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Hockey in the Hermit Kingdom
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Last Updated on Thursday, 07 August 2014 11:18
A team of U.S. and Canadian women's hockey players will travel to North Korea to play a series of games in August 2015
By Allison Micheletti
North Korea is most likely one of the last countries anyone would expect to read about in a hockey magazine. North Korea has a population of 24,851,627; it is a region of mainly hills, mountains and valleys; it is on the eastern side of Asia, and boarders China, South Korea and a very small area of Russia. Finally, the fact that almost everyone knows: It is a highly militarized communist country.
It turns out that this country 6,423 miles away from the United States has given the hockey world something to talk about. In August of 2015, a team of women from the U.S. and Canada over the age of 18 will be traveling to Pyongyang, the capital city, to a play a series of hockey games against the women’s teams in North Korea.
Ron Carroll is the man behind the plan. He speaks with such excitement and enthusiasm about the project, and provides insight into how traveling to a highly isolated country to play hockey will work.
A Canadian who studied mediation and negotiation at Harvard and is involved with peace matters, Carroll visited North Korea and his historic idea began to hatch. He found interest in these North Korean teams and went to see them play. The North Korean national women’s team plays at the international level at Division 1B (ranked 27th in the world) and after observation Carroll found their play equivalent to that of a college team here in North America.
There are 515 registered female players in the country and North Korea currently has three indoor rinks. After a few phone calls with contacts in North Korea, an agreement was finally made that Carroll and his team could come into North Korea to play, something that has never been done before.
When North Korea plays internationally, they always travel to other countries. This will be the first time that international play will take place in North Korea. The capital city of Pyongyang will host the event. The North Korean women have a league in Pyongyang where they play on different teams and have a schedule starting in September. Carroll and his team will be heading there to play these games right before the start of the North Korean women’s league season.
There will be 20 players on this team from the U.S. and Canada. The trip will cost about $7,000 per player. However, with fundraising, Carroll is hoping to raise enough so each player will only have to pay half.
The team will first fly to Beijing and then take the train to Pyongyang. The plan, as of now is to tour the city for a day or two, play three hockey games and then tour around the country and help train the youth players. Another idea still in the works would be to have a joint practice with the two teams, followed by all the players getting together for dinner, another event that has never been done in North Korea. When asked about communication between the two teams, Carroll noted that most of the North Koreans begin to learn English as children, and are well-versed in the English language by the time they are adults.
With the strong military presence and the growing nuclear program, Carroll has no apprehensions about going to North Korea. “I have no worries. It is a safe country and the people are very nice.”
Carroll tells story after story about the numerous acts of generosity and kindness the people of North Korea had shown him in previous trips.
“I wanted to do something new and unique, and this is historic, so I jumped at it,” Carroll said. “This event is not a moneymaking operation, but an opportunity for both sides to meet players from halfway around the world.”
With an extremely positive outlook and mentioning that no one knows where North Korea could be in 20 years, Carroll said that a player may make one friend, and perhaps further down the road it will not be so difficult to continue to hold that friendship.
In the hockey world, hockey is always considered to be much more than just a game. Carroll’s innovative idea and a group of open-minded individuals are exemplifying that perfectly. How wonderful it is that hockey is opening doors in places where most people would expect the door to be locked?
Carroll stressed how winning or losing the games is of no importance in this expedition. To him, the real importance is to use hockey as a vehicle to break down barriers to give people a chance to experience that maybe, just maybe, we are not as different as we thought we were.
