The South Korean men’s national soccer team’s path to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar is to include a crucial road match against North Korea, but it is unclear whether a rare match between the Koreas in Pyongyang will materialize, considering political tensions.
With the Koreas, there is never a separation between sports and politics. North Korea has previously refused to allow South Korean players to enter the country for World Cup qualifiers, forcing FIFA to relocate its home games to Shanghai.
Drawn in the same Asian qualifying group on Wednesday, the Koreas are scheduled for a match in North Korea on Oct. 15 and in South Korea on June 4 next year. Group H also includes Lebanon, Turkmenistan and Sri Lanka.
The South Korean men’s team last played in Pyongyang in 1990 for a friendly match.
Experts are mixed on whether North Korea would choose to host South Korea at home, as relations between the two have cooled significantly in past months amid stalled nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang.
Some analysts say the qualifier in North Korea is likely to happen because of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who has a passion for sports, has tried to present himself as an international statesman while pursuing diplomacy to leverage his nukes for security and economic benefits.
Wherever they take place, the matches between the Koreas are likely to be intense.
The South Korean Football Association said that their two matches against North Korea and the road match against Lebanon would be critical in determining whether they make it to Qatar.
While Korean athletes have jointly marched in ceremonies and competed as teammates during the Olympics and other sporting events, World Cup qualifiers are all about national pride, with nearly every match considered a must-win.
“South Korean people will get very angry if the national team fails to qualify for the World Cup,” said Nam Sung-wook, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Korea University.
If the World Cup qualifier in North Korea does take place, a potential venue would be Pyongyang’s massive May Day Stadium, where South Korean President Moon Jae-in last year delivered a speech to a 150,000-capacity crowd while visiting for his third summit with Kim.
Aside from issuing aspirational statements on a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and stabilized peace, Kim and Moon agreed that the Koreas would pursue a joint bid for the 2032 Summer Olympics and also send more combined teams to next year’s Tokyo Games and other major sports events.
However, relations have sourced since the collapse of a nuclear summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in February over disagreements in exchanging sanctions relief and disarmament.
North Korea has since ignored South Korea’s calls to organize combined teams in field hockey, basketball, judo and other sports for the qualifying rounds for the Tokyo Olympics.
It has also refused to send North Korean athletes to the World Swimming Championships under way in Gwangju, South Korea.
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