Why Tottenham matches banned in North Korea

Updated: 17 Feb, 2025 • 0 • min read

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Why Tottenham matches banned in North Korea

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Dictator Kim Jong-Un has banned Tottenham Hotspur matches from being shown in North Korea for a very specific reason.

The Premier League is a global product with hundreds of millions of fans tuning in to watch the 20 English top flight teams take on each other throughout the course of a season.

It is shown in North Korea, but coverage is restricted to 60 minutes and, according to a report, airs before evening news but, bizarrely, four months after matches have been played.

However, the regime does not show any games involving teams with players from his hated neighbours of South Korea.

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That means games involving Tottenham, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Brentford are not shown in North Korea due to the respective presence of Son Heung-min, Hwang Hee-chan and Kim Ji-soo for those teams.
The findings came in a report by the independent US-based Stimson Center's "38 North project".

The report says that State TV is rife with propaganda, but sport is "one of the few moments each day when state TV is not trying to send an overt or underlying message to its viewers."

The Center's Martyn Williams said:

There wasn't really any intention to the research except that we thought it was interesting.

We just saw a lot of football on KCTV. It's the main international sport they broadcast.

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