Han Kwang song was a teenage feeling of Liverpool and Manchester City.
In his second senior match in European football, Han defeated former goalkeeper of England, Joe Hart who became the first North Korean who scored in the Serie A.
Barely two years later, the striker joined the Italian giant Juventus.
But a mysterious series of events was already moving that would destroy Han's promising career and bring him back to uncertainty.
Han, who once had the world at his feet, finds himself a virtual prisoner of global politics.
He is back in Noord -Korea and plays in the Interior competition on 25 April, so that the Pariah State is only left for national team competitions.
But even that is better than being stranded abroad for three years by the COVID-19 Pandemie and being forced to only train at an embassy, with his promising career in ruins.
It was a trip to Barcelona that set Han on his way to short -lived star row.
The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un likes to use Sport as a political tool-network like his father Kim Jong-il, who once claimed to have beaten a 38 Onder-PAR 34 under the par 34, including different holes in one, in his very first golf round ever.
At the Pyongyang International Football School, the motto would be: “Better than Messi.”
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The regime was looking for an academy in Europe to train their best young football players and opted for Fundacion Marcet in Barcelona.
Coaches traveled to Pyongyang and selected 18 players, including Han, to go to Catalonia in the autumn of 2013.
Jose Ignacio Marcet, president of the academy and a former Barca and Real Madrid player, explained how the young visitors took the time to adapt.
Marcet said: 'They couldn't lose. They understood that the norm had to win.
“That is why we had to teach them that losing and making mistakes was vital in the learning process and it is one of the keys to success.
“Week after week they started to change their mentality.
“They became more relaxed and quickly began to adapt to the dynamics of Spanish culture.
“The players who left were completely different from those they were when they arrived.
“I think we have succeeded in putting a stamp on a country that does not easily have foreign influence”.
Some of those young people left a stamp on the global football phase less than a year later.
Han scored the equalizer when the under-16s of North Korea came from behind to beat South Korea 2-1 in the final of the Asia Cup under 17 in September 2014.
He continued his European football training at an academy in Perugia as part of a collaboration between the Noord -Korean government and the Italian football management of the agency, but could not officially play because of the FIFA rules on the transfer of minors.
Nevertheless, City and Liverpool were to those who show interest in his progress, with Reds Chief Scout Barry Hunter reportedly traveling to meet the player and his representatives.
In 2016, Han was close to Fiorentina with fellow countryman Choe Syong-Hok, who had scored the winner in that Asia Cup final.
But instead, he went to Cagliari in February 2017 and was so impressive for the youth teams that he made his senior debut against Palermo in April.
And in the next match of Cagliari, at home at Torino, he wrote history after noticing as an 81st minute replacement.
With his team with 1-3, Han Hart defeated Torino's goal. It was mainly big news because one of the largest football shame in Italy, at the 1966 1966 World Cup, was a defeat by North Korea.
Han said: “I feel at home here. I am very happy and I want to thank the manager, my teammates and the club.”
Yet the political issues that Han would eventually send in football had already surfaced.
The time of international teammate Choe in Fiorentina ended after four months because it turned out that his salary was being taken back to the North Korean authorities.
Similar concerns were expressed about Han's wages, especially after he had signed a five -year professional contract with Cagliari in June 2017.
But for now he was free to continue his promising career – albeit with some interference from home.
Han went on loan to the B -side Perugia series, where his goals had to make the conversation for him -because the North Korean regime blocked an interview on Italian television.
Perugia President Massimiliano Santopadre said: “A phone call from a shadow control figure arrived and it blocked everything.
“Negotiating, such as on the transfer market, was also impossible, because Pyongyang wants to talk to Han alone and exclusively.
“The situation with their government has become rigid and their football players are forbidden to appear on TV, otherwise they would have repatriated him. Han is scared.”
Whatever his fears are, the striker kept doing well and after two seasons in Perugia he went on another loan, this time to Juventus' under 23 side and with an obligation to buy at the end of the two -year -old deal.
Han said in a written post via the ISM International Scouting Center: “It has been a long way, but in the end I can say that my dream came true [after] Scoring my first goal in Serie A and becoming the first North Korean that wears such an important shirt as Juventus. “
Juventus called Han to the bank of the first team in October 2019 and on January 2, 202.0 they bought him from Cagliari for around £ 3 million.
But only six days later, the 21-year-old was sold twice the price to Qatari side Al-Duhail.
What was going on? Well, let's rewind until the end of 2017, the year that Han arrived in Cagliari.
In June of that year Han had made his senior debut for Noord -Korea in a friendly against Qatar.
But in September his country carried out his sixth nuclear test, so that the United Nations Security Council announced further sanctions.
In November, Noord -Korea increased the Ante even further by launching an intercontinental ballistic rocket.
So in December the UN announced that all North Koreans who work and “foreign export income generated the DVK … used to support its forbidden nuclear ballistic programs” should be sent on December 22, 2019.
In view of the provisions of resolution 2397, it remains unclear how Cagliari, Juventus and Al-Duhail got away in January 2020 with selling and buying Han.
And only Han knows what was going on in his head, but on the field he scored five goals in 16 performances when Al-Duhail won the Qatar Stars League and finished second in the cup.
But Han's appearance as a replacement in the last match of the 2019/20 season, on August 20, would be the last time that the wider world saw him for more than three years.
Official documents and the odd media report are everything there is to fill in the empty places.
UN records show that Han's contract with Al-Duhail was terminated by the beginning of 2021, in accordance with the prohibition on hiring North Koreans.
Yet Han could not even go home because his home country had completely closed his borders in response to the COVID-19 Pandemie.
It is said that it is proof that he flew from Doha to Rome on January 26. And then the path gets cold and trusts Hearsay for almost three years.
An article in China quoted a former North Korean international player called a Yingxue: “Han Guang-shong was trapped in the North Korean embassy in China because of the pandemic and just two to three years trained.
“It's a shame that Han Guang-Shong could not return to the North Korean football team to participate in the game in China earlier during his time.”
But the first time someone in the outside world knew for sure what Han did and where, then Noord -Korea finally resumed competitive football in September 2023 after a gorge of almost four years.
Han played the first half of a 1-0 defeat in Syria in the opening match of the second round of Asian qualifications for the World Cup 2026.
At the beginning of 2024, Japanese media reported that Han was back in Noord -Korea and played for the sports club of 25 April.
The name of the team is derived from the date on which Kim Il-Sung, grandfather of Kim Jong-il, founded the predecessor of the Korean folk army to combat the Japanese occupiers.
Multisports institution On 25 April belongs to the Ministry of People's Harvies and all its players are considered army officers.
Little is now known about the life and career of football player/soldier Han, who is still only 25.
His last international performance was on November 19 last year in a 1-0 home destruction by Turkmenistan who left North Korea Rock Bottom of their group in the third round of world cup qualification.
The game, just like earlier “home” matches, was performed in Laos, because of what the regime described as “security problems”.
North Korea was finally opened again to a limited number of tourists last month after a gap of more than five years.
But the door seems to have been beaten on Han's dreams to become a global football player.
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