Reply With QuoteI'm reading Baghdad FC right now and this really makes me think of the bad ol' days under Saddham's son Uday. Scary stuff. I'd like to see our players more accountable to fans and press alike but nothing remotely like this.
North Korea soccer coach fears for his life
What I can't believe is that they actually showed the Portugal game live. Brutal.
http://www.thestar.com/sports/soccer...s-for-his-life
North Korea soccer coach fears for his life
Cathal Kelly Staff Reporter
First, they were made to listen to a public airing of their faults. Then they had to turn around en masse and do the same thing to their disgraced coach, who may not be long for this world.
New reports are leaking out of North Korea about the national soccer team’s humiliating return home after losing all three of their matches at the recent World Cup.
No one expected North Korea to do well – except, apparently, the leadership apparatus of North Korea.
Embarrassment was compounded when, after a competitive 2-1 opening loss to five-time champions Brazil, the country’s despotic leadership took the unprecedented step of broadcasting the team’s second game on live television. North Korea’s 7-0 loss to Portugal was one of the most lopsided in tournament history.
According to early reports, the North Korean play-by-play team stopped speaking during the second half of the broadcast. The match went unreported in the next day’s newspapers.
In a country that takes perverse delight in punishing its most loyal servants, you could smell the payback coming.
It apparently arrived on July 2, shortly after the North Koreans returned home.
The 23-man roster – minus its two Japanese-based ringers, Jong “Weepy” Tae-se and An Yong-hak – was hauled up on stage in front of 400 attendees at the inaptly named People’s Palace of Culture.
The audience included a large number of university students and athletes, as well as high party officials.
For the next six hours, players were reprimanded for failures in their play, according to a jarring report from Radio Free Asia.
This included a damning player-by-player appraisal of individual mistakes in play, provided by the country’s leading sports broadcaster.
More alarmingly, they were accused of “betraying” the country in the “great ideological struggle.”
After the players received their collective rollicking, the team was then forced to round on its coach, Kim Jong-hun.
Things were far worse for Kim.
He was accused of “betraying the young General Kim Jong-un,” the shadowy son of North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il.
Though no adult photos exist of Kim Jong-un, he is thought to be his seriously ill father’s heir apparent. A nascent personality cult is quickly building up around him in North Korea.
When the team first qualified for the World Cup several months ago, the success was chalked up nationwide as “young General Kim Jong-un’s accomplishment.”
The ominous linking of coach Kim with future leader Kim means the soccer manager’s “safety is in jeopardy,” according to RFA.
In recent months, North Korea has executed two top officials – one who oversaw a recent disastrous currency revaluation and another in charge of diplomatic talks with South Korea. Both were subjected to the same sort of accusations of treachery before they faced the firing squad.
Rumours abound that coach Kim has been expelled from the Worker’s Party and forced into the construction industry as a labourer.
I'm reading Baghdad FC right now and this really makes me think of the bad ol' days under Saddham's son Uday. Scary stuff. I'd like to see our players more accountable to fans and press alike but nothing remotely like this.
The next time you wake up in any country in the world not called North Korea, be happy.
Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?
It pains me to say this, but I saw this coming.
To be honest, me too, I actually was thinking most the NK team would attempt to defect at some point in the tourney.Originally Posted by jpoma
It was a perfect chance to defect, Cubans do it all the time during INT tournies in Baseball.
"I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bull****. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are." - Bill Hicks
Problem on defecting probably in a North Korean context is what happens to the rest of your family.
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind. - Albert Einstein
True, but I figured some of the young one would try, ones with out wives and kids.
Cuban Baseball players do it leaving family usually kids and a wife behind, yes they won't be executed, but you don't get to see them anymore.
I know it isn't a simple thing to do, but either is living in North Korea, so I figured you have 25 North Koreans together outside of North Korea; that a couple of them would of made a dash for it. Maybe they had some security around there team to make sure that didn't happen as to me its not far-fetched to think some would want to take that path.
"I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bull****. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are." - Bill Hicks
Forget wives and kids, they'd execute parents and siblings for treason if any of the players defected. Ugh, just thinking about Kim Jung-Il and others like him makes me sick. I can't believe there are "human beings" that would so blatantly abuse their power and treat their brethren with such inhumanity.
"I am Jack's wasted life."
I think we should treat these reports with an appropriate amount of scepticism. As much as North Korea is a brutal, repressive regime there is also a lot of anti-North Korea propaganda as well. The source for this info is "reports" leaking out of NK as reported by the American propaganda radio station, "Radio Free Asia". Such stations while reporting a lot of news to countries whose citizens wouldn't hear it otherwise also report an awful lot of untruths and propaganda. I am also sceptical that a station which is the sworn enemy of NK has such good journalistic contacts within the country that they can report what went on in a meeting that if it actually happened would have had an audience of regime insiders. The spy agencies might have such contacts but if that is the source of the info I don't necessarily trust the spy agencies to tell me the truth. I think we can all remember numerous examples of claims about dictators and regimes that the Americans went up against that later proved to be untrue, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and participation in 911 being the best example. I am not saying this isn't true but before I start posting about how bad the North Korean's are treating their soccer players and coaches I am going to have to hear the info from a much better source than this.
Thank you Grizzly.
The place is no doubt bat sh1t crazy.
However, there are people whose full time job it is to make this crap up.
Iraqi soldiers killing babies in incubators anyone?
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Give a man a rocket launcher, and lots of people will fish for him.
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