, where the living standards remain far superior than in the countryside.<\/p>\n

The experiences of some of these players were captured in a groundbreaking 2008 documentary, Hana, dul, sed<\/a>, which follows four women \u201cduring their active careers and after retirement, unobtrusively observing their everyday lives against the backdrop of bombastic monuments and solemn gestures in this communist hermit state\u201d.<\/p>\n

But in 2011, the team\u2019s global momentum screeched to a halt. Five players tested positive for a banned steroid at the Women\u2019s World Cup in Germany. North Korea denied wrongdoing, claiming the players had been given a natural substance derived from musk deer glands after the players had been struck by lightning.<\/p>\n

Fifa rejected their bizarre explanation and issued a four-year ban, meaning they missed the 2015 edition. North Korea subsequently failed to qualify for the 2018 Asian Cup and 2019 World Cup, while pandemic lockdowns saw them withdraw from both tournaments in 2022 and 2023.<\/p>\n

As a result, the senior women\u2019s team have been largely absent from international competitions for over a decade (though have mysteriously kept their global top 10 ranking), with economic sanctions making it nearly impossible for individual players to sign contracts overseas.<\/p>\n

But even with their senior team in stasis, North Korea\u2019s long-term plan has continued to pay off. Thanks to their decades-long investment in women\u2019s football, particularly the opening of the Pyongyang International Football School in 2013, the nation\u2019s youth teams are experiencing a second wave of success.<\/p>\n

The first generation of graduates from that school are the reigning Under-17 and Under-20 Women\u2019s World Cup and Asian Cup champions, making North Korea the most successful national team across all youth tournaments (14 titles, including four trophies in the past two years).<\/p>\n

The Asian Cup, which kicks off on Sunday in Perth, may be too soon to see young stars like Yu Jong-hyang, Choe Il-son, Jon Il-chong and Chae Un-gyong shine. But it will be the best glimpse yet of whether this old, unlikely superpower of women\u2019s football is rumbling back to life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1986, when Norwegian delegate Ellen Wille stood on stage at Fifa\u2019s annual congress in Mexico and demanded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-498376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}