N. Korea football club Naegohyang arrive in S. Korea for much-anticipated match

The North Korean women's football club Naegohyang Women's FC arrived in South Korea on Sunday for a much-anticipated inter-Korean match this week.

Naegohyang will take on Suwon FC Women in the semifinals of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Women's Champions League at Suwon Stadium in Suwon, some 30 kilometers south of Seoul, at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

Now in its second year, the Women's Champions League is Asia's top women's club competition and offers $1 million to the champions.

Naegohyang's 27 players and 12 members of their staff traveled from Beijing, where they had been training since Tuesday, and landed at Incheon International Airport, just west of Seoul, just after 2 p.m. Sunday.

Naegohyang Women's FC are the first North Korean women's football club to cross the border.

They are also the first group of North Korean athletes to travel to South Korea for competition since December 2018, when North Korea sent players to International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) World Tour Grand Finals in Incheon.

Dozens of members of South Korean civic groups, including those representing South K