With sweeping bans on foreign content, North Korea’s media landscape is among the most heavily censored in the world.
Football, however, gets a pass. The sport has been celebrated since the national team became the first Asian side to advance from the group stages at the 1966 World Cup.
The English Premier League (EPL), in particular, is shown on Korean Central Television (KCTV), although Pyongyang’s coverage is somewhat different from what the rest of the world gets to experience.
According to a report on Monday (Feb 10) by 38 North – a website that analyses the country’s affairs and is run by US think tank Stimson Center – Tottenham, Wolves and Brentford are conspicuously absent from state TV coverage.
The common factor linking the three clubs: South Korean players in their ranks, with Spurs skippered by the country’s best footballer, Son Heung-min.
North Korea also only began showing the current EPL season on Jan 13 – some five months after the campaign kicked off.
Ipswich’s 2-0 loss against Liverpool was the game that went on air, even though that match took place on Aug 17, the opening weekend of the season.
The following game that was shown on state TV was another fixture that was played in August last year.
Foreign punditry and commentary are absent, while matches, which typically play for 90 minutes, are distilled down to 60 minutes of coverage.
The delayed coverage of EPL football is not unusual in North Korea, according to 38 North, adding that how KCTV gets its footage is a “mystery”, since it does not have broadcasting rights for the competition.
For the 2023-24 season, the first game (Burnley-Manchester City) that was broadcast in the country was a fixture that took place one-and-a-half months earlier. That same match was subsequently aired two more times.
Coverage of that season was limited, with only 21 out of a total of 380 EPL games shown, and a number of those games were repeats.
38 North also noted that the title run-in was not aired, meaning viewers in North Korea would likely be in the dark about the league title winners, Manchester City.
Despite the paucity of games, their delayed airing and the number of edits, state TV’s coverage may still be acceptable to most football fans in North Korea, 38 North’s report noted.
“With propaganda making its way into almost every aspect of North Korean television, international sports coverage is one of the few moments each day when state TV is not trying to send an overt or underlying message to its viewers, so that may be sufficient to make it enjoyable,” it said.
North Korean viewers did get to watch the finale of last season’s Champions League, although coverage of European football’s elite competition was neither timely nor in order.
38 North said that several Paris Saint-Germain games were not shown, presumably because South Korea’s Lee Kang-in plays for the French club. The only PSG match that was screened was its semi-final defeat by Germany’s Borussia Dortmund.
