On May 20th, Naegohyang FC will face South Korea’s Suwon FC in the semifinals of the Women’s Asian Champions League.
Published May 4, 2026
Seoul’s Ministry of Unification confirmed that a North Korean women’s soccer club will visit this month to become the country’s first sports team to play in South Korea since 2018.
After the 1950-1953 conflict ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, the neighbors are technically at war, and sporting and cultural exchanges between the two countries are extremely rare.
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On May 20th, Naegohyang Women’s FC will face South Korea’s Suwon FC Women in the semifinals of the Asian Champions League.
The ministry announced on Monday that the visiting delegation will include 27 players and 12 club staff. The Korean Football Association announced to AFP news agency that the team will arrive on May 17th.
They will arrive at Incheon Airport on an Air China flight from Beijing, a Unification Ministry official said.
The winner of the match at Suwon Sports Complex, south of the capital Seoul, will play Australia’s Melbourne City or Japan’s Tokyo Verdy Beleza in the final of Asia’s top women’s club competition on May 23.
“The losing team in the semi-finals will return home on Thursday, May 21, but the third-place match is not scheduled,” the ministry statement added.
The match will be the first time a North Korean sports team will play in South Korea since shooting, youth soccer and table tennis delegations visited South Korea in 2018.
The last time North Korea sent a women’s soccer team to South Korea was in 2014, when the North Korean national team participated in the Incheon Asian Games.
Founded in 2012 and based in North Korea’s capital, Naegohyang’s team is largely “composed of national team-level players,” the ministry said.
The North Korean national team is one of the leading teams in Asian women’s soccer, winning multiple international titles in recent years, especially at the youth level.
Most recently, in November last year, they defeated the Netherlands 3-0 in the U-17 Women’s World Cup final.
