What was shaping up to be a remarkable return of international sports to North Korea on Tuesday ended up as an embarrassing own goal after the country suddenly scrapped its World Cup qualifier against historic rival Japan last week, raising questions about Pyongyang’s intent to reopen to the world.

The scheduled fixture at Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Stadium would have marked the first visit by foreign athletes to the DPRK since it sealed its borders four years ago due to COVID-19, but a forfeit now leaves the team’s World Cup hopes on shaky ground.

But even beyond the damage to North Korea’s sporting ambitions, the last-minute reversal highlights possible divisions within the country’s leadership about the future of its pandemic policies a year and a half after it claimed to eradicate the virus.

“In general, if a given policy appears totally incoherent, that usually means the policy-making process behind the scenes is indeed totally incoherent,” Christopher Green, International Crisis Group’s senior consultant for the Korean Peninsula, told NK News. “It points toward mixed messages and a capricious leader.”

FACTORS BEHIND WITHDRAWAL

An Asian Football Federation (AFC) inspection team traveled to Pyongyang at the start of March and greenlit the Japan fixture, even though the AFC had been forced to relocate a women’s soccer game between the two countries weeks earlier after Japan complained about travel logistics. 

Only foreign media that North Korea approved could travel to Pyongyang to cover the match, and no Japanese fans would be able to attend due to the DPRK’s stringent pandemic policies.

But as the North Korean soccer team was in Tokyo to face Japan, the news broke that the DPRK didn’t want the second leg in Pyongyang to take place, reportedly citing the outbreak of an infectious disease in Japan. 

After a lack of communication from the North Korean side, FIFA stepped in to pull the plug, resulting in a 3-0 forfeit for the DPRK and seriously denting their hopes of qualifying for the next round.

To advance now, North Korea will likely need to win their remaining games against Syria and Myanmar and hope Syria doesn’t beat Myanmar on Wednesday.

“Opening up after COVID must be quite a challenge,” Aidan Foster-Carter, an honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds University, told NK News. “They bit the bullet and made the decision to host the game but then someone got cold feet and backtracked.”

“It’s not a good look from any point of view,” he said.

However, several experts expressed doubt that medical concerns were the main factor behind Pyongyang’s decision, particularly as the country has eased quarantine measures for visitors from other countries since last year.

Simon Cockerell, the general manager of DPRK-focused travel agency Koryo Tours, said North Korea went to extreme lengths to keep COVID-19 out of the country but called the reasons it provided for the match cancellation “spurious and difficult to take particularly credibly.”

“It does seem as if this is the face-saving reason as who could really disagree with canceling an event due to the risk of the spread of disease,” he said.

Pointing to the increasing visits from countries such as Russia, he said it seems likely that there were political concerns about allowing a team from Korea’s former colonizer to enter the country.

The abrupt about-face notably came as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has made overtures for a summit with Kim Jong Un in recent months, with Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, voicing skepticism about Kishida’s intentions this week.

Given the reports of “tentative diplomatic contacts” between Pyongyang and Tokyo, Green said the decision to effectively uninvite the Japan soccer team may be a “visible manifestation” of how talks are going. 

“The infectious disease pretext is unlikely to be the main or even a significant cause of North Korea’s decision,” he told NK News.

PAST WITHDRAWALS

Sporting events like the Olympics have in the past offered North Korea a platform to engage with the outside world, but the country also has a history of pulling out of international competitions at the last minute.

The pandemic saw North Korea pull out of the major events including the Tokyo Olympics and FIFA World Cup qualifiers and cancel local events like the Pyongyang Marathon, as the country isolated itself further from the rest of the world to keep the virus at bay.

While the global pandemic was the main factor for several withdrawals in recent years, the DPRK has previously walked away from other sporting contests due to international politics and national ideology.

Weeks before North Korea shut its borders due to COVID-19 in Jan. 2020, its women’s soccer team reportedly pulled out of a 2020 Olympics qualifying tournament in South Korea.

Pyongyang did not provide a reason for the withdrawal, but the move came amid rapidly deteriorating relations with Seoul and Washington following the failed Hanoi summit almost a year earlier.

More recently, North Korea withdrew from last year’s Asian Paralympic Games after organizers prohibited the use of its flag due to a prior doping ban, and it skipped an Olympic weightlifting qualifier in Cuba in June despite having registered for it.

Such abrupt withdrawals reflect poorly on North Korea, according to Koryo Tours’ Cockerell.

“It isn’t a play which makes them look rational or powerful,” he told NK News. “It comes across as a bit petty and a disappointment to those who would like to see more engagement through the relatively neutral medium of sports.” 

During times of tensions with regional rivals, North Korea has previously played its home matches at neutral venues, including a FIFA World Cup qualifier against South Korea in China in 2008. It held another World Cup qualifier against the South behind closed doors in Pyongyang in 2019.

But Cockerell noted that the Japan and North Korean men’s national teams have previously played in Pyongyang despite long-running bilateral tensions.

IMPLICATIONS FOR ENGAGEMENT

North Korea’s abrupt about-face on hosting the Japanese men’s soccer team sends mixed signals about the regime’s strategy and may even underscore division with the leadership, experts said.

While Pyongyang has fluctuated between engagement and hostility toward its regional rivals, Foster-Carter said “monolithic unity” within the regime ultimately backs the leadership’s decisions.

“North Korea normally runs a very tight ship,” he said. “It is often weird, but also usually very good at presenting a united front and sticking to positions and decisions once made.”

The decision to scrap the match in Pyongyang and Kim Yo Jong’s statement on relations with Japan stands out even more as the DPRK steps up exchanges with Russia and China, raising hopes of a wider opening to tourism and the return of diplomats and humanitarian workers to the country.

Cockerell said the decision to scrap the World Cup qualifier against Japan is “not a positive sign” for reopening, he suggested it does not necessarily mean North Korea is unwilling to allow athletes and visitors from other countries.

“I would hesitate to ascribe a wider meaning to it given that it specifically applies to Japan and the relationship — or lack thereof — between North Korea and Japan is not really applicable to their relationship with any other country,” he said.

International Crisis Group’s Green agreed that the withdrawal has a “significant political component” and thus may not reflect broader policy moves toward re-engagement with the outside world.

He added that the nature of global sporting contests also means the DPRK will get more opportunities for sporting engagement in the future despite its reputation taking a hit with repeated withdrawals. 

“I’m sure that the North Korean government’s standing within Asian and global sporting federations is low, but the principles upon which international sports tend to operate mean they will keep coming back no matter what Pyongyang does.”