Inside North Korea’s Obsession With Dominating Girls Soccer

The sport has become something of an athletic arbitrage for the country, which figures other nations won’t subject preteens to such arduous training.

SEOUL—After the last whistle blew at the youth women’s World Cup final in November, the Netherlands coach sounded dejected. His side had just lost 3-0.

North Korea’s girls have won the 17-and-under FIFA competition a record four times.

“I don’t think we could have beaten them,” the coach conceded.

The Netherlands squad had just run into North Korea.

Youth women’s soccer, alongside weightlifting and table tennis, is something of an athletic arbitrage for cash-strapped North Korea. The Kim regime figures other nations won’t subject preteen girls to arduous training. That’s left opportunities for outsize achievement for a government perennially hunting for propaganda victories and international prestige.

Rival players and coaches say the young North Korean women possess unmatched stamina, mental toughness and physical aggression. “They don’t let you breathe,” said Irune Dorado, a Spanish midfielder, after losing to the North Koreans in 2024.

Yoon Duk-yeo, a former South Korean women’s national team manager, recalled the tenacity he saw in the North Korean athletes’ eyes. They would completely throw their bodies on the line, seemingly unafraid of injury, he said.

“You instinctively pull back or yield when you’re about to collide with someone, right? But I didn’t see any of that,” said Yoon. “Their obsession with winning was on another level.”

Kim Jong Un, the 42-year-old dictator, has looked to sports as a platform to demonstrate his resilience against international sanctions and drive nationalism—especially among younger citizens who’ve bristled in secret at the regime’s brutal way of life.

North Korea’s girls have won the 17-and-under FIFA competition a record four times, and currently hold the title for women 20 years old and under.

After returning from Morocco in November, the U-17 squad, draped in the country’s blue-red-and-white flags, were greeted at the Pyongyang International Airport by soldiers who held salutes to the fronts of their wool Ushanka caps. Mothers waved colorful bouquets.

The team is welcomed in Pyongyang in November after winning the Women's U-17 World Cup tournament in Morocco.

The winners of the 2024 U-17 Women’s World Cup pose with Kim Jong Un after their victory.

In the evening news broadcast, star player Yu Jong Hyang was asked about her feats. She netted eight goals in seven matches. North Korea’s opposition scored just three times combined.

“They were goals scored together by all of the players on the team. Not just by me,” Yu said.

Yu’s remarks aren’t humility, but rather a reflection of the regime’s intentions to portray the victories as big wins for North Korean socialism—and Kim himself, said Lee Jung Woo, of the University of Edinburgh, who focuses on the political aspects of sport. “The regime is trying to turn these girls into role models,” Lee said.

North Korea faces significant logistical challenges. Nearly half of the country is undernourished, according to the United Nations, shrinking the potential pool of players. Often those tapped to enter the pipeline for national teams come from privilege, given the need for cleats, uniforms and three meals a day.

Jeong Haneul, a former youth men’s North Korean soccer player, recalled training sessions where coaches equated the soccer pitch with a battlefield. An incoming shot should be considered a “bullet from the enemy” while a defensive breach was akin to an incursion into Pyongyang—where the “General,” or ruling leader Kim, resides.

“As an athlete you are always told you are engaging in a war of speed, skill and grit,” said Jeong, 31, who defected to the South in 2012 by darting across the Korean Demilitarized Zone.

For their sacrifice, the victorious players and their families are afforded some enormous perks. They get extra rations. They often receive apartments in Pyongyang, by far the country’s most modernized city. And then the big one.

“What’s most important is when they win a gold medal they get to meet the leader,” said Brigitte Weich, an Austrian filmmaker, who has made two documentaries on the North Korean women’s soccer team.

Kim met with the championship U-17 squad late last month. He praised the country’s “persons of merit” for leaving “footprints of pure and clean conscience on the path toward the prosperity of the state.” The teenage girls, during their encounter with the Supreme Leader, broke into tears and rushed him from all sides.

For all the success with young women, North Korea hasn’t replicated the dominance elsewhere. None of the men’s teams are competitive. The senior women’s squad hasn’t appeared at a World Cup since 2011.

For their sacrifice, the victorious players and their families receive extra rations and often apartments in Pyongyang.

The North Koreans’ physical advantage erodes over time, as top senior national teams eventually get populated with professionals training year-round. North Korea’s young stars also can’t move to foreign leagues, as paying their wages would be a sanctions violation.

Since 2006, Kim Kyung-sung has helped North Koreans access overseas training and established an inter-Korean sports exchange. He recalls 9-year-old North Korean girls, living temporarily at a Chinese sports compound, rising daily at 5 a.m. to do 300 jump ropes. From a young age, the North Korean girls are aware snagging first place at an international tournament could elevate their entire family’s social status.

“Most kids just want to have fun or take a nap, right?” Kim said. “The stakes for winning are just so much higher for the North Koreans.”

Write to Dasl Yoon at dasl.yoon@wsj.com and Timothy W. Martin at Timothy.Martin@wsj.com