Featured Image Credit: Getty
Topics: Brentford, Fantasy Premier League, Son Heung Min, Tottenham Hotspur, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Football
John McDougall
Topics: Brentford, Fantasy Premier League, Son Heung Min, Tottenham Hotspur, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Football
North Korean citizens are among those around the world who watch the Premier League - but football fans there are banned from watching three English top flight teams in action for a very specific reason.
The English top flight is a global product with hundreds of millions of fans tuning in to watch the 20 Premier League teams take on each other throughout the course of a season.
That includes the Democratic People's Republic of Korea - North Korea - which is ran by dictator Kim Jong Un, who succeeded his father Kim Jong Il following the latter's death in 2011.
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Korea has been divided into a communist North and the democratic South before and following the Korean War, which began in 1950.
An Armistice was reached in 1953 when the country was split into two at the 38th parallel and the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) has been in place ever since, with both Korean nations' armies guarding and patrolling it.
Despite an Armistice being agreed, no formal peace treaty has followed the ceasefire agreement, with border incidents taking place in the decades following highlighting the continued tension between the two nations.
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The North Korean national football team has reached the World Cup finals only twice and its best result coming in 1966 when it reached the quarter-finals.
The South Korean national football team meanwhile has experienced more success on a global stage, having reached the World Cup finals on 11 occasions.
This also included South Korea finishing fourth in the 2002 World Cup, which the country co-hosted along with neighbour Japan.
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South Korean players plying their trade in the Premier League has led to certain sides being banned from being shown on North Korean state TV (KCTV), it has emerged.
A report by the Washington-based Stimson Center’s 38 North project and cited by the Daily Mirror suggests South Korean players appearing for Premier League sides are not shown in North Korea.
That means games involving Tottenham Hotspur, Wolves and Brentford are off limits in North Korea due to the respective presence of Son Heung-Min, Hwang Hee-Chan and Kim Ji-Soo for those teams.
Games are shown in North Korea four months after they are played, meaning games from the start of this season played in August were actually only broadcast in January.
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The 38 North Project report states that though North Korean TV is loaded with propaganda, sport is 'one of the few moments each day when state TV is not trying to send an overt or underlying message to its viewers'.
Senior fellow Martyn Williams said: "There wasn’t really any intention to the research except that we thought it was interesting. We just saw a lot of football on KCTV. It’s the main international sport they broadcast."
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