A North Korean women's football club will travel to South Korea this month, marking the first visit by a northern sports delegation in nearly eight years amid ongoing tensions between the two Koreas.
Naegohyang Women's FC, based in Pyongyang, will face South Korea's Suwon FC Women at Suwon sports complex on 20 May for the semi-finals of the AFC Women's Champions League. The Asian Football Confederation confirmed Naegohyang's participation on 1 May, according to South Korea's football association. A delegation of 39 individuals, including 27 players and 12 staff, is expected to arrive on 17 May.
This will be the first time a North Korean women's football team has competed on southern soil since the 2014 Incheon Asian Games. It is also the first visit by any North Korean sports delegation since December 2018, when a unified Korean table tennis team competed in Incheon.
The visit comes at a time of deep estrangement between Seoul and Pyongyang. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who took office in June 2025, has made reviving inter-Korean dialogue a central policy goal. In an address last August, he stated that 'South and North Korea are not enemies' and renounced any pursuit of unification by absorption.
Pyongyang has given no public indication of a shift in position. In December 2023, Kim Jong-un redefined inter-Korean relations as those between 'two hostile states' in a state of war. Kim Yo-jong, a senior North Korean official, said shortly after Lee took office that Pyongyang had 'no interest' in dialogue regardless of who led the South.
North Korea's women's football programme ranks 11th in the world, above Australia, China and South Korea. Naegohyang previously beat Suwon 3-0 in the group stage last November in Myanmar.
