Not much is known about North Korean World Cup coach Kim Jong-hun. What is known is that he arrives fashionably late to games and leaves as soon as he can, suggesting a distaste for the spotlight that contradicts the brash showmanship of Diego Maradona, and appears to comply to the North Korean image en masse. This at least offers an opening lead for a biography.
Kim was a player of some note in his youth, though how much is hard to tell, given the impenetrably wall that isolates the People’s Republic of Korea from the rest of the world. One thing’s for sure: his track record with the current North Korean team testifies to his coaching excellence: there’s little doubt that on that front he knows his stuff.
The international football records show that he was capped four times in World Cup qualifying matches, and that after his playing career he was able to rise in the rankings to eventually be awarded in 2007 the opportunity to take the Korean team to the Cup—something hitherto only come to pass once, way back in 1966.
That tournament was one for the ages, for the host and victor, England, the Germans, who still believe they were snubbed, and for Portugal, the team slotted to play North Korea today and whom beat the Korean team with Eusebio in 5-3 dramatic fashion in 1966. Since then, almost everything in the world as in soccer has changed, except for North Korean isolation and football.
In their last game against Brazil, in which the Koreans held Brazil to a modest 2-1 victory, Koreans players made a name for themselves, before which they remained broadly anonymous to the rest of the world. The exception was perhaps Jong Tae-se, the charismatic Korean striker who plays in Japan and has confessed that he has developed a “hankering for the fruits of capitalism.”
Coach Kim claims to get strategic advice from Korean Dictator himself, Kim Jong-il, just as his predecessors undoubtedly received council from the likes of his old man, Kim Il-sung. Likewise, the match against Portugal echoes the 1966 match, a game coach Kim confessed to remembering although then he was only nine. At a brief press conference he said:
“We were very disappointed. A lot of people remember that disappointment. I remember that game very well. [On the coming Portugal game] We are going to try to do our best to make up for that disappointment.”
On July 23rd, 1966, at Goodison Park in Liverpool, North Korea squared off against Portugal, a match both teams never really expected to be in. Portugal owed its appearance to a victory of injury-subdued Pele and Brazil, which was a story, but meager in comparison to that of North Korea asserting themselves at the particular sporting event (they had just come off a shocking 1-0 victory over Italy in their final first group match). Within the first half of the match, although North Korean were huge underdogs, they scored with their first shot, and again in the 20th and 24th minutes, goals hypnotizing teams and fans alike.
Then it was Eusebio who woke up on the Portugal side, and scored an incredible four times (twice on well-deserved penalties) before rallying his team to an incredible 5-3 victory.
Regardless of how the Korean squad fares this time around, Coach Kim deserves credit for getting them here. In the 2006 qualification matches for the World Cup, the team employed a wild attacking style, and lost all five of its matches. Things are different now: the team been playing tight defensively, and truly, another can happen.
Kim has reported shown his players a video of the Portugal 1966 match and the players vow to not let another defeat taint their performance and reputation.
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