The mainly Irish Beijing Celtic football team may have lost a football match in Pyongyang, but they scored a major diplomatic coup, writes PeterGoff
Kim Chol-su can bend it like Beckham, but he has never heard of the English football star. Names like Roy Keane and Ronaldo are also new to the 27-year-old North Korean who can slice through a defence without breaking a sweat.
But Kim got his first taste of international competition last week when the Beijing Celtic football team made history by becoming the first amateur club to play in North Korea, one of the most inaccessible countries in the world. Celtic's players, who are all based in China, are mostly Irish, with the remainder coming from England, Belgium, Sweden, Canada and China itself.
It was a small, but important, step forward in North Korea's relations with the outside world at a time when tensions in the region are running high.
"Football is the platform but it's about so much more than that," says J.B. Terrins, a Celtic player from Armagh. "This country has been so isolated for so long. A large element was just about showing these ordinary young guys that foreigners are not necessarily hostile; that we can easily get on well together."
The tour to Pyongyang was inspired by the award-winning film, The Game of Their Lives, a documentary that reveals the human side of the incredible performance by the North Korean 1966 World Cup team that beat Italy and reached the quarter-finals in one of the greatest shocks in football history.
"After we saw that film we were intrigued," says Will Fingleton, one of the tour organisers. "We could see how passionate they were about football and we really wanted to go and play them."
Nick Bonner, an Englishman who produced the film and runs Koryo Tours, a travel company that specialises in trips to North Korea, explains: "It had never been done before. It was a batty but beautiful idea. We told the North Korean authorities it was about 'craic' - and explained what that was - and about friendship and understanding."
North Korea is still technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War and in the current political climate is a country bracing for an invasion. Pyongyang, the capital, is a city of three million people but its empty boulevards, lined with communist-style architecture, are eerily quiet. Female traffic police, providing rare splashes of colour with sky-blue uniforms and white batons, direct the few cars that rumble along the bumpy roads.
Terrins describes Pyongyang as "by far the most surreal place I have ever been. It's like entering a time warp." There are no advertisements, and at night the few lights that do shine illuminate revolutionary slogans, giant memorials to the leaders, and anti-US posters that show a fist crushing an American military helmet or an "imperialist aggressor" impaled on a bayonet.
Reverence for "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung, North Korea's first leader, is quasi-religious and he retains the position of eternal president, despite the fact he died in 1994. The country, which is often hit by famine in the rural areas, is now run by his son, Kim Jong-il.
The North Korean lieutenant colonel who led the players on a tour seemed not to notice the tense atmosphere; he was more interested in talking about football and he clearly did not think the visitors would be up to much.
"Most of you guys are old and fat," he says with a rumbling laugh. "If you played our army team I think we'd win about 10-0. I don't think you could beat a Korean team."
But Celtic are feeling confident. "It wouldn't be diplomatic if we hammered them," is the consensus. And closer to home on the diplomatic front, Britain's ambassador to North Korea, David Slinn, is invited to play in Celtic's central defence.
After a few minutes into the game it becomes evident Celtic's pre-match confidence is misguided and by the time Kim Chol-su and crew get into their stride the away team find themselves a goal down. Chances are squandered at both ends but the home side is always looking the more comfortable, and 10 minutes from the end Kim waltzes through the penalty box and drives the ball into the roof of the net, giving them an unassailable 2-0 lead.
"Oh, well thrown, lads," comes Bonner's sarcastic appreciation.
In the bar afterwards music becomes the parlance and Enda Brogan from Mayo lets fly with Neil Young's Rockin' in the Free World, as the non-English speaking Koreans smile and stamp their feet. The tune is answered by Chae Song-ok, a 25-year-old waitress who plucked on the guitar and sang hauntingly beautiful versions of Danny Boy and My Way in Korean. Meanwhile, Kim Mi-hwa, a 21-year-old hotel waitress, dances by the bar and shouts, "We really like the Irish. They like to sing, drink beer and have fun; they're just like the Koreans."
Simon Cockerell, from Koryo Tours, says: "It was incredible. The football and music combination built an enormous bridge. The Koreans loved it and now want to make it an annual event, only bigger, with more players and spectators in a big stadium."