Is North Korea the Model for China? Lessons from the 2010 World Cup

The mystery team of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the North Korean national men's soccer team, attracted multitudinous fans in China. Chinese enthusiasm for the North Koreans was in stark contrast to their general disgust and disdain for their own national team.

North Korea's National Men's Soccer Team

How was it possible for North Korea, an impoverished and isolated nation of 23 million, to qualify for the 2010 World Cup, while a rapidly growing and open China with 1.3 billion people failed to do so? Debates about the performances of the North Korean team even entered the realm of political discourse in China, with many Chinese seeing in the North Korean experience a source of inspiration for reforming Chinese soccer and even Chinese society.

China's National Men's Soccer Team: A National Disgrace

Despite China's emergence as a sports superpower, as evidenced by its great success at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, men's soccer had become a national disgrace. To be sure, the Chinese women's national soccer team had been relatively successful in international competitions, winning the gold medal in the Asian Games three times, making the final two at the 1996 FIFA Women's World Cup and the 1996 Olympics, and currently ranking 10th on the FIFA list. In contrast, the Chinese men's national soccer team, among Asia's best in the 1980s, now only ranked 78th on the FIFA list. In its only appearance at the World Cup in 2002, the team lost all three games and failed to score a single goal. While China's neighbors, Japan, North Korea and South Korea all qualified for the 2010 World Cup, the Chinese team failed to do so. Exasperated with the long string of failures by the national men's team, Chinese soccer fans have dubbed it the National Pigs (guozhu国豬), punning on the abbreviated name for the team (guozu国足).

National Pigs (国豬)

The Chinese soccer players' "bad habits of excessive drinking, visiting prostitutes or other decadent lifestyles were blamed [by some Chinese] as the major causes of their failures in big international competitions." Others argued that government policy was an important reason for the mediocrity of Chinese men's soccer: the state funneled money "to individual sports like gymnastics, swimming and diving, and to sports in which Chinese have traditionally excelled, like badminton and table tennis," in order to produce the greatest number of winners and medals. Sports ministry officials focused on investing in "promising sports prodigies with a quicker guarantee of victory." Still another reason cited is that few children and young people play soccer: schools now de-emphasize sports, cities lack soccer fields, and the popularity of soccer among young people has been eclipsed by basketball, which is boosted by Chinese NBA players like Yao Ming as role models and by the aggressive marketing of the NBA in China.

Li Chengpeng, Sports Journalist

Perhaps corruption is the single biggest factor. As Forbes journalist Gady Epstein observed, "Chinese men's soccer failed to qualify for the [2010] World Cup finals but is outscoring the rest of the world in one category: corruption." Leading sports journalist and soccer commentator Li Chengpeng (李承鹏) co-authored in 2009 "Inside Story of Chinese Soccer 中国足球内幕" [ch] which provided a detailed exposé of close ties between gambling syndicates and professional soccer in China, resulting in the widespread corruption of officials, referees, coaches and players. The throwing of games, the fixing of matches and deliberately blown calls became frequent occurrences in the Chinese primary league competitions since the 1990s. Players even had to pay bribes to be admitted into national teams. Many players, coaches and managers were involved in gambling. Some players and coaches were victims of physical violence due to their involvement in or opposition to gambling: the owner of one soccer club allegedly tried to bury alive one of his players for throwing games, and one soccer manager was marched out of his house with a gun to his head for refusing to condone gambling. As Li Chengpeng saw it, professional soccer in China is organized not as modern organizations in the mold of the NBA, but along the lines of the Chinese underworld.

A government crackdown since late 2009 has resulted in at least 20 arrests, including Nan Yong (南勇), the head of the Chinese Football Association (中国足球协会), and Lu Jun (陆俊), a former World Cup referee who had been dubbed the Golden Whistle (金哨) for impartial refereeing in contrast to the Black Whistles (黑哨).

Foreign experts too have pondered the question about China's failure to send a team to the World Cup. Forbes columnist Ray Tsuchiyama dismissed some common explanations. If China was handicapped by lack of urban practice space and lack of money for balls, what about "Brazilian children practic[ing] soccer with a can wrapped in streets filled with parked cars?" If corruption leads to inferior playing, then what about successful soccer powers such as Brazil, Italy, Nigeria and Russia that have had their fair share of scandals?

Along with other expert panelists to which the New York Times posed the question, "Where Are China’s Soccer Stars?", Tsuchiyama suggested that one of the most important factors may be the lack of grassroots organizations fostering enthusiasm and nurturing talent among Chinese children and youth: "The Chinese state-managed sports focus yields a huge number of medals in Olympic and other world competitions. But it has prevented the development of local sports autonomy — in particular, independent soccer clubs which form a foundation for training young players. In America, by contrast, parents, teachers, coaches and parents-as-coaches have had a tremendous impact over the past three decades on youth soccer development." Historian Xu Guoqi cited the lack of soccer moms among other reasons: "Too many factors contribute to China’s poor performance in soccer, including its political system, lack of a decent pool of soccer players, and Chinese parents’ overemphasis on book learning and academic examinations over everything else, soccer included ... Chinese enjoy watching soccer games, but few really want to play or have their children play soccer." Anthropologist Susan Brownell agreed the Chinese sport system "does not work well for sports in which stars emerge slowly from a wide participation base, where talent becomes apparent only as the athletes mature physically." Moreover, corruption arises because power is concentrated: the Chinese Football Administration responsible for administration and the Football Management Center responsible for managing corporate sponsorships and business affairs are both run by the same person. Rowan Simons, the chairman of China ClubFootball FC, concurred: "Football is a mass participation sport in which the best players may not emerge until their later teens. The simple truth is that China needs a system of community-based clubs that are run by the people for the people."

North Korea: The Miracle Team of the 1966 World Cup

North Korea Team Flag

Whatever the cause, the Chinese soccer fans had no national team to root for in the 2010 World Cup, and instead lavished their affection and support on the North Korean team. This was not the first time that North Korea participated in the World Cup. Nor was it the first time that its national soccer team was embraced by the people of a foreign country. North Korea last competed in the 1966 World Cup hosted by England, when it became the Cinderella team of the tournament. As recounted in the BBC documentary The Game of Their Lives [trailer], the qualification process became a subject of bitter political controversy when FIFA allocated a single slot for the countries of the African, Asian and Oceania zones. With the African countries and most Asian nations boycotting in protest, Australia played against North Korea for the slot. By stunning the Australians, North Korea qualified along with 10 teams from Europe, 4 teams from South America, and 1 team from North and Central America (Mexico).

The lack of diplomatic relations between North Korea and host country England posed political obstacles. The British Foreign Office could not deny visas to the North Koreans out of fear that England would then be stripped of being the host nation. It was reluctant to allow any display of national symbols by North Korea lest that would imply diplomatic recognition and set the precedent for demands by East Germany which England did not recognize. Eventually a compromise was reached: the North Koreans were allowed to display their flag, but their national anthem would only be played at the opening match between England and Uruguay and at the championship match (as it turned out, the North Korean anthem was never played).

North Koreans Celebrate Victory Over Italy

Although 1000 to 1 underdogs and with an average height of only 5" 5', the North Korean team achieved a miracle by advancing to the quarterfinals. After losing to the Soviets 3-0 in their first Group D match, the North Koreans squeaked out a tie with Chile by scoring a goal with two minutes to go. In their final group game on July 19, 1966, they managed to stun the highly touted Italians 1-0 with no. 7 Park Do-ik scoring the winning goal, thereby advancing to the quarterfinals (in 2002, South Korea would match this by beating Italy to reach the World Cup quarterfinals).

Li Chang-myung & Shin Yunk-kyoo Block Eusébio

By this point, the North Koreans with their active attacking style had won the hearts of the people of Middlesbrough, a town in Northeastern England where the team had been staying and playing. 3,000 Middlesbrough residents followed the North Korean team to Liverpool, where the quarterfinal game against Portugal would be played. The North Koreans started fast, scoring three goals in the first twenty minutes for a big lead, and it appeared that another miracle was in the offing. Alas, the Portuguese managed a comeback, with their legendary player Eusébio scoring four goals in response and Portugal winning in the end 5-3. The North Korean team returned home to a hero's welcome.

Surviving Members of the 1966 Team

In 2001, Director Daniel Gordon (who had been impressed by the North Koreans when as a kid his dad gave him a video of the North Korea-Italy match) and producer Nick Bonner received permission from the North Korean government to visit North Korea to make the documentary on the 1966 team, The Game of Their Lives. After completing the film in 2002, the filmmakers then secured permission from the governments of Britain and North Korea to bring the seven surviving members of the soccer team back to Middlesbrough for a memorable visit.

North Korea's Tortuous Path to Return to the World Cup

The North Korean national team took a tortuous path to return to the World Cup in 2010. For years it was rumored that the 1966 World Cup team was purged for womanizing before the game against Portugal. According to a history of North Korean soccer by blogger Joo Seong-ha, a North Korean defector who is now a reporter for the leading South Korean daily Dong-A Ilbo (translated by Ask a Korean: Part I, Part II, Part III), the team was indeed purged, not for falling for the "courtesan tactics" of the imperialists, but as innocent victims swept up in a 1967 political purge, the most prominent victims of which were no. 2 party leader Park Geum-cheol and party secretary Kim Do-man — Park and Kim had provided unconditional support to the national soccer team and claimed its success among their accomplishments. Eventually some members of the team were rehabilitated and returned to serve as coaches.

Nonetheless, the purge had set back progress in North Korean soccer for decades. An important step taken by the government to rebuild its national men's soccer team into an international competitive force was the 1991 hiring of a foreign coach, Hungarian Pal Csernai who had successful coaching experience in the German leagues. Csernai's first great success was a 2-1 victory at the unprecedented friendly match between his North Korean team and the U.S. team at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC on Oct. 19, 1991. The North Korean team made a creditable run to return to the World Cup by winning 7 of 8 games in the preliminaries in 1993, only to falter in the final qualifying stage in Doha, losing 4 of 5 games, the last to South Korea which advanced to the World Cup.

1966 Hero Park Do-ik as 2008 Olympic Torchbearer

With the return of Csernai directly from Doha to Munich, and the onset of the food crisis of the 1990s, the North Korean soccer program went through another difficult period. Nevertheless, a league system of 130 teams continued to function, and the age of selecting players to be groomed as future stars continued to be lowered to ensure the provision of adequate nutrition at a young age.

As reported by Chinese journalists Wang Wei (汪伟) and Wang Qian (王倩), after its failure in Doha in 1993, North Korea stayed away from international competition for the next 5 years [ch], while building a national training facility at Mt. Paektu, which would produce many of the future national stars. The North Korean national team made its first international reappearance at the 2001 Shanghai Invitational.

The internationalization of North Korean soccer accelerated with the failure of the national team to qualify for the 2006 World Cup [ch], after which Kim Jong-il decided to allow North Korean players to play for professional soccer clubs abroad, broaden their horizons, and raise their playing levels. Clubs in Asia and Europe took an interest in North Korean players, because of their work ethnic, low cost, and news value. From 2007 on, a number of national team players played professional soccer abroad, e.g. national team captain Hong Yong-jo in Russia and Kim Young-jun in China. Most national team players had competed in 30-40 games at A-level international tournaments [ch] before the 2010 World Cup, a few even close to 60. The collective international experience of the North Korean team was actually much more extensive than its Chinese counterpart.

Thus, despite the closed nature of North Korean society, soccer is its most open sector. Nevertheless, there were limits. Players abroad were accompanied by political commissars who handled translations and prevention of "the possibility of foreign hostile forces causing harm to the players" [ch]. North Korean players impressed foreign media as behaviorally reserved, emotionally restrained, resistant to exchanges with foreigners, and often holding the Quotations of Kim Il-sung.

North Korean Players Celebrate Qualifying for the World Cup

Unlike its 1966 predecessor with every player except the goalie on active attack, the North Korean national men's soccer team adopted a defensive style that earned it second place in Asia qualification round's Group B with 3 wins, 3 draws, 2 losses and 7 goals in 2009. At the last game on June 18, 2009, North Korea tied Saudi Arabia, thereby qualifying for the World Cup for the first time since 1966. The players were honored with a massive parade on their return to Pyongyang. Sixteen players received the honor of being named People's Athlete, the highest possible honor for athletes normally reserved for winners in the Olympics and the World Championships. Another three were named Contributing Athlete, usually awarded to winners of an Asia-wide competition.

The extravagant showering of honors on the national team player might be connected to the political significance that the North Korean government attached to the World Cup: North Korea watchers reported that, as the ailing Kim Jong-il was preparing for his son Kim Jong-un's succession, he had hoped that the success of the national men's soccer team could be attributed to Kim Jong-un, thereby "build[ing] support among military and workers' party elites for a transfer of power."

Still, with a world ranking of 105, the North Koreans were again a long shot to win the 2010 World Cup. Moreover, North Korea was seeded in Group G, the so-called Group of Death with 5-time champion Brazil, previous World Cup runner-up Portugal, and powerhouse Ivory Coast. Nevertheless, Son Kwang-ho, vice-president of the DPRK Football Association, was sanguine about North Korea's prospects, informing FourFourTwo reporter Neil Billingham on his visit to North Korea: “North Korea will win the World Cup ... it is because of the great support of our Dear Leader Kim Jong-il that our national team will make this great achievement.”

North Korea: Darling of Chinese Soccer Fans and the New Left

Chinese soccer commentator Li Chengpeng was not so sure. To him the North Korean model, relying on the revolutionary spirit of the people under the stern gaze of their leader Kim Jong-il, a military style of management, and training in a closed society, was irrational and unscientific. In response to many Chinese fans who demanded that he praise the North Korean team for its team spirit, he penned a highly sarcastic and satirical editorial "Good! North Korea, Seize the Crown! (好吧，朝鲜夺冠)" [ch]. In a more serious vein, Li did predict a narrow win by Brazil over North Korea in their opening match on June 15, 2010, not because he believed that the two teams were evenly matched or that the North Korean revolutionary spirit would prevail over the technical skills of the Brazilians, but because the Brazilian team would conserve its energy for the next round of the World Cup while the North Koreans would give their all under the watch of Kim Jong-il.

Felipe Melo (Brazil) vs. An Yong-hak (North Korea)

Indeed, Brazil won narrowly only by 2-1, an outcome that was considered to be a great spiritual victory by the North Koreans and their Chinese supporters, who took strong exception to Li Chengpeng's negative assessment of North Korea's chances. 13 of 15 papers that normally carried Li's commentary had refused to publish his "Good! North Korea, Seize the Crown!," probably because it was considered to be politically incorrect for denigrating a close ally of the Chinese government. But it was available on Li's blog and was widely republished online. Li's blog entry attracted close to 500,000 hits and over 3,000 comments, with over 70% critical of Li.

Chiek Tioté (Ivory Coast) vs. Hong Yong-jo (North Korea)

Many of these criticisms of Li and praises for the North Korean team were echoed by postings on the influential leftist commentary site Utopia (乌有之乡). This site reflects the perspectives of the New Left, whose proponents are highly critical of the market reforms that have been implemented in China since the 1980s for promoting social inequalities and injustice. Some leftists even look back to the Mao Zedong era as a time of material poverty but spiritual wealth, in comparison to the present time of material wealth but spiritual poverty. They see North Korea today approvingly as a reflection of Maoist China. Even before the World Cup, in January of 2010, Utopia hosted a screening of The Game of Their Lives [ch] (paired with South Korean film Peppermint Candy) in Beijing, at the discussion of which two leftist commentators and the audience were very positive about North Korea's political and social developments.

In the context of the World Cup and North Korea's narrow loss to Brazil, a representative posting on Utopia stated: "The game of soccer can best reflect the spirit of a nation and its inner qualities ... North Korean soccer demonstrates a simple principle. Material poverty cannot defeat a soccer team. It is spiritual poverty that is an incurable sickness. The soccer played by the Chinese players who have become rich is ugly to the extreme, while that of the North Korean players is blindingly brilliant ... Looking back in history our country has also gone through a period of material poverty but spiritual wealth. Regrettably this kind of period will not return. Of course it is better that material poverty not come back. But spiritual poverty may be scarier, as it makes the people disheartened and helpless."

Jong Tae-se, Striker for North Korea

One North Korean player who had gained the greatest admiration among Chinese soccer fans was Jong Tae-se, who is one of two zainichi players on the North Korean team. As of the end of 2008, there were 589,239 registered “zainichi,” “people of Korean descent born and raised in Japan,” mostly descendants of Koreans forcibly brought to Japan as laborers between 1910 and 1945 when Korea was a Japanese colony. As Ray Tsuchiyama points out, "To use a Korean name and Korean citizenship status in Japan means discrimination in education and employment, and difficulties in social interaction, including pre-marital checks and assumptions about ties to the criminal underworld. There are many ethnic Koreans who assimilated into Japanese society by taking Japanese citizenship and using Japanese names." Many more held on to their Korean identity in spite of, or because of, discrimination. Jong Tae-se was born in Nagoya and educated in pro-Pyongyang schools run by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan. As a star player in Japan Professional Football League, Jong could have attained Japanese citizenship and possibly played on the national team of either Japan or South Korea. Instead he opted to play for North Korea, which had already courted him when he was a sophomore at Korea University in Tokyo (profile of campus in Chronicle of Higher Education).

Jong Tae-se in Tears

Because of his “charge-ahead and shoot” style atypical of Asian players, Jong Tae-Se was dubbed “People’s Wayne Rooney” by the Asian media, and has attracted a wide following among Koreans all over the world and also among other Asians. What particularly endeared him to Chinese fans, however, was his propensity to cry whenever the North Korean national anthem was played, which signified a fervent patriotism that was deemed lacking among the materialistically inclined Chinese players.

Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) vs. Jong Tae-se (North Korea)

Many Chinese fans remained faithful and declared their admiration of the indomitable spirit of the North Koreans even as they suffered lopsided defeats of 7-0 by Portugal (June 21, 2010) and 3-0 by the Ivory Coast (June 25, 2010), and failed to advance beyond the group stage. Li Chengpeng saw things differently: Portugal's rout of North Korea represented the total demolition of the latter's spiritual model. He asked the Chinese fans who clamored for modeling Chinese soccer on North Korean soccer: Why follow a model that China itself has gone through thirty years ago, when an athlete had to write his self-criticism after a mistake on the field, when he would be punished if he had an unauthorized interview with the foreign press, when he had to thank the great nation and leader whenever he crossed the finish line, and when national soccer team captain Dai Linjing (戴麟经) was persecuted to death during the Cultural Revolution for having a bad class background?

Li agreed with the Utopia leftists that North Korea's present echoed the Maoist past in China, but drew different conclusions: "Don't let political faith give rise to illusions in sports or literature. Don't believe that if the great leader beckons and looks on, the country will become the champion. This is similar to some time ago when the leader of a particular country [meaning Mao Zedong during the Great Leap Forward] said that crop production must exceed 10,000 kilograms, that the country would surpass England and chase after America in 5 years. Subsequently millions upon millions of people smashed their cooking pots to smelt steel, and then millions upon millions of people starved."

Postscript

Kim Jong-hun, Coach of the North Korean Team

Why did the North Korean team lose so badly to Portugal and then the Ivory Coast after losing only 2-1 to Brazil? The euphoria of that narrow loss evidently led the North Korean government to optimistically abandon its normal policy and allow the live broadcast of the North Korea-Portugal game on June 21, 2010, probably the live broadcast ever of a sports event on North Korean television. According to the Chosun Ilbo citing Radio Free Asia, Kim Jong-il concluded that the team lost to Brazil because it focused only on defense in the second half. He then "gave orders for the team's defenders to be positioned forward and even specified where each defender should be standing in the field." The abandonment of a tight defense strategy, whether it was at Kim Jong-il's direction or whether it was a decision of coach Kim Jong-hun under extreme pressure to win on a live broadcast, proved disastrous. In its World Cup rematch with North Korea since that historic 1966 game, Portugal did not break through until after 29 minutes. The North Koreans, who had played well up to that point, collapsed completely, giving up six goals in the second half without scoring one themselves.

Parody: Jong Tae-se as Miner

Speculations that the North Korean team would be sent to the coal mines for its failure at the World Camp were rampant. In Chinese cyberspace, parodies (egao恶搞) based on mashups or Photoshopping existing images or videos were posted on this scenario: in one video, Jong Tae-se's weeping image was edited to show him wearing a coal miner's protective helmet and bemoaning his fate.

In reality, the two zainichi players on the North Korean team — Jong Tae-se and An Yong-hak — flew directly to Japan following the end of North Korea's run at the World Cup. On account of his strong play at the World Cup, Jong was signed by the German club VfL Bochum of the Bundeliga league in early July. The zainichi's North Korean teammates and coach might not have been so fortunate. Radio Free Asia reported that the team was summoned to appear on stage at a large auditorium at the Working People’s Culture Palace, and "subjected to a session of harsh ideological criticism" before more than 400 people for six hours. The players were criticized by other athletes and a sports commentator, and then forced to criticize their coach Kim Jong-hun for betraying heir-apparent Kim Jong-un. The players might have gotten off relatively lightly. Rumors circulated that Coach Kim might have been expelled from the Workers' Party or sent to do forced labor, for derailing plans to celebrate the World Cup as Young General Kim Jong-un's achievement.

In August of 2010, FIFA, the governing body for world soccer, launched an investigation into whether North Korea had punished some of the national team players and their coach. In a letter responding to FIFA's letter of inquiry, the North Korean Football Association stated that there was no truth to the allegations of humiliation of the players and their coach, and that the team was training as usual for the Asian Games. FIFA stated that it was "satisfied with the information received," and declared the matter closed.

(Last revised: September 25, 2010)