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Confident co-hosts Japan, South Korea happy to be over first hurdle
Posted: Tuesday December 07, 1999 11:41 AM
TOKYO (AP) -- It is hardly a match made in heaven. Never before have two countries co-hosted soccer's World Cup, the world's biggest sporting event. Let alone two countries with as bumpy a past as Japan and South Korea. To make things even more delicate, there is still the possibility that when the World Cup comes to Asia in 2002 a couple games may be hosted by North Korea, which is technically still at war with the South and which has no diplomatic relations with Tokyo. Even so, after the World Cup's first official event -- the draw Tuesday to decide which teams will play each other in the preliminary rounds -- both co-hosts said they were confident that everything will fall into place. "South Korea and Japan's first collaboration went very well, and I'm happy about that," said Shunichiro Okano, president of the Japan Football Association. "We have lots of work to do to prepare for such an historic event," said Choi Chang-shin, secretary of the Korean World Cup Committee. "It's not just about Japan and South Korea, the next World Cup is about boosting pride throughout Asia." Under a compromise agreement to bring the first World Cup to Asia, Japan and South Korea were chosen as the 2002 co-hosts in 1996. The opening game of the concluding round will be played on June 1 in South Korea, and the final on June 30 in Japan. "We've never experienced anything like this in Asia," said Yashiko Endo, general secretary of Japan's organizing committee. "We're just preparing the foundations." The arrangement has caused a good deal of nervousness in both countries, which have yet to get over animosities from Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910-1945. South Korea has added another complication by offering to give the North two of the 32 games it has been allocated in the co-hosting arrangement. Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA, soccer's governing body, said Tuesday that North Korea has indicated it will not field a team of its own for the cup, because soccer officials there believe they do not have a team of high enough standards. But he said FIFA would still consider the possibility of bringing the North, one of the world's most isolated and impoverished countries, into the hosting arrangement. "This question is still open," he said. "We will do it for better understanding between peoples, but FIFA will never interfere in politics."
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