How a North Korean football prodigy vanished, and re-emerged
SEOUL – When the North Korean men’s football team took the field for two 2026 World Cup qualifying matches in November, close observers noticed an important roster change.
Han Kwang Song was back, more than three years after vanishing from public view for reasons beyond his control – United Nations-imposed sanctions on North Korean nationals over Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.
The striker’s story is a rare case in which sanctions on North Korea have reverberated through professional football. It also shows how enforcement of UN sanctions against individuals varies by country.
The government in Italy did not deport Han, now 25, while he was playing professional football there. But when he moved to Qatar, the Qatari government did.
“The basic story makes sense; the surprising part is that Qatar complied with the UN resolutions,” said Marcus Noland, an expert on North Korean sanctions and executive vice-president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
Han’s early success was partly a product of North Korea’s push to cultivate football talent. After attending a prestigious footballing school founded by the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, he trained in Spain before turning pro in Italy.
He quickly made an impression in Europe as a speedy forward with an eye for goal.
Back home, North Korea’s official news agency praised him after a 2019 Asian Cup qualifier as “the player that experts and enthusiasts paid the most attention to”.
“In North Korea, he’s a superhero,” said Kim Heung-tae, a professor of sports science at Daejin University in South Korea who follows the North’s football programme.
But in 2017, as punishment for the North’s sixth nuclear weapons test, the UN Security Council ordered all North Korean nationals working abroad to be repatriated by December 2019 – to prevent financing of the North’s military.
Han, playing overseas in professional football leagues at the time, was among the targets.
But the Italian authorities did not repatriate him by the 2019 deadline, UN Security Council reports show.
Instead, Juventus, where he had been earning more than €500,000 (S$730,000) a year, struck a deal in early 2020 to send him to Al-Duhail, a team in Qatar, on a five-year contract worth about €4.3 million.
Though a Security Council panel of experts on North Korea contacted Italy and Qatar immediately after that transfer, it was not cancelled, and Juventus accepted a transfer fee from the Qatari club, according to the UN.
The panel said in a report that it later “reiterated to Qatar the relevant resolutions concerning the case”.
That summer, Han stopped appearing for Al-Duhail. In January 2021, Qatar’s mission to the UN said in a letter to the UN panel that Han had left Qatar after his contract was “terminated” by the club – and that Qatar’s actions reflected its commitments to Security Council resolutions about North Korean nationals who earn income abroad.
At the time, the coronavirus pandemic was raging, and North Korea’s borders were sealed.