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15 June 2010
by Admin

North Korean Soccer Heroes

"脱南者" - 纯爷们!

''I saw the North Korean national flag rising and, finally, I had made the World Cup", said Jong Tae-Se, who was hailed by some as "The People's Rooney " and "World Cup 2010's cult hero". His tears touched the hearts of billions, espacially the audience in Asia, as he stood up to sing North Korean anthem before his country's first World Cup match in 44 years.

He is not a North Korean by birth but by choice. Although he has an ancestral root in the North, his parents are both South Koreans. Like most exiled Koreans living in Japan, he feels deeply ashamed of the South which he considers as mere a military colony of the United States, and that eventually leads him to seek to become a citizen of North Korea, a country though economically less developed than Japan and South Korea but stands on its own feet and bows to no one.

有一种胜利叫虽败犹荣

Jong's soccer team, each of them is a true warrior, who "held the world's best and most flamboyant team, Brazil, goalless to half-time of their opening World Cup match before gallantly going down 2-1", as so described by the Sydney Morning Herald.

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