SOCCER

The Final Score

Thirty-five years ago North Korea rocked the sporting world by defeating Italy in the World Cup. Today the giant-killing team is finally able to tell its story

By John Larkin/SEOUL

Issue cover-dated December 13, 2001

IT'S A MOMENT captured only on grainy archive film, but it amounts to one of the greatest sporting upsets of the 20th century. Representing North Korea against soccer giants Italy at the 1966 World Cup, Pak Doo Ik let loose a venomous shot with his right foot.

Unleashed, the ball flew into the opposite goal. In a moment, Italy's World Cup campaign was effectively over. North Korea--which just 13 years earlier was a country at war--was on its way to the quarter-finals. As one excitable commentator said at the time: "The fall of the Roman Empire has nothing on this!"

For the North Koreans who played that day in England, it's the greatest sports story never told. At the height of the Cold War, men from the most rigid of communist states won the hearts of English fans with a magnificent running game that would be adopted by the world's best teams. They were only the second Asian team to qualify for soccer's biggest tournament, and the first to make it to the quarter-finals. That feat remains unequalled by an Asian squad.

In light of the the miseries that famine and awful government have inflicted on North Korea since 1966, the team's achievements have an even greater poignancy. South Korea has long since eclipsed the North as a regional soccer power, and is preparing to co-host next year's World Cup with Japan. North Korea is an economic basket case that has never returned to the World Cup finals and didn't even play in the 2002 qualifiers. Attempts to persuade Pyongyang to co-host next year's event failed.

For North Korea, 1966 remains its soccer high water mark--a brief, brilliant moment when it flashed across the sky of world sport and then vanished almost as quickly. For almost 35 years, no one in the West has ever really known what happened to the team after it eventually crashed out of the 1966 cup at the hands of Portugal. Rumours have swirled, including claims that members of the team were jailed by the country's furious leaders.

But now, thanks to a British documentary crew, members of the team are finally getting a chance to tell their tale. In November, producer Dan Gordon and Beijing-based North Korea travel agent Nick Bonner were allowed to enter the country to interview surviving players from 1966.

For soccer fanatic Gordon it was a dream come true. "These guys were my personal heroes. My dad used to rave about them when I was a boy. For a lot of people, the story of the 1966 World Cup is the story of the little Koreans that nobody gave a chance."

Gordon's aim was to make the North Koreans' achievement in 1966 more than just a fleeting monochrome memory. His team spent 10 days in the North as the first Westerners to interview players and coaches from 1966. The resulting one-hour documentary will be broadcast before next year's World Cup.

The story viewers will see is one of a team driven by talent and a fanatical patriotism, and of sport's ability to bridge ideological and linguistic divides. It's also about politics. The team's competitive spirit was fired by a personal meeting shortly before their departure with Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea, who died in 1994 but is still revered as the country's "Great Leader."

That encounter was still fresh in the mind of Italy's nemesis, Pak Doo Ik, when Gordon interviewed him in the living room of his modest Pyongyang home. Surrounding them were souvenirs from 1966, including a platter presented by the people of Middlesbrough where the team was based. But taking pride of place was a team photo with Kim Il Sung and his son and successor, Kim Jong Il. "Before we left for England, the Great Leader told us we could not expect to win the World Cup, but we could certainly win one or two games," Pak, who is now in his 60s, told Gordon. "After we beat Italy we knew we had fulfilled his wishes. In the dressing room we were all crying. I ran up the steps to the top of the stand and made a speech to the Great Leader. And then I cried some more."

The players viewed the tournament as a peaceful extension of the war that had devastated their country. With sporting facilities wrecked, bottles and rocks were used for soccer balls. "We'd get anything resembling a ball and kick it around," recalls goalkeeper Ri Chan Myung. "The neighbours would join in and we'd play among the ruins." Han Bong Jin, another member of the team, remembers: "We went out to do battle for our country and our people. When the result was broadcast to the Korean people, many openly wept for joy."

What the fans back at home didn't know, though, was that their team almost never made it to the finals in England. Officials in London considered refusing visas for the team members and their entourage--Britain had no diplomatic ties with North Korea and had fought against it during the Korean War as part of United Nations forces. Letting the North Korean team into the country could have put Britain in an awkward diplomatic tangle as it might have implied official recognition of the Kim regime.

Despite howls of protest from South Korea's ambassador in London, British officials eventually decided to admit Pak's team, but insisted that the North Korean flag could not be displayed and that the team could not be not be referred to by North Korea's official title, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Diplomatic hurdles cleared away, the North Koreans set about trying to erase bitter memories of South Korea's participation in the 1954 World Cup, where it was thrashed by Turkey and Hungary. The team started badly, losing 3-0 to the Soviet Union. But they went on to salvage a draw with Chile, which had placed third in the previous World Cup.

Just as memorably for Pak, though, the match sealed a love affair with the people of Middlesbrough, who had taken the team under their wing. "When they tied Chile, the crowd cheered so hard the strip lighting came down in the press box," says Dan Gordon. For people in the working-class city, the North Koreans' underdog status mirrored the fortunes of their own Middlesbrough Football Club, which had just been relegated to England's third division. "The players told me they couldn't believe how much the local community supported them," Gordon says. "At every game the chant of 'Korea, Korea' went up in the stands."

BOLSTERED BY THEIR SHOWING against Chile, the Koreans next played Italy--regarded by many as one of the world's top three soccer nations. Beating them was no fluke. True, the Italian coach foolishly rested some of his best players, but the Koreans ran the legs off those he fielded. Kim Il Sung had told the players to exploit their greatest strength--speed--by calling on the spirit of Chonlima ("1,000-league horse"), a figure drawn from Chinese mythology and usually represented as a winged horse. Chonlima was used by Kim Il Sung to exhort his subjects to develop the economy at lightning speed. "The team of 1966 played Chonlima football and was incredibly fast for the time," says Gordon. "Everyone else looked so slow."

But in the quarter-final against Portugal--or rather their legendary star Eusebio--Chonlima faced its greatest test. The North Koreans approached the match as they always did, inflicting wave after wave of attack, as if they were storming a hill in the Korean War. In less than a minute the Koreans scored a goal. Shortly after they led by an astonishing three goals to nil. Another stunning upset and an improbable semi-final against England at Wembley looked certain.

And then, quite suddenly, Chonlima showed up its great weakness: Attacking football yields goals, but leaves a team weak in defence. Sure enough, North Korea's defence crumbled to allow in five goals, four by the brilliant Eusebio. North Korea went down five goals to three. Looking back, two of the Koreans, Yang Sang Kuk and Rim Jung Soon, told Gordon that after the Portuguese landslide they wished they'd never been born.

Gordon's access to the team's surviving members allowed him to broach a more sensitive issue. According to French author Pierre Rigoulot's The Last Gulag, Pak and his team-mates were imprisoned after infuriating Kim Il Sung with their drinking and womanizing after the Italy match.

Nick Bonner says the players poured scorn on the idea. "We asked Pak about it and he said, 'No, we just played a great match!'" Gordon and Bonner obtained footage of the delirious celebrations at the team's homecoming.

"It's amazing," says Bonner. "The players were carried around on people's shoulders." The Italy game even brought fame to the North Korean commentator, who ended his legendary call with the words: "Do you hear me, Korea? We've won!"

With political relations between the two Koreas again in stalemate, sporting exchanges may have the best chance of breaking the ice between the rival states. Gordon is a believer in the theory of sport as a unifying force, and sees his film as an aid to engaging Pyongyang.

Perhaps, but history suggests otherwise. Unification through sport has been tried without results. The national teams of the two Koreas have played each other before and have even fielded joint squads. This hasn't done much to bring their deeply contradictory political systems any closer to reconciliation.

A documentary won't change that. But it will achieve something if it presents average North Koreans in a way they're rarely seen--as ordinary human beings. Soccer fans, if you like.

"We have some great players up here, and South Korea has some great players too," a North Korean soldier at the town of Panmunjom on the fortified border with South Korea tells Gordon. "If only we were unified, what a great team we'd have."

Kim Jong Il, take note.