Pyongyang Match Likely Relocated
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
South Korea football manager Huh Jung-moo might be spared from a daunting trip to Pyongyang's massive Kim Il-sung stadium after all.
With North Korea continuing to refuse South Korea to display its flag and play its national anthem in their World Cup qualification match in Pyongyang next month, the South's Korea Football Association (KFA) plans to submit the matter to FIFA for arbitration.
It bears further watching how FIFA would handle the dispute, although moving the fixture to a third country or forfeiting the match and giving the South an uncontested win, seem as the only logical options.
``It's hard to predict how FIFA will resolve the matter. Unlike other cases in the past, North Korea has no tangible obstacle in hosting the match," said KFA official Ko Seung-hwan, who participated in the talks between the two countries in Gaeseong, North Korea, Tuesday, which proved fruitless.
``There will be a lot of work to be done should the match be moved to a third country, including agreements on the venue, ticket sales and broadcasting."
KFA officials admitted that football authorities of both countries discussed the possibilities of moving the match to a neutral location, with China, Japan and other neighboring countries seen as natural candidates.
South Korea, looking for its seventh consecutive World Cup berth, is placed alongside North Korea, Jordan and Turkmenistan in the third stage of the Asian qualifying rounds and opened its campaign with a 4-0 drubbing of Turkmenistan earlier this month.
Its next opponent in the home-and-home tournament is North Korea and the March 26 match in Pyongyang would have marked the first time since 1990 that the two national teams play each other in the North's capital.
The North had been suggesting the South use the ``Korean Peninsula Flag," a white flag marked with a blue map of the peninsula, and the traditional Korean song of ``Arirang" for the Pyongyang match, but the KFA refused the offer.
Hosting an international football match in the Hermit Kingdom has often been a complicated matter. In the regional World Cup qualifying tournament in 2005, North Korea was forced to move a Pyongyang match to Bangkok after the crowd at Kim Il-sung stadium showered the opposing Iranian players with bottles and chairs in its first home match.
There's no question Huh would prefer avoiding the 70,000-plus crowd and notorious artificial turf at the famous Pyongyang stadium.