Ri Kum-Hyang (C) of Naegohyang Women’s FC (PRK) celebrates after scoring a goal throughout the AFC Women’s Champions League match between Naegohyang Women’s FC (PRK) and ISPE WFC (MYA) on the Thuwunna Stadium in Yangon on November 15, 2025. (Photo by Sai Aung MAIN / AFP)
A women’s football club will on Sunday be the primary sports team from North Korea to go to neighboring South Korea in eight years.
READ: A take a look at North-South Korean sports ties
The isolated and nuclear-armed country’s Naegohyang Women’s FC will play the South’s Suwon FC Women three days later within the Asian Champions League semi-finals.
AFP looks on the trip, the politics and the logistics.
The politics
The 2 Koreas remain technically at war since the 1950-53 conflict resulted in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Sports cooperation helped trigger a thaw in inter-Korean ties after North Korea sent athletes, cheerleaders and a high-level delegation to the 2018 Winter Olympics within the South.
READ: Two Koreas hold first unification basketball match in 15 years
The 2 Koreas also fielded their first unified Olympic team — a joint women’s ice hockey squad — on the Pyeongchang Games.
Ri Sol Ju, the wife of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, also visited South Korea in 2005 as a part of a North Korean cheering squad for the Asian Athletics Championships.
But relations have sharply deteriorated since US-North Korea nuclear talks collapsed in 2019, with Pyongyang repeatedly declaring itself an “irreversible” nuclear state.
The logistics
The Naegohyang squad is about to reach in South Korea by air from Beijing.
A complete of 39 people will make the trip, in accordance with South Korea’s unification ministry, consisting of 27 players and 12 staff members.
They may stay at a hotel in Suwon, a city about 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of Seoul and where Wednesday’s match will happen.
South Korea’s Suwon FC squad shall be based at the identical hotel.
The dining areas and travel routes shall be kept separate, local reports said, making encounters between the 2 sides unlikely.
The sport shall be at Suwon Sports Complex, which has a capability of just below 12,000.
The law
Under South Korean national security laws it might be deemed illegal to own or brandish the North Korean flag or play its national anthem in public.
A separate law — the Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation Act — also requires South Koreans to acquire prior approval from the unification minister before contacting North Koreans by any means.
A government official told AFP the North Korean players’ visit had received prior approval, meaning it could not be considered illegal for South Koreans to exchange easy greetings with them.
Under Kim Jong Un “sports are viewed not simply as entertainment, but as a measure of national capability”, said Lim Eul-chul, a North Korea expert on the South’s Kyungnam University.
Pyongyang is probably going “aiming to showcase what it sees as its ‘overwhelming superiority’ through sporting performance, using it as a possibility to send a powerful message that it’s superior to its ‘hostile state’ rival”, he told AFP.
The club
North Korea is traditionally strong in women’s football, especially at youth level, where they’ve won multiple World Cups lately.
Naegohyang FC, based in North Korea’s capital Pyongyang, is a rising force in the ladies’s game within the country, in accordance with South Korea’s unification ministry.
Founded in 2012, the club won the North Korean top flight within the 2021-22 season after defeating powerhouses April 25 Sports Club.
Naegohyang also beat Suwon — their opponents on Wednesday — 3-0 within the Champions League group stage in November.
Because the Champions League is a club competition, national flags and anthems is not going to be used throughout the match.
The fans
North Korean cheerleaders wave the Unified Korea flag as they attend the boys’s preliminary round ice hockey match between South Korea and Czech Republic throughout the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympic Games on the Gangneung Hockey Centre in Gangneung on February 15, 2018. (Photo by Ed JONES / AFP)
North Koreans are usually not typically allowed in South Korea so no fans will travel across the border.
The visiting team will though, have loads of support.
Seoul’s unification ministry will provide 300 million won ($200,000) to support South Korean civic groups planning to cheer each teams on the match.
It should cover tickets, cheering supplies and banners, a ministry official said, adding the event could help promote “mutual understanding between the 2 Koreas”.
About 2,500 supporters are expected at the sport, in accordance with the unification ministry.
A ministry official said civic groups would “largely be left to make your mind up for themselves” what they chant, but the federal government will give guidelines given the “special nature” of the event.
“We see it as a rare and meaningful exchange between young South and North Koreans,” Hong Sang-young, secretary general of the civic group Korean Sharing Movement, told AFP.
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“Political slogans or messages could cause misunderstandings, so we intend to give attention to football itself and on supporting young people from each Koreas sharing the identical space.”