{"id":62712,"date":"2024-03-21T00:30:39","date_gmt":"2024-03-20T15:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2024\/mar\/20\/japan-north-korea-rivalry-extends-beyond-football"},"modified":"2024-03-21T00:30:39","modified_gmt":"2024-03-20T15:30:39","slug":"japan-v-north-korea-world-cup-qualifier-resumes-rivalry-that-extends-beyond-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=62712","title":{"rendered":"Japan v North Korea World Cup qualifier resumes rivalry that extends beyond football"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Crunch fixture taps into a complicated underlying political history, with 150,000 North Koreans living in Japan<\/p>\n<p>A place at the next football <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/world-cup-2026\">World Cup<\/a> is not all that is at stake when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/japan\">Japan<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/north-korea\">North Korea<\/a> meet on Thursday for the first of two qualifying matches, in a resumption of one of the fiercest rivalries in international football.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the huge gap between the countries\u2019 economies and the profiles of their domestic leagues, few expect the match at Tokyo\u2019s national stadium to be a walkover for the Japanese, who are 18th in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/fifa\">Fifa<\/a> rankings, 96 places above their opponents.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2024\/mar\/20\/japan-north-korea-rivalry-extends-beyond-football\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Crunch fixture taps into a complicated underlying political history, with 150,000 North Koreans living in JapanA place at the next football World Cup is not all that is at stake when Japan and North Korea meet on Thursday for the first of two qualifyin&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,627,88,421,40,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-football","category-japan","category-kim-jong-un","category-north-korea","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62713,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62712\/revisions\/62713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}