Rival Koreas Face Off on Soccer Field

The two rival Koreas clashed on the soccer field today in a game dedicated to friendship, watched by the largest crowd to see a South Korean sports event since the 1988 Olympics.

South Korea won 1-0, but the score was insignificant beside the diplomatic coup in having two enemy nations share a playing field for only the second time since World War II.

The first time was two weeks ago in North Korea when the northern team beat the south 2-1.

About 5,000 plainclothes police were deployed inside and outside Olympic Stadium. The more than 80,000 spectators were searched twice and passed through metal detectors to reach their seats, and scalpers were asking $140 for tickets, 10 times the highest printed price.

At the end of the game, spectators rose for a standing ovation as the athletes jogged around the stadium holding hands and waving. The teams exchanged shirts and waved them in the air.

“Our wish is unification,” blared a unification song over the loudspeakers.

“This is not purely sports festival,” said Kim Yu Sun, chairman of North Korea’s Sports Guidance Committee before the match began. “It should lead to a unification festival.”

During the game, the South Korean crowd cheered wildly for plays by both teams. Radical students, who had said they would root for the North Korean visitors, were not visible.

The game, called “North-South Unification Soccer,” is the high point of a five-day visit by a 78-member North Korean sports delegation. The group is the first sports delegation from the communist North to visit South Korea since the division of the peninsula in 1945.