Politics and Sports Collide in Japan: The LA Times featured a piece over the weekend on the North Korean soccer team. After a ten-year hiatus, the team will again compete for a spot in the upcoming World Cup. The team's road to the Cup leads through Japan, though, which is causing a great deal of conflict.

The game comes at a moment when the two countries are locked in a rancorous political dispute over at least eight Japanese citizens who were kidnapped by agents of the Communist state during the Cold War and are said to be dead.



Anti-North Korean emotions are running high in Japan over the abductees. A large majority of the Japanese public and media is clamoring for Tokyo to impose economic sanctions against North Korea for what are seen as unconvincing explanations of how the abductees died.

Japan is no stranger to the problematic mixture of sports and politics, as it played the role of the bad guy in a game last year against China.

Japan is particularly sensitive in the wake of last summer's Asia Cup tournament held in China, where a sizable number of Chinese fans jeered the Japanese team.



By holding up hostile signs and throwing debris at the Japanese, Chinese fans demonstrated that little is forgotten or forgiven from the years of Japanese war and occupation.

Japan feels its players and fans were not adequately protected during that game and has pledged to provide adequate protection for the North Koreans. But the chance for violence is present, not only because of the current situation, but also for the historical reason that Japan was also once the colonizer of the Korean peninsula.



As for the game itself, many in the soccer community are watching just to see how good this North Korean team is. After its ten-year hiatus, the team played in the preliminary stage of the World Cup qualifying round and won its division without losing a game.

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