North Korea

Guangzhou, Nov 4: Isolated North Korea for the first time ever in history will send largest delegation to the Asian Games next week, with total of 199 athletes making way towards China according to Asiad organisers. The nation will participate in 20 out of the 42 sports being held including football, basketball, gymnastics, weightlifting, archery and judo, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted organisers as confirming. Before this, the record was of 195 athlete’s way back in 1998 Asian Games in Bangkok. North Korea which is popular for wrong reasons of nuclear weapons programme and dubious rights had the worst last Asian Games in Doha four years ago, where they managed to win only six gold medals out of the total tally of 31 medals.

Due to bad performance in Doha they were standing 16^th overall which was shocking and surprising as they have always been under 10 rankings since their first participation in Asian Games in 1974 in Tehran. The nation has always shown the hunger and desire towards the international events because of their close relations with sports and their team which is based in southern city of Guangzhou will compete against the backdrop of tense situation with South Korea. There is still stressed out position since Seoul accused Pyongyang with decisive attacks on one of its warships in March which took 46 lives away.

There will be some very good qualities of athletes coming up from North Korea which includes Kim Un-Guk, who was gold medallist in men’s 62-kilogram weightlifting at the very recent world championships. While in men’s football team there will be same nine players in the squad which featured in this year’s world cup, while on the other hand female judoka An Kum-Ae, who was the silver medallist in the 52 kg division at the Beijing Olympics will certainly eyeing for gold here.

According to Yonhap the team will also include shooter Kim Jon-Shu who lost respect and reputation and will be back after had completed suspension of two years for doping. The silver and bronze medal which was won in 50 metre pistol and 10 metre pistol at the 2008 Beijing Olympics was snatched away from Kim after founding that he took banned substance beta blockers.

Tags: Archery, Asian Games, Basketball, China, Football, Guangzhou, Gymnastics, Judo, North Korea, Sports, Weightlifting