As for North Korea’s star striker, he is the Japan‑born Jong Tae-se, who plays in Japan’s J‑League, drives a Hummer and finds his team‑mates appealingly quaint. Writing on his blog earlier this year, Jong described a stopover on a team trip from Switzerland to Austria, during which his team‑mates were stunned to discover you had to pay to use the gents in a station. “They turned to me,” recalled Jong, “and said, ‘This is truly what capitalist society is like.’” It’s a reasonable point.
