During the women's Asian Cup qualifying expedition to Pyongyang, South Korean reporters planned to take China International Airlines when they enter Pyongyang from China and Korea Air when they leave. There were suggestions that it would not be desirable to take Korea Air due to sanctions against North Korea, but the flight schedule did not match, so they used Korea Air to fly to Beijing from Pyongyang.

Even if you don't know the border exactly, there were so many mountains in North Korea that you could know from where North Korea was.

I arrived at Pyongyang Sunan Airport while looking down at Mount Mindung on the plane. It was only 250 kilometers straight from Seoul, but as the Japanese media put it, there was a strange and strange feeling that I was "somewhere in the universe." The material that relieved such tension was fine dust.

Fine dust, which is believed to be coming from China, was blanketing Sunan Airport. North Korean agents who came to meet me also became close through conversations such as "It's as dusty as the South" and "This is all coming from China."

He then headed to Yanggakdo International Hotel on a 25-seat small bus, and the way there felt like a showcase in Pyongyang.

The bus wrapped around Kim Il Sung Square and Yeomyeong Street, a luxury housing complex that North Korea was promoting at the time, before coming back to their accommodation. The meaning of the event was felt by a foreign correspondent's "reverse coverage" of the South Korean media, saying that he had departed from Seoul and passed through Beijing to cover the event.

The next day, the women's team started covering its first training session. It was an unfamiliar place and they could have gotten nervous, but the women's team players did not. They created a calm atmosphere by laughing and talking as if they were on a tour at the Kim Il Sung Stadium. Through the laughter of the women's team members, the team had to deal with world-class North Korean soccer in an away match against Pyongyang, but showed confidence that it could advance to the finals at the Women's Asian Cup by ranking first in the group.

Kim Il-sung Stadium, which can accommodate about 42,000 people, has a track but feels like a soccer stadium, so the stadium feels compressed rather than vast. With roofs in all directions in the stands, I thought it could be difficult for the away team to cheer against North Korea.

The facilities in the stadium were as good as ever. I visited various places in the stadium with North Korean agents, and locker rooms, conference rooms and other facilities were up-to-date. I hung photos of North Korean athletes when they performed well in international competitions. They include photos of North Korea returning to Korea after winning the title at the 2013 East Asian Cup in South Korea, photos of North Korean weightlifters winning gold medals at the 2012 London Olympics, and photos of North Korea when it surprised the world by advancing to the quarterfinals by beating Italy 1-0 at the 1966 World Cup in England.

What stands out the most at Kim Il Sung Stadium is artificial turf. In fact, it might be embarrassing to play an A-match on artificial turf instead of natural turf, but at that time, there was no big problem in holding an international competition as it had only been six months since the artificial turf was replaced.

Women's national team players and officials from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) also praised the artificial turf. "If you keep using it for two to three years, it may not be suitable to play," AFC said in its assessment. It made me wonder if the team changed the artificial turf at the match against North Korea and Japan on Wednesday.

Portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il and his father-in-law hanging on the top of the headquarters seat must also be mentioned. Looking at the large portraits of the two shows a home advantage that cannot be seen in any stadium.

In fact, Kim Il-sung Stadium is more than a stadium in North Korea's history.

Kim Il-sung, who returned from the Soviet Union after liberation, gathered the public and first gave a speech at the current Kim Il-sung Stadium, then Pyongyang Stadium, and in North Korea, it is a revolutionary site.

That's why there is a large mural depicting Kim Il Sung's speech at the beginning of the stadium. There is the Arc de Triomphe in Pyongyang, which is larger than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France, if you walk about 200 meters from Kim Il Sung Stadium. A commentator who only introduced the Arc de Triomphe for 37 years dressed up in hanbok and explained the meaning of the Arc de Triomphe and the background of 1925 when Kim Il Sung claimed to have started an anti-Japanese movement since he was 13 years old.  토토사이트

North Korea has not lost an A match since 2005 at Kim Il-sung Stadium, and that record has been maintained so far. Japan also lost in an away match to Pyongyang in 2011. In such an environment that makes the away team more difficult, South Korean women's team players came to the ground and were preparing for a showdown with North Korea on April 7, 2017.