North Korea lags behind most of the rest of the world in several areas. But the hermit state has had an outsized impact on international women's football.
"Normally when there are 30 shots in the game, it is the United States with about 25 of 'em. Not today!"Heather O'Reilly had scored the game's final goal, dragging world number ones and two-time champions United States to a 2-2 draw in their opening match at the 2007 Women's World Cup.
Yet, despite living standards being well behind most other nations, North Korea has been one of the strongest female football nations on the planet. O'Reilly and her United States team-mates may have lacked footage of North Korea. Brigitte Weich certainly doesn't. Weich relays a theory that North Korea's focus on women's football sprung from a stage in Mexico in 1986.
The plan was simple, sweeping and efficient. Formal football training at school from an early age, scouts sent out across the country, and, for the best, a central school of excellence and a raft of army teams allowing them to train and develop full-time at the state's expense. In the 2000s, when England's women would rarely attract crowds in five figures, North Korea were packing out the 50,000-capacity Kim Il-sung Stadium.
"The players I followed said 'the Americans are much taller than us and much stronger than us, because they have enough food and all kinds of things we don't have' - but our minds are so strong, no-one expects that,'" remembers Weich."That is how they are brought up: the glory of the nation is everything and the individual is nothing.
"But it was definitely a fleeting thought because it didn't appear that they wanted to engage much. Perhaps it was unfair of me to think, but there were not a tonne of smiles and eye contact being exchanged. They were all business in that elevator.
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