A North Korean assistant referee on the sidelines of a soccer pitch in Pyongyang | Image: NK News (Sept. 2018)
North Korea’s men’s soccer team bowed out of the Asian Games in acrimonious fashion against Japan on Sunday, lashing out at its opponents’ staff and physically confronting the referee following a loss to a rival that the DPRK demonizes as its former colonial ruler.
Japan edged the hotly contested quarterfinal 2-1 after scoring a penalty with around 10 minutes remaining before tensions boiled over.
North Korea’s men’s soccer team bowed out of the Asian Games in acrimonious fashion against Japan on Sunday, lashing out at its opponents’ staff and physically confronting the referee following a loss to a rival that the DPRK demonizes as its former colonial ruler.
Japan edged the hotly contested quarterfinal 2-1 after scoring a penalty with around 10 minutes remaining before tensions boiled over.
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Shreyas Reddy is a correspondent at NK News, based in Seoul. He previously worked as a researcher at BBC Monitoring, where his work focused on news and key people and organizations from the Korean Peninsula, Japan, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Follow him on Twitter.