North Korean women’s football club headed to Seoul in rare trip across the border

A North Korean women’s football club will travel to South Korea this month, marking the first visit by a northern sports delegation in nearly eight years, at a time of near-total estrangement between the two Koreas.

Naegohyang Women’s FC, based in North Korea’s capital Pyongyang, will face South Korea’s Suwon FC Women at Suwon sports complex, on 20 May for the semi-finals of the AFC Women’s Champions League.

South Korea’s football association said the Asian Football Confederation had confirmed Naegohyang’s participation on 1 May. A delegation of 39, consisting of 27 players and 12 staff, is expected to arrive on 17 May, according to the unification ministry.

It will be the first time a North Korean women’s football team has competed on southern soil since the 2014 Incheon Asian Games.

It is also the first visit by any North Korean sports delegation since December 2018, when a unified Korean table tennis team competed at a tournament in Incheon.

That came at the tail end of a brief period of inter-Korean sporting rapprochement that saw the two Koreas march together under a unification flag at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and field a joint women’s ice hockey team, alongside North Korean officials and cheering squads visiting the south.

The latest visit comes amid deep tensions and minimal contact between Seoul and Pyongyang.

South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, who took office in June 2025, has made reviving inter-Korean dialogue a central policy goal.

In an address marking liberation day last August, he said: “South and North Korea are not enemies.” He also renounced any pursuit of unification by absorption, and pledged no hostile acts.

An official at the presidential office told the Guardian the government welcomed Naegohyang’s participation in the tournament, adding that it would work with the AFC and Suwon FC “to ensure that the team can successfully compete in the match”.

Pyongyang has given no public indication of a shift in position. In December 2023, Kim Jong-un redefined inter-Korean relations as those between “two hostile states” in a state of war, a formulation later reflected in state policy and reiterated as recently as March.

Shortly after Lee took office, Kim Yo-jong, a senior North Korean official and the leader’s powerful sister, said in a state media statement that Pyongyang had “no interest” in dialogue regardless of who led the south.