North Korea set their World Cup target: happiness for the Dear Leader

Posted Tuesday, June 15, 2010 by theguardian.com

The emissaries of the Dear Leader to World Cup 2010 sat grim-faced through a meeting with the capitalist media

There is something about a North Korean World Cup press conference that recalls a possibly apocryphal story featuring the creepy Guinness Book of Records editor Norris McWhirter. According to this tale, Norris was visiting a school in his capacity as leader and co-founder of the Freedom Association, the charmless libertarian pressure group whose policies included mounting legal challenges against peace campaigners and allowing 1980s cricketers "freedom to trade" in apartheid South Africa. After delivering a fairly eye‑wateringly right-wing lecture to his young audience, Norris broke the silence that greeted its conclusion by asking if anyone had any questions. "Yeah," drawled one kid. "What's the biggest fish?"

And so with the North Koreans, where once you've sat through the footballing platitudes, the temptation is to meet the cursory "any questions?" with the response: "Yes. Be honest, you did sink that ship, didn't you?"

Unfortunately, any meeting with representatives of the North Korean national set‑up is preceded by a Fifa suit announcing that "questions that intersect politics with football" will not be tolerated.

So, making their first World Cup appearance since 1966, North Korea have been drawn in the so-called Group of Death, and tomorrow night play Brazil, who – for the benefit of those only taking a temporary interest in such things – are better at football than them. Today it fell to the coach, Kim Jong-hun, and team media officer, Kim Myung-chul, to face the degenerate capitalist media as per Fifa obligations. On this form, it would be a stretch to nickname them the Chuckle Brothers.

Who picks the team – the coach or Kim Jong-il? Silence. Will North Korea be pursuing the same counterattack strategy they pursued in qualifying? "I believe," replied an icy Kim Jong-hun, "that we are the Korean DPR, so please do not use any other name for us." Alas, it's that easy to forfeit the chance to have your anodyne query left tantalisingly unanswered. As for their goal in the tournament: "This will bring great happiness to our Dear Leader." It would be screamingly funny, of course, were it not taking place on the very the day it emerged that His Dearness had cut off all state food rations to his people.

To more important matters, though, such as North Korea's attempt to fiddle Fifa rules by listing an extra striker as a goalkeeper – a ruse on which they have been rumbled, meaning Kim Myong‑won will now have to play as a keeper or not at all. "He was a striker and now he's registered as a goalkeeper," said Kim, tersely. "He is really a goalkeeper but he's really fast, so we switched him to a striker … But this World Cup, he said he wanted to be a goalkeeper again."

Brazil's Luís Fabiano is believed to have dithered in the same way. As for North Korea's star striker, he is the Japan‑born Jong Tae-se, who plays in Japan's J‑League, drives a Hummer and finds his team‑mates appealingly quaint. Writing on his blog earlier this year, Jong described a stopover on a team trip from Switzerland to Austria, during which his team‑mates were stunned to discover you had to pay to use the gents in a station. "They turned to me," recalled Jong, "and said, 'This is truly what capitalist society is like.'" It's a reasonable point.

Meanwhile, there is good news for the fans back home. Despite his initial refusal to show any games unless North Korea won the tournament, it seems the Dear Leader has relented and state TV has now screened several. Naturally, they didn't show the Great Satan v Not-So-Great Satan game – or "USA v England", as the Fifa programme still insists on referring to it – nor did South Korea's 2-0 victory over Greece get an airing.

It might not be the most enormous shock to you to learn that North Korea does not appear to have obtained the footage by formal channels, and irate international broadcast officials are said to be investigating the matter. Let's hope they don't lavish too much time on chasing up leads. Frankly, in the great scheme of unlicensed stunts North Korea has pulled, nicking a feed of the France v Uruguay game probably features some way down the list, below the nuclear programme.

As for the rogue state's chances, you will not have been short of reminders that in 1966 North Korea reached the quarter‑finals. These days, the side of North Korea's World Cup team bus reads "1966 again", making them the second most amusingly maudlin team in the tournament.

Their '66 heroes will have lacked the opportunity to develop the mercenary skills of, say, our own Sir Geoff Hurst, but according to Kim they still do the rounds. "They came quite often to the training camp and they gave us a lot of advice. They told us what it would be like, and they gave us a lot of encouragement so we could make our Dear Leader proud."

Asked if he recalled the 1966 victory over Italy, Kim said he did. He had been 10 years old, "and it made me realise that football was very important and could really inspire the people of my country, and at that moment I decided to devote my life to football." And with that, a slicing hand gesture indicated he was calling time on the media – or the hacksis of evil, as he hopefully refers to them in private.