Japan has warned soccer fans not to attempt travel to “hostile” North Korea ahead of next week's World Cup qualifiers in Pyongyang.
The Tokyo Ministry of Foreign Affairs “strongly requested that the general public refrain from attending the March 26 game, which was the first in North Korea since 2011.”
“As you know, North Korea views Japan as an enemy, and travel by the general public is not recommended,'' the paper said on X (formerly Twitter).
Japan and North Korea will meet in Tokyo on Thursday as part of qualifying for the 2026 World Cup, ahead of next week's return match.
Japan's long-standing advice to its citizens appears not to travel to North Korea, but it does not explicitly prohibit it. The two countries have no diplomatic relations.
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It's unclear how many, if any, fans will be willing to travel. To do so, you will need a North Korean visa.
However, Japanese broadcaster NHK reported that 14 government officials and a small number of members of the media will accompany the Japanese team to the match.
The first leg of the women's playoffs at the Paris Olympics was moved last month from the North Korean capital to neutral Saudi Arabia.
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Relations between the two countries have long been plagued by issues such as compensation for Japan's brutal occupation of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945 and more recently North Korea's missile launches over Japanese territory.
The abduction of Japanese nationals by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s, who forced them to learn the Japanese language and customs, has also long been a hot topic of contention.
Thursday's match in Tokyo was expected to draw a significant number of North Korean supporters from Japan's long-standing ethnic Korean community of about 300,000 people.
Most are descendants of civilians removed from their homes during Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula.
