El Clásico, a fiery derby between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, as we all know well.
But have you heard of The Korean Derby? The Korean Derby is a match held between representatives of Gyeongseong (old name for Seoul) and Pyongyang.
The first match was held on 8th of October 1929, during the Japanese occupation of Korea. The intent of the match was to unify Korean people to overcome the hardship of the Japanese colonisation and to show superior soccer skills of the Korean people to Japanese.
The match was immensely popular that all the stores near the stadium closed and the trains carrying people between Seoul and Pyongyang was packed-full of people.
One time, when Pyongyang representative lost the first match, Pyongyang people gathered about 20,000 people to cheer for their team in the return match.
The soccer rules that they followed wasn’t as strict with fouls when compared to modern soccer. So the match became a brawl with crowds cheering players to ‘smash his legs!’.
Unfortunately, the last match of the Korean Derby was held on March 1956 in Seoul. At the time, Korean Peninsula was divided along 38th parallel line and Pyongyang players had to take a boat to come to Seoul for a match. A return match after the last game was promised but the promise could not been kept due to the Korean War.
So until now, head-to-head record between Seoul and Pyongyang favours Pyongyang, where they won 9 times, drew 7 times and lost 5 times.
Recent talks between South and North Korea seems to be promising and it is hoped that the Korean Derby resumes after a successful peace talk between the leaders.
The full story is available on the podcast above.
