Tokyo – Japan has warned soccer fans not to try to travel to “hostile” North Korea for next week’s World Cup qualifiers in Pyeongchang.
Tokyo’s foreign ministry “strongly urges the general public to refrain” from attending the March 26 match, the first for both sides in North Korea since 2011.
“As you know, North Korea takes a hostile view of Japan and travel is not recommended for the general public,” it said on X, formerly Twitter.
Japan and North Korea play in Tokyo on Thursday in a 2026 World Cup qualifier, ahead of next week’s return leg.
Japan has long advised its citizens not to travel to North Korea, but does not explicitly forbid them. The two countries do not maintain diplomatic relations.
It was unclear how many fans, if any, would attempt to travel. They would need a North Korean visa for that.
However, the Japanese team will be accompanied to the match by fourteen government officials as well as a small number of media, Japan’s NHK television reported.
The first leg of their women’s play-off for the Paris Olympics moved from the North Korean capital to neutral ground in Saudi Arabia last month.
Relations have long been dogged by issues, including reparations for Japan’s brutal occupation of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945 and, more recently, Pyongyang’s firing of missiles over Japanese territory.
The abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s – forced to train spies in Japanese language and customs – has also long been a major point of contention.
A sizeable contingent of North Korean supporters from Japan’s long-standing ethnic Korean community of about 300,000 was expected to attend Thursday’s match in Tokyo.
Most of them are descendants of civilians taken from their homes during the Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula.
