Kim Jong Il’s on-the-spot guidance does for North Korean soccer what it did for North Korean agriculture and industry

At last, something interesting has happened at the World Cup after all. The North Korean team was crushed by Portugal in the most lopsided World Cup score in eight years, eliminating North Korea from the competition, and greatly advancing my personal objective of ignoring the rest of the World Cup.

The question on everyone’s lips now is whether the North Korean players or their families will face retribution for this loss. I really don’t know the answer to that, and although the speculation is not completely groundless, it’s too real to be legitimately amusing. To the extent anyone has a basis to ask the question, you also have to question the sporting league’s decision to invite that country to participate in the tournament at all. A case in point would be Uday Hussein’s “management” of the Iraqi Olympic team. Saddam Husein’s Iraq shouldn’t have been invited to the Olympics at all, and the OIC was complicit with the torture of Iraqi athletes for extending the invitation. FIFA and the OIC owe it to the North Korean athletes to pursue any similar such questions that are legitimately raised.

With that being said, I don’t hesitate to identify one North Korean who should face a firing squad: the imbecile who provided strategy advice to the North Korean coach before the game:

North Korean manager Kim Jong-Hun reportedly gets coaching advice directly from the country’s diminutive dictator via an invisible cell phone.

According to ESPN.com the coach has claimed he gets “regular tactical advice during matches” from Jong Il “using mobile phones that are not visible to the naked eye.”

“Jong Il is said to have developed the technology himself,” coach told ESPN.com.

And to think that some people wonder why I blog about North Korea.

And not for the first time, the results of on-the-spot guidance speak for themselves. It certainly suggests some first-rate content for the next load of DVD’s those defectors and activists float into North Korea. Each would begin with Coach Kim’s statement about this unique medium of on-the-spot guidance, and then would cut straight to a montage of all seven Portuguese goals, and finally, the glum faces on North Korea’s rented ChiCom cheering section.

Updates: Let’s begin on a lighter note. A reader forwarded this link, which I thought was pretty damn funny, even if I can’t vouch for its authenticity.

And in retrospect, this may not have been the best occasion for North Korea to experiment with live broadcasting:

North Korea picked the wrong moment to allow its people to see a bit more of the outside world. The authoritarian regime was so proud of its soccer team in the World Cup that it allowed an unprecedented live broadcast back home of the match against Portugal — a rarity for the communist nation that normally exerts strict control over the media.

What ensued was a different sort of history: North Koreans, used to seeing only positive news about their reclusive country, watched as their soccer team received the worst drubbing so far in this year’s tournament and was prevented from advancing to the next round.

As the 7-0 loss to Portugal concluded, the North Koreans quickly halted Monday’s coverage. “The Portuguese won the game and now have four points,” the Korean Central Broadcasting commentator said. “We are ending our live broadcast now.” [AP, Jean H. Lee]

The only thing needed to make this conform perfectly to stereotype would be if state TV immediately switched to stock footage of happy workers praising you-know-who:

It then cut to factory workers and engineers praising North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

I wonder what stereotype will be validated next. From the report, it sounds like the North Korean players and coach left the field genuinely dejected. One can certainly image multiple reasons for that. To those of us who watch North Korea closely, the assurances of the North Korean coach that no one will be punished for playing badly aren’t really all that reassuring.

In a rather apt illustration of how the good intentions behind “engagement” often tend to do more harm than good for North Koreans, we’re reminded of a side of North Korean sports that sportswriters prefer not to write about. Incidentally, stop me if you’ve heard this reporter’s name somewhere before:

The 23 men training in Tembisa are their country’s most visible ambassadors, among the few North Koreans allowed to travel overseas. At home, they’re already heroes, bestowed with medals and merit citations and honored on postage stamps unveiled last week to commemorate the team’s success in qualifying for the World Cup.

With that honor comes pressure. Moon Ki-nam, a former national-level North Korea coach who defected to South Korea in 2004, said players are handsomely rewarded with coveted apartments if they win internationally but are punished, some sent to coal mines, if they lose.

Even some of the feted players from the 1966 team were said to have been sent to one of North Korea’s infamous labor camps for squandering a promising 3-0 lead to lose to a Eusebio-led Portugal in the quarterfinals. [AP, Laura Ling]

Hat tip to Theresa D for this one.

Leave aside the obvious comparison to the World Cup’s current host which, in the not-so-distant past, was isolated and ostracized globally for human rights abuses that never approached the severity of those in North Korea today.

Perhaps because I’m just not that into soccer, I can view it with some detached perspective and say that basic sportsmanship shouldn’t be negotiable, nor should the health and welfare of the players. That’s why any country caught doping its players or feeding them steroids would face a variety of sanctions, including team suspension, under FIFA’s rather intricate disciplinary code. And you mean to tell me that a country suspected of intimidating and possibly imprisoning its players wouldn’t? Well, let me know if you can see where that’s specifically prohibited.

Our speculation about our darkest fears for the North Korean players isn’t exactly groundless, but why speculate? FIFA can always ask for the right to do what the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Food Program can’t: inspect and monitor. If FIFA has the right to take blood samples from players for countries all over the world, what would really be so intrusive about it demanding the right to check in on the members of the team every few months? Doesn’t this concern actually dwarf those that justify FIFA’s aggressive and expensive anti-doping program?

Viewed in this context, you have to ask yourself just how responsible FIFA was to allow a low-ranked team representing a despotic regime with a history of sending losing players to the gulag into the World Cup.