Remember the North Korean Cheerleaders?

I remember when I was living in Seoul the Asian Games were held in Busan, and then the Universidad games in Taegu. I remember that for both these games, the biggest hits were the North Korean cheerleaders. They were extremely good looking girls that came cheering for their team, with DPRK and Korean unification flags. In fact, much more airtime and newstime was spent on them than the rest of the games. And not without reason: they were sweet cheery nice girls from North Korea. When they weren't performing their cheers ("Skill! Technique! Focus!") they were staying at a hotel off-limits to anyone else (many young guys would drive up there to meet them and get turned away).




And then there was the incident with the Kim Jong-il poster, which was a bit strange, but interesting. They were in the bus going back to their dormitories after a game and noticed a banner of Kim Jong-il and Kim Dae-jung that was in the rain, and close to the ground. They started shouting for the bus driver to stop, and in fact one girl slammed on the breaks herself. Then they rushed over to the poster and took it back with them, so that the picture of their Dear Leader wouldn't get ruined.

I also remember how South Korean girls would throw written notes at them from their stands during the games. The notes were always innocent, as in "I hope we all get to be together soon", and they would all scream and cheer together with the south koreans after each of the notes.

Either way, for those who lived in Korea during this time, these cheerleaders were a big event. Guys would ogle over them, and girls would cheer them on. They always had smiles on their faces and watching them made reunification seem so much closer at hand. For once it was nice to see South Koreans genuinely happy, and North Koreans looking excited to be there, both groups sitting right next to each other on the stands, without politics getting in the way. I bring this up because apparently they're in a gulag now.