Naegohyang FC will play the South\u2019s Suwon FC on May 20 in the semifinal of the Women\u2019s Asian Champions League on May 20.<\/p>\n
Published On 4 May 20264 May 2026<\/p>\n
A North Korean women\u2019s football club will become the first sports team from the country to play in South Korea since 2018 when they visit this month, Seoul\u2019s unification ministry has confirmed.<\/p>\n
The neighbours remain technically at war after their 1950\u201353 conflict ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty, and sporting and cultural exchanges between them are very rare.<\/p>\n
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Naegohyang Women\u2019s FC will play the South\u2019s Suwon FC Women on May 20 in the semifinals of the Asian Champions League. The winner will face Melbourne City or Tokyo Verdy in the final, also to be played in Suwon, on May 23 .<\/p>\n
The visiting delegation will include 27 players and 12 club staff, the ministry said on Monday. South Korea\u2019s football association told AFP news agency that the team would arrive on May 17 .<\/p>\n
They will fly into Incheon airport on an Air China flight from Beijing, a unification ministry official said.<\/p>\n
The winner of the match at Suwon Sports Complex, south of the capital Seoul, will play the final of Asia\u2019s top women\u2019s club competition against either Australia\u2019s Melbourne City or Japan\u2019s Tokyo Verdy Beleza on May 23 .<\/p>\n
\u201cThe losing team in the semifinal will return home on Thursday, May 21 , with no third-place playoff scheduled,\u201d the ministry statement added.<\/p>\n
The match will be the first time a North Korean sports team has played in the South since shooting, youth football and table tennis delegations travelled there in 2018.<\/p>\n
The last time Pyongyang sent a women\u2019s football team to the South was in 2014, when the North Korean national team took part in the Asian Games in Incheon.<\/p>\n
Founded in 2012 and based in the North Korean capital, much of Naegohyang\u2019s squad is \u201cmade up of national team-level players\u201d, the ministry said.<\/p>\n
North Korea\u2019s national team is one of the dominant forces in Asian women\u2019s football, winning multiple international titles in recent years, especially at youth level.<\/p>\n
The most recent one came in November last year, when they defeated the Netherlands 3-0 in the final of the U-17 Women\u2019s World Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Naegohyang FC will play the South\u2019s Suwon FC on May 20 in the semifinal of the Women\u2019s Asian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":881985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2026],"tags":[45182,7,88,119130,12811,817],"class_list":["post-881984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-asia-pacific","tag-football","tag-news","tag-north-korea","tag-south-korea","tag-sport"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116514914569907229","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=881984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}