N Korean team ventures into South
Home Naegohyang Women's FC will play Suwon FC Women at ACL semis A women's football club will on Sunday be the first sports team from North Korea to visit neighbouring South Korea in eight years. The isolated and nuclear-armed country's Naegohyang Women's FC will play the South's Suwon FC Women three days later in the Asian Champions League semi-finals. The two Koreas remain technically at war because the 1950-53 conflict ended 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 in the South. The two Koreas also fielded their first unified Olympic team — a joint women's ice hockey squad — at the Pyeongchang Games.
Ri Sol Ju, the wife of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, also visited South Korea in 2005 as part of a North Korean cheering squad for the Asian Athletics Championships.
Published: May 14, 2026 2:50 pm
Source: The Express Tribune — Read original