The North Korean women's team have pulled out of next month's East Asian football championships in Tokyo following a diplomatic spat over visas. North Korea withdrew "because of a visa problem" and will be replaced by Taiwan, who finished second in the qualifying round, East Asian Football Federation President Junji Ogura told reporters Tuesday.
Taiwan will join China, South Korea and Japan in the February 6-14 tournament. North Korea finished runners-up to Japan in the 2008 championship. A Japanese government minister spoke out in December against the North Korean team's planned visit, citing an official visa ban for North Koreans imposed in protest at Pyongyang's 2006 nuclear test.
But Tokyo made an exception and approved the visit earlier this month because football's governing body FIFA prohibits political interference in the sport, Ogura said. "Government officials made some comments and the news reached North Korea," said Ogura, who is also on the FIFA board and a vice president of the Japan Football Association (JFA). JFA General Secretary Kozo Tashima said North Korea didn't say why they decided to withdraw.
Relations have remained tense between Japan, which once colonised the Korean peninsula, and North Korea. Agents from the communist nation abducted Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s to help train Pyongyang's spies in Japanese language and customs, further souring relations. After North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, Japan stopped all trade, froze air and sea transport links with the North and banned almost all visits by North Korean citizens.
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