This year the DPRK won four trophies at U-20 and U-17 international football games.

In the 1970s FIFA adopted women’s football as its official event. With the first world championship in 1991 as a momentum, women’s football rose to an internationally popular sports event, drawing deep interest of experts and amateurs.

In the new century FIFA decided to hold U-20 and U-17 Women’s World Cup tournaments every two years in a bid to promote women’s football and train promising players under a more far-sighted plan.

The first world junior women’s football championship held in 2002 was renamed the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup in 2008. Its scope and popularity have grown as FIFA expanded the participating teams to 24 from this year’s championship.

The Korean women footballers registered successful records in the previous U-20 and U-17 international events, causing a worldwide sensation.

They won the third 2006 U-20 World Cup finals in Russia and the first 2008 U-17 World Cup finals in New Zealand, and made similar successes in the two age-group World Cups in 2016 and 2024, respectively.

As a result, the DPRK is among the three countries which won U-20 Women’s World Cup three times in the history of the event and it is the first to win U-17 World Cup three times.

The Korean women’s football teams demonstrated their unrivalled skills in the previous U-20 and U-17 tournaments.

Expert application of the strategy based on high team spirit and mutual cooperation and combination were characteristic of the performance of the Korean footballers, which made it possible for them to gain the upper hand in the matches against strong rivals.

Many foreign experts and media said that the Korean teams beat all likely winners in this year’s U-20 and U-17 Women’s World Cups and completely turned down the general view of “European and American superiority in football” of the football amateurs. They attributed the miraculous results of the Korean footballers to their persevering spirit to exalt the honour of their country rather than their high physical and technical abilities.

Attack was the main stream in the performance of the Korean women’s teams.

They swept to the victory from the group league to the finals, six matches in all, in the third U-20 World Cup in 2006. In the event they scored a total of 18 goals, with a single loss.

In this year’s FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup the Korean team made consecutive wins in the seven matches with 25 goals through formidable attack.

According to analysis, the Korean teams were much more superior to their rivals in goal possession, distance of run of players, kick precision, corner kick and other physical and technical indices in the 2024 U-20 and U-17 World Cups.

Such victories served as important occasions for the Korean teams to further consolidate their status as a world-class giant.

Yang Ryon Hui