Inter-Korean Reunification Basketball Games
From Hoopedia
Excerpted from The People's Korea news service, October 6, 1999:
As the latest sign of a thaw in a temporary decline in inter-Korean exchanges, the first inter-Korean basketball matches were held at the Pyongyang Indoor Stadium on September 28 and 29 according to the arrangements between the DPRK’s Asia-Pacific Peace Committee and south Korea’s Hyundai Group.
Sponsored by the south’s largest business conglomerate, the 80-member delegation flew to Pyongyang on September 27 via Beijing to participate in the unprecedented basketball games, named the “basketball game for reunification.”
Hyundai’s honorary chairman Chong Ju Yong, who made his sixth visit to Pyongyang via Panmunjom with the group’s executives, watched the games, which were telecast live to the south, along with APPC Chairman Kim Yong Sun.
Given a warm welcome by thousands of spectators chanting slogans such as “great national unity” and “national reunification,” north and south Korean players displayed their high skills and techniques for two days.
On the first day’s action in the court, men’s and women’s teams of the two sides mixed their players to play goodwill games, divided into the “solidarity” and “unity” teams. In a match between two women’s teams, “solidarity” beat “unity” team 133-127 while the “unity” won the men’s game 129-104.
On the second day, for the real competition, Faeori, one of north Korea’s national teams, edged Hyundai’s Redfox 95-93 in the women’s match. North Korea’s Thunder also won a victory over Hyundai 102-71 in the men’s game.
In 1990, national soccer teams of the north and the south traveled to each other for the historic inter-Korean soccer match. Last August, workers of the two sides played a series of football games in Pyongyang.
