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Lankov on the Great North Korean Soccer Riot: I’ve disagreed with Andrei at times, but you can’t ingore the views of someone with such an exceptional depth of experience in North Korea. Not given to alarmist conclusions, but limited as we all are to speculation, Lankov sees something very significant:

Pyongyangites have demonstrated that they are able to fight with police over the outcome of a soccer match. But what will come next? Does this not mean that one day they will react in a similar manner to a sudden price hike, the arrest of a popular personality, or a case of perceived police brutality. Many years ago Alex de Tocqueville wryly observed that a bad government faces the greatest danger not when it is in its worst state but when for whatever reasons it weakens its grip over the people. It seems that the North Korean state is easing or losing its grip, so the unruly crowd in Kim Il-sung Stadium might be yet another a sign of things to come.

I strongly recommend you read the entire piece, which Lankov places into the context of social conditions in North Korea for the last several decades. Of course, the question of whether it was a riot at all was, umm, controversial. The debate started as an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin argument (which mostly centered around inapposite comparisons to sports riots in places like Milwaukee and Newcastle) and ended up getting, shall we say, intense, with Duophony picking a fight and getting the worst of it.