Heroes’ welcome in Pyongyang for World Cup-bound North Korean soccer team

Heroes’ welcome for NKorean soccer team

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s soccer team returned home Saturday to a rousing heroes’ welcome, complete with a brass band and bouquets, after securing a spot in the World Cup for the first time in more than 40 years.

But the heirs to the “Red Mosquitoes,” the underdog darlings of the 1966 World Cup, are unlikely to bask in the same international welcome when they travel to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup.

North Korea’s return to soccer’s most prominent tournament — secured Wednesday with a 0-0 draw against Saudi Arabia — has been overshadowed by the string of North Korean provocations that have had the world on edge in recent months.

Since early April, North Korea has launched a long-range rocket, abandoned nuclear disarmament talks and conducted an underground atomic test in quick succession, earning international condemnation and new U.N. sanctions aimed at punishing the regime for its nuclear defiance.

On Saturday, a U.S. destroyer was trailing a North Korean ship in what could be the first test of a new U.N. Security Council resolution calling on member states to inspect vessels, with the owner country’s approval, if they believe the cargo contains banned goods.

At home, the soccer team’s success gave the communist regime another victory to parade before the people as ailing North Korean leader Kim Jong Il seeks to solidify national unity before possibly anointing a son as his successor at the end of a “150-day campaign” under way in the country.

The 67-year-old Kim, who reportedly suffered a stroke last August, is believed to be paving the way to name 26-year-old Jong Un, his youngest son, as the nation’s next leader. The recent provocations are suspected to be part of a show of strength engineered by the regime’s leadership before the official announcement.

As a young man, Kim himself used the success of the Red Mosquitoes to further his political career, a former head coach of North Korea’s national team told The Associated Press.

Kim “personally managed a soccer team for about three years, visiting stadiums and taking good care of his players,” Moon Ki-nam, who defected to South Korea in 2004, said from the southeastern city of Ulsan, where he coaches a university soccer team.

Kim was officially anointed as the successor to his father Kim Il Sung in 1974, and assumed leadership upon his father’s death in 1994.

On Saturday, a brass band and several thousand people welcomed the players as they landed at the airport.

“When I was keeping goal, I felt like I was defending the gateway to my motherland,” goalkeeper Ri Myong Guk said on SNTV.

“Our footballers played very well. They had the strong mental power and the devotion of spirit necessary, finally, to get through and qualify for the 2010 World Cup,” said head coach Kim Jong Hun.

The celebrations echoed the triumphant homecoming of the Red Mosquitoes, who shocked and delighted the world in 1966 by knocking favorite Italy out of the World Cup to reach the quarterfinals.

That finish was the highest ever for an Asian team until South Korea reached the semifinals in 2002. Upon their return, North Koreans swarmed the team and carried the players through the streets.

Back then, players were handsomely rewarded for international wins — and punished if they lost, Moon said.

“Players and coaches were awarded big apartments if they won, but they were purged and sent to coal mines for labor if they lost,” he told the AP.

The government banned the team from traveling abroad following stinging defeats to both Japan and South Korea in the qualifying stages of the 1994 World Cup in the United States. The squad tentatively returned to the international stage in 1999 but skipped the 1998 and 2002 World Cups, and failed to qualify for the 2006 tournament.

No doubt the pressure is on the team to give the impoverished but proud country international sporting glory.

Some games have turned violent. At one 2005 qualifier, North Koreans pelted the field with bottles and rocks and surrounded the visiting Iranian team’s bus.

Games have also turned political. Last year, North Korea refused to allow the South Korean flag and national anthem at qualifying games in Pyongyang, forcing soccer’s governing body, FIFA, to move two matches to Shanghai, China.

In April, just days before North Korea’s controversial rocket launch, the head coaches of the two Koreas — whose countries technically remain at war — struck a conciliatory note before a Seoul qualifier. They expressed hopes that both Korean teams would advance.

But the warmth turned frosty when South Korea won 1-0, with North Korea accusing its wartime rival of deliberately sickening its players with “adulterated foodstuff.” State-run media denounced the game as “a theater of plot-breeding and swindling.”

South Korean authorities denied the claims.

The North Korean team now relies on a stranglehold defense and a speedy counterattack — lessons learned from 1966.

Back then, so little was known about the team from the communist country that “they might as well have been flying in from the moon,” filmmaker Daniel Gordon said in a 2002 documentary, “The Game of Their Lives.”

They were mild-mannered but generous with autographs and quick to sing patriotic tunes, chanting: “We will show others who we are,” Gordon said.

They were also scrappy and ambitious. But their freewheeling method on the pitch was no match for Portugal, led by soccer great Eusebio. After an early three-goal lead, the Red Mosquitoes lost 3-5 in the quarterfinals.

In Seoul, Sam Ka, secretary general of Korea Football Association, said he was pleased both Koreas qualified for the next World Cup and voiced hope that soccer will ease tensions and help the reclusive North rejoin the international community.