North Korea’s World Cup miracle and the town that kept the memory alive

This week, the NK News Podcast presents a special episode on one of the most unlikely stories in World Cup history: North Korea’s extraordinary run at the 1966 tournament and the English town that embraced the team as its own.

Sixty years after the DPRK stunned Italy and reached the quarterfinals, this episode revisits how a little-known team from a country Britain did not recognize became the emotional heart of Middlesbrough’s World Cup summer.

Through archival sound, documentary clips and interviews with Nicholas Bonner, Daniel Gordon and Tosh Warwick, the episode traces North Korea’s road to England, the Cold War anxieties surrounding its arrival, the players’ meticulous preparation and the small human encounters that transformed suspicion into affection.

This special episode is based on Shreyas Reddy’s two-part feature series for NK News, Part 1 of which can be found here, and Part 2, here. 

Special thanks to Nicholas Bonner and Daniel Gordon for allowing us to use soundbites from “The Game of Their Lives” and to Joon Ha Park for providing the dubbed Korean soundbites.

About the podcast: The North Korea News Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Alannah Hill exclusively for NK News, covering all things DPRK — from news to extended interviews with leading experts and analysts in the field, along with insight from our very own journalists.