A Dominant Victory in 2025

In the 2025 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup, the football team of North Korea won its second consecutive title, defeating The Netherlands 3–0. Their opponent’s coach after the final stated that, “the gap between Korea DPR and us is simply too big to compete with them at the moment.” The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) also broke the record for most goals scored in tournament history. Head coach, Pak Song-jin, attributed their success to the nation’s “winning culture.”

Juche: A Brief History

Kim-Il Sung, the DPRK’s founder and first head of state, introduced the concept of Juche in a speech he delivered in 1955. Kim-Il Sung crafted Juche on principles of political independence, economic independence and military independence. The doctrine was formally incorporated into the constitution in 1972. The regime presented Juche as a doctrine of self-reliance designed to resist foreign influence. Due to this heavy emphasis on self-reliance and decades-long sanctions by most of the world, the DPRK has limited avenues for foreign trade: 99.1% of their imports are from neighbouring China and 83.5% of their exports are to China. Sports have therefore provided the DPRK with a channel for international engagement. Sporting events help garner soft power for this isolationist state in international relations as it is seemingly neutral space for facilitating state-to-state cooperation and relation building.

North Korea at the Olympics

The Olympic games have given the DPRK a platform to showcase elite athletes. Since first competing in the Summer Olympics in 1972, North Korean athletes have won 61 medals. At the 2012 Summer Olympics, weightlifter Om Yun-Chol lifted 158 kilograms, setting an Olympic record. Twelve years later, at the 2024 Summer Olympics, North Korea’s table tennis team entered the competition as underdogs. North Korean table tennis duo Ri Jong Sik and Kim Kum Yong were seeded sixteenth in the table tennis mixed doubles event. As the last seed, they beat the second, fourth and eighth seeds before placing second against China with a score of 4-2. This performance earned the table tennis duo and the DPRK a silver medal.

Developing Successful Athletes

Among the 24 countries with the lowest GDP per capita to attend the 2024 Summer Olympics, North Korea was the only one to win any Olympic medals, earning six. If one looks not only at GDP but also at an oppressive political system, a comparison with structurally similar nations like Eritrea or Turkmenistan may offer useful comparisons. Like North Korea, both consistently rank amongst the bottom 20 countries on globally on matters of human rights and democratic governance. At the Olympic games, Turkmenistan has won only one silver medal and Eritrea one bronze medal. How does the DPRK produce successful athletes at the Olympics when similarly structured nations do not?

Arirang Mass Games

The DPRK showcases its nationalism in the field of sports through the Arirang Mass Games, a display of mass gymnastics performed by up to 100,000 participants. The games have been organised since 1946 and take place nightly in the capital Pyongyang, from August to October. The mass games are now held at the Rungrado 1^st May Stadium that opened in 1989. With a capacity of 150,000, it is the largest stadium in the world. The mass games demonstrate the collective discipline the regime values and enforces. The same rigorous emphasis is often cited as a foundation of the country’s athletic training system and international athletic success.

Displaying Hope for Reunification as a Strategy

The DPRK’s participation in the Olympic games has helped serve as a buffer against doubts about the chances of reunification of the two Koreas caused by the decades-long separation, the North’s nuclear program, and the immense political and economic chasm. During the 2018 Winter Olympics, the DPRK marched with South Korea under one flag. It marked the first time athletes from both states competed together. The flag design featured a blue silhouette of the whole Korean peninsula and the surrounding outlying islands. Both nations also unified to form one women’s ice hockey team at the event. After the games that year, North Korea and South Korea agreed to submit a joint candidature for the 2032 Olympics Games. They lost their bid to Brisbane, Australia.

North Korean Athletes and Olympic Virality

In 2024, the North Korean table tennis duo, Ri Jong Sik and Kim Kum Yong took a selfie with Chinese and South Korean Olympics table tennis players after their loss to China. This selfie followed one where South Korean gymnast Lee Eun-Ju and North Korean gymnast Hong Un-Jong took a selfie together at the 2016 Summer Olympics. Over half the global population followed the 2024 Summer Olympics and social media posts covering the games drew 12 billion social media engagements. Small moments like those selfies are therefore important for the DPRK as they draw positive engagement on social media towards the regime.

The Olympics as a Diplomatic Gateway

North Korea’s human rights abuses and its nuclear weapons program have resulted in international sanctions that severed most diplomatic relationships. The Olympics, governed by the International Olympic Committee’s policy of political neutrality, allow North Korea to participate regardless of diplomatic isolation and domestic oppression. And Olympic participation has facilitated diplomatic breakthroughs: During the 2018 Winter Olympics, South Korean President, Moon Jae-in, was invited to visit North Korea. This led to the April 2018 inter-Korean summit, the first such meeting in over a decade. At the summit, the two sides discussed prospects for denuclearisation and North Korea’s commitment to recovering remains of prisoners of war from the Korean War.

An Opportunity to Globalise

The momentum from inter-Korean Olympic cooperation extended beyond the peninsula. In June 2018 at North Korea–United States Singapore Summit, US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un agreed to establish relations. In a joint statement between both leaders, they stated that beginning relations would be “in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.” The statement also committed to “efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula” For the DPRK, the Olympics have served as a rare diplomatic opening—allowing international engagement without formally abandoning the self-reliance principles of Juche.