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Han Kwang Song, a 20-year-old North Korean football player, has signed at the prestigious Juventus in Turin, Italy. The striker who has been playing for two years in the Italian league thus becomes the first North Korean to play in a "big" club. It is extremely rare that sportsmen from the very closed dictatorship of North Korea evolve abroad ... and its recruitment by the Juve raises questions related to the international sanctions which strike North Korea and its nationals.
From our correspondent in Seoul , Frédéric Ojardias
Han Kwang Song has been loaned for one year to Juve by his current club, the Cagliari Calcio Club. A one-year loan with a $ 5 and a half buyback option. The first North Korean to play in the Transalpine championship, the striker was spotted in North Korea by an Italian senator who regularly goes to Pyongyang. He will play in the U23 team.
The few North Koreans authorized by Pyongyang to live and work abroad are forced to pay back a significant portion of their income to the regime, and that is where the shoe pinches.
Beginning in December, sanctions imposed by the UN will prohibit any North Korean expatriate from bringing in foreign currency. A measure intended to drain the finances of a regime that refuses to give up nuclear power. Bank transfers in the North are also prohibited.
But the Italian club assures the specialist NK News that this recruitment is legal and that Han Kwang Song is not subject to these restrictions, without saying any more, nor disclosing his salary.