North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has effectively blacklisted Tottenham Hotspur from the country's football broadcasts. The nation's 26 million inhabitants regularly tune in to watch Premier League matches before the evening news, but games featuring teams with South Korean players are conspicuously absent.
This means that Spurs and their captain Son Heung-min are never featured on North Korea's equivalent of Match of the Day. Coverage last year also omitted Hwang Hee-chan of Wolverhampton Wanderers, and Brentford's Kim Ji-soo.
Matches are aired on state-run KCTV four months after they take place, meaning games played in August were broadcasted in January. These insights were revealed in a report by the Washington-based Stimson Center's 38 North project.
The report highlighted that while North Korean television schedules are filled with propaganda, sports broadcasts represent "one of the few moments each day when state TV is not trying to send an overt or underlying message to its viewers".
Senior fellow Martyn Williams commented: "There wasn't really any intention to the research except that we thought it was interesting. We just saw a lot of football on KCTV. It's the main international sport they broadcast," reports the Mirror.
In 2023, KCTV aired action from the Premier League, World Cup and Champions League. Matches are condensed from 90 minutes to 60 minutes and are almost certainly infringing copyright laws, according to the report.
North Korea does not have a legal agreement to broadcast any Premier League TV highlights.