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North Korea·South Korea·Football·Diplomacy

North Korean women's football club arrives in South Korea for first inter-Korean sports visit in seven years

Sunday, 17 May 2026, 06:27 · 1 min read

The North Korean women's football club Naegohyang Women's FC landed at Incheon International Airport on Sunday, becoming the first North Korean sports team to travel to South Korea since 2018 and setting the stage for a rare inter-Korean encounter on the pitch. The club will face South Korea's Suwon FC Women in the semifinals of the AFC Women's Champions League (Asia's top women's club competition) on Wednesday at Suwon Stadium, about 30 kilometres south of Seoul — a rematch of a group-stage fixture last November that Naegohyang won 3-0. All publicly available tickets for the match sold out within hours, with around 3,000 members of civic groups set to form a joint cheerleading squad that will support both sides, reflecting cautious optimism that the visit may open space for future inter-Korean cooperation within multilateral sporting frameworks, even if broader diplomatic exchanges remain unlikely.

Sources
YonhapN. Korea football club Naegohyang arrive in S. Korea for much-anticipated match ↗︎YonhapN.K. football team's S. Korea visit signals possibility of inter-Korean cooperation in multilateral arenas: cheering squad official ↗︎
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