North Korean women’s club to play rare football in South | Football News

Naegohyang FC will play South’s Suwon FC on May 20 in the semifinal of the Women’s Asia Champions League on May 20.

North Korea’s women’s soccer club will become the country’s first sports team to play in South Korea since 2018 when they visit this month, Seoul’s unification ministry has confirmed.

The neighbors remain at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in war rather than a peace treaty, and sporting and cultural exchanges between them are rare.

Naegohyang Women’s FC will play South’s Suwon FC Women on May 20 in the semifinals of the Asia Champions League. The winner will face either Melbourne City or Tokyo Verdy in the final, also to be played in Suwon, on May 23.

The incoming delegation will include 27 players and staff from 12 teams, the ministry said on Monday. The South Korean Football Association told AFP that the team will arrive on May 17.

He will fly to Incheon Airport on an Air China flight from Beijing, said an official from the Ministry of Communications.

The winner of the match at the Suwon Sports Complex, south of the capital Seoul, will play in the final of Asia’s top clubs against Australia’s Melbourne City or Japan’s Tokyo Verdy Beeleza on May 23.

“The team that lost in the semifinal will return on Thursday, May 21, without preparing for the third place,” the ministry said.

The match will be the first time a North Korean sports team will play in the South since youth soccer and table tennis delegations went there in 2018.

The last time Pyongyang sent a women’s soccer team to the South was in 2014, when the North Korean national team participated in the Asian Games in Incheon.

Established in 2012 and based in the North Korean capital, most of the Naegohyang team is “made up of national players”, the ministry said.

The North Korean national team is one of the most successful teams in Asian women’s football, and has won several countries in recent years, especially at the youth level.

The most recent came in November last year, when they defeated the Netherlands 3-0 in the final of the U-17 Women’s World Cup.