My Distant Homeland  ·  EP.01  ·  June 12, 2026

Soyeon Jang

North Korean defector · 17-year RFA journalist · Founder of Crossing NK

The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicked off on June 11, marking the first time the tournament has been co-hosted by three countries — the United States, Canada, and Mexico — with matches played across 16 cities. Once again, the world has been swept up in World Cup fever. Amid that excitement, I want to share a story about how passionately this tournament was once loved in one of the most closed-off countries on earth: North Korea. Isolation and the World Cup — an unlikely pairing, isn’t it?

1It was 1986, a mosquito-ridden summer night. In the single room of our modest earthen house sat a small black-and-white television set. The room was packed with people, and even the tiny yard outside, its window left open, was crowded with neighbors craning their necks toward that small screen. Everyone had gathered to watch the tournament the whole world was obsessed with — what North Korea calls “Segyecup” (the World Cup).

Once every four years, when World Cup season arrived, people would gather in twos and threes at any house with a television, whether in Pyongyang or a small provincial town. Even with the windows thrown wide open, the sticky heat never let up, and mosquitoes bit mercilessly at bare arms — but no one moved. Sun-darkened faces gleamed with anticipation, eyes fixed on the screen, determined not to miss a single movement of the players chasing that one ball.

For North Koreans, the World Cup was never just entertainment to watch. Its roots trace back to the 1966 World Cup in England. In their first-ever World Cup appearance, North Korea stunned the world by defeating two-time champion Italy 1–0 on a goal from Pak Doo-ik, becoming the first Asian team to reach the quarterfinals. When the players returned home, they were welcomed as national heroes. Pak Doo-ik, who scored that decisive goal, later became head coach of North Korea’s national football team in the 1970s. But light and shadow always went hand in hand. Much later, I heard from friends that several members of that football team had ended up in political prison camps — one for concealing that he was the son of a landlord, another for “aiding espionage” simply for passing along a letter from a relative in Japan.

In North Korea, football is never just a sport. Kim Jong Il himself once said, “In physical culture, football is fundamental” — and indeed, football holds the status of a “national sport” on both sides of the Korean peninsula. In an era with few TV channels and little entertainment of any kind, the World Cup was an event that brought the entire outside world into North Korean living rooms.

There was one player who completely captured the hearts of North Koreans during that era: Argentina’s Diego Maradona. At the 1986 Mexico World Cup, the 25-year-old Maradona scored the “Hand of God” goal against England in the quarterfinals, followed immediately by what would become known as the “Goal of the Century.” He finished the tournament with five goals and led Argentina to the championship. North Koreans who witnessed those moments through their television screens were utterly captivated.

Watching Maradona — barely 165 cm tall — weave past a string of much taller opponents to score was especially moving for North Koreans. Perhaps there was something familiar, even relatable, in the sight of someone so small conquering the world. After Maradona led Argentina to the title, short, stocky, sturdily built men all across North Korea began earning the nickname “Maradona.”

In broadcast programming otherwise saturated with propaganda and personality cult, football commentary offered one of the few moments people could immerse themselves in purely, without agenda. In the world of competition, everyone was equal. Whichever team played better won; whichever played worse lost. There was no ideology here, no propaganda, no forced applause.

At the 2006 Germany World Cup, North Korea’s Central Broadcasting Committee formally requested World Cup broadcast footage from South Korea’s broadcasting authority — even though North Korea’s own team wasn’t competing in the tournament. The regime itself understood full well how badly its people wanted to watch.

The World Cup in the Kim Jong Un Era

Here’s an interesting fact. Many assume that South Korean matches vanished from Korean Central Television after South Korea’s surprise run to the semifinals in 2002. But that’s not actually true. During the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup, North Korea broadcast South Korea’s round-of-16 match against Italy — and even on July 1, in the immediate aftermath of the Second Battle of Yeonpyeong, when inter-Korean tensions were at their most extreme, North Korea aired a recorded broadcast of South Korea’s semifinal and third-place matches. Even on the brink of war, the people’s love for the World Cup could not be suppressed.

Even more striking: while broadcasting those matches, North Korean authorities went to great lengths to conceal the fact that South Korea was the host nation. It wasn’t until July 2 — through a radio commentary — that this was finally disclosed. The games were shown, but South Korea’s presence was meant to be erased.

It would be more than a decade before South Korean matches disappeared entirely from Korean Central Television. Starting with the 2014 Brazil World Cup and the 2018 Russia World Cup, under Kim Jong Un’s rule, not a single match involving South Korea, the United States, or Japan was broadcast. At the 2022 Qatar World Cup, the English-language Hyundai Motors advertisement captured on stadium billboards was blurred out, and Taegukgi (South Korean flags) visible in the stands were pixelated. The ball kept rolling — but the screen kept erasing more and more.

I still vividly remember, as a teenager, wearing a sleeveless undershirt on those summer nights, cheering wildly at the sight of Maradona. Looking back now, I realize that excitement was never just sports fever. It was something alive even within a tightly controlled daily life — a feeling, a longing, for freedom. In the instant a ball was sucked into the goal, the cheers and joy that erupted were, at least for that moment, uncontrolled. Real. Something no mosaic could ever erase.

— — Soyeon Jang, President, Crossing NK