Goal Scene from Penalty Kick Deliberately Obscured
Only Match Result Announced Without Naming the Scorer
It has been confirmed that North Korea's Korean Central TV deliberately obscured the goal scene of Lee Kangin, a player for Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), during a recently broadcast FIFA Club World Cup match.
Korean Central TV aired the first Group B match between PSG and Atletico Madrid, which took place at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California, USA, on June 15 (local time), during its broadcast on the 20th.
North Korea's Korean Central TV aired a segment on international sports news during its regular 8 PM news broadcast on the 20th, introducing the group stage qualifying matches of the 2025 Club World Cup. During the scene showing PSG player Lee Kangin's penalty kick winning goal, the goal scene featuring Lee Kangin (red circle) was mosaic-censored. Korean Central TV screen Yonhap News Photo
In this match, PSG secured a 4-0 victory by scoring a fourth goal with a penalty kick just before the end of the second half. Although this goal was scored by Lee Kangin, the North Korean broadcast blurred his face and jersey number in the footage.
Additionally, the broadcast only briefly stated, "In this match, the PSG team defeated the Atletico Madrid team 4 to 0," without mentioning the name of the goal scorer at all. This is interpreted as a reflection of the North Korean authorities' intention to minimize exposure of South Korean players' performances on the international stage.
North Korean broadcasts have aired major European football league matches, such as the EPL (English Premier League) and UCL (UEFA Champions League). However, matches featuring South Korean players such as Son Heungmin (Tottenham), Hwang Heechan (Wolverhampton), and Lee Kangin (PSG) have been consistently excluded or the players' appearances have been minimized.
Such reporting practices have been repeatedly observed in the past. During the 2022 Qatar World Cup broadcast, the Taegeukgi (South Korean national flag) inside the stadium was mosaic-censored, and in coverage of the 2024 AFC U-17 Women's Asian Cup, the Taegeukgi emblem on the Korean uniform was obscured. Furthermore, the North Korean media has used strongly political terminology, such as referring to the South Korean team as the "puppet Korean team."
Since the second half of 2023, North Korea has begun referring to South Korea as "puppet" instead of "South Joseon." This trend intensified after Chairman Kim Jongun defined inter-Korean relations as those of "hostile states" rather than "fellow countrymen" at the end of that year. The term "puppet" (gwe-roe) is derived from a Chinese character word meaning a puppet used in puppet shows. In North Korea's Korean language dictionary, the first definition is "a national traitor or a political group of such people who, subordinated to foreign invaders including imperialists, serve as their stooges and sell out their country and people."
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