Little is known about his life aside from his enrolment in the prestigious Pyongyang International Football School founded in accordance with Kim Jong Un’s well-known love of sports. Han was born in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang in 1998. A CNN investigation into his story has shed new light on his disappearance. He had been due to fly out of Qatar in 2021 in accordance with the UN sanctions – and has since vanished. The sanctions ordered member states to repatriate all North Korean nationals working in their respective jurisdictions amid concerns that foreign money was being transferred to support Kim Jong Un’s nuclear and weapons programs. The UNSC resolution set the end of 2019 as the deadline for repatriation.īut the Covid-19 pandemic led to North Korea fully sealing its borders, making it impossible for Han and fellow repatriated North Korean nationals to return home.
Han was praised back home as “a promising player who drew the attention of the European football world,” according to North Korea’s propaganda media Sogwang.īut the good times didn’t last after the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) imposed sanctions against North Korea for conducting its sixth nuclear test in 2017. “His physique wasn’t big, but he was quick with his positioning and could score headers well,” South Korean football commentator Hahn June-hea told CNN Sport. The young striker from Pyongyang quickly drew attention from soccer pundits and fans – not just for his unique background, but for his technical prowess as well. “ The Little North Korean,” as an Italian commentator once described him, Han was not especially tall, but with his scorching pace, strong tackling and lethal heading in front of goal was still capable of competing among Europe’s best. In 2017, Han Kwang Song became the first North Korean to score a goal in one of Europe’s five major soccer leagues and even made a shock transfer to Italian giant Juventus in 2019, then later to Qatar’s Al-Duhail.īut his promising career was cut short when he disappeared from the world soccer stage in 2020, leaving fans with a question: “Where is that North Korean player?”
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