South Korea received North Korean athletes for the first time in more than seven years on Sunday, when a women’s soccer team arrived to contest the Asian club championship.
Thirty-nine players and staff from Pyongyang’s Naegohyang Women’s Football Club rushed past a crowd of media and security at Incheon International Airport after the team arrived on a flight from Beijing.
Arriving smartly dressed in matching blazers and skirts, the North Korean players walked straight to their bus, without glancing at the gathered pro-unification groups cheering, “Welcome.”
The players and staff remained silent and emotionless until the door of their bus closed and left for Suwon under police escort.
The team’s visit doesn’t come at a time of particularly warm inter-Korean ties. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has cemented the division of the Korean Peninsula in the past month, revising the reclusive nation’s constitution to define each country as distinct territories, while removing a clause related to reunification.
Continue reading the complete article on the original source
