N. Korea player stresses importance of Japan qualifier

YOKOHAMA, Japan: An Yong Hak was born and raised in Japan but he will be cheering for his former team North Korea when the two sides clash in a World Cup qualifier in Tokyo on Thursday.

An is one of roughly 300,000 ethnic Koreans living in Japan, a group that has long suffered discrimination in areas such as employment and social welfare.

He attended a pro-Pyongyang school in Japan and played 40 times in midfield for North Korea, facing Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka and Yaya Toure at the 2010 World Cup.

This week’s qualifier is a special occasion for some ethnic Koreans in Japan, especially those in the stands cheering on the North Korean team, because it is a chance for them to assert their identity.

“I played against Japan at Saitama Stadium in the qualifiers for the 2006 World Cup – they scored in injury time and we lost,” An, now 45 and retired as a player, told AFP at a pro-Pyongyang school in Yokohama ahead of Thursday’s match.

“But after the game we all shook hands and waved to the Japanese fans.

“It was a great game that went beyond the result, and I hope this time is the same.”

Ethnic Koreans in Japan are mostly descendants of civilians taken from their homes during Japan’s brutal colonisation of the Korean peninsula from 1910 until Tokyo’s defeat in World War II in 1945. Some like An, who is a third-generation ethnic Korean in Japan, are educated at schools with backing from pro-North organisations and funding from Pyongyang.

Japan and North Korea do not have formal ties but the Tokyo government allows the schools to operate, albeit without providing the subsidies it gives to other schools.

An started his career in Japan’s J-League but said that representing North Korea felt natural.

“I was born and raised in Japan, so to be honest, I knew the Japan players’ names and faces better than the DPR Korea players from seeing them on TV,” he said, using North Korea’s official name.

“But I am an ethnic Korean and my name is An Yong Hak. I thought of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as my national team and I always worked hard with that in mind.”

An went on school trips to Pyongyang as a child and said he and his classmates were always given a warm welcome.

His international team-mates were not quite so open at first but “by the end we were like family”, he said.

“We live in different countries but we’re all humans, so you treat each other with good faith and communicate,” he added.