Today the North Korean soccer side is scheduled to face soccer giant Brazil, a match they’re almost sure to lose. NPR took a look back at the last time a North Korean side won an upset game, in 1966 when they defeated Italy, another soccer superpower. It’s a weird twist on the old Cinderella sports story, where Cinderella’s evil stepmother is a fascist dictator. The other thing is that it didn’t exactly have a happy ending:
The North Korean team lost its next game and exited the tournament. Little is known about what happened to the players once they returned home.
Obviously details of what goes on in North Korea are scarce, so maybe nothing bad happened to the players once they returned home, but that’s kind of an ominous statement, since repressive countries punishing their soccer teams for losing isn’t exactly unheard of.
— A. Serwer
