TOKYO – North Korea has expressed its intention to participate in the Asian Games in Japan next year by sending a delegation of more than 260 members, a source familiar with the matter said Wednesday.
It has told the organizing committee of the Asian Games, to be co-hosted by Aichi Prefecture and its capital Nagoya from Sept. 19 to Oct. 4, that the team would include around 150 athletes to compete in 17 events, including football, the source said.
Japan, which does not have diplomatic ties with North Korea, will carefully consider its response, given that it has a general ban on entry by that country’s nationals as a sanction following its repeated ballistic missile launches, among other reasons.
In February and March of 2024, Japan allowed the entry of dozens of North Korean athletes to take part in football matches, stressing that travel for sports exchanges is an exception to the sanction measures.
North Korea, which imposed rigid border controls for its citizens amid the COVID-19 pandemic, did not send a delegation to the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021.
It sent a delegation to the 2023 Asian Games, held between September and October in Hangzhou, China, and to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
The upcoming summer edition of the Asian Games, held every four years in principle, will take place in Japan for the third time since Hiroshima hosted it in 1994. North Korea did not take part in that year.
In the 2017 Asian Winter Games in Sapporo in northern Japan, seven North Korean athletes participated.
AloJapan.com