Thought for The Day 20th June

The North Korean national football team have qualified for the 2010 Football World Cup in South Africa. Only 6 sides have guaranteed their place so far (England still need at least a point) and North Korea’s early success is already causing their autocratic regime several major headaches.

The players will be heavily controlled; few fans from North Korea will be able to support their team and there is even a question as to whether or not the matches will be televised. No home fans. No TV. It will be down to Twitter then.

Watching the other qualifying match in that group this week – Iran against Saudi Arabia – the green arm bands on the wrists of some Iranian players in support of democracy back home- were more important than the result of the game.

Sport frequently manages to provide an arena for international dilemmas to be seen in the cold light of day. It’s often the case: one tournament – different continents, many nations – but what a varied backdrop is provided by the lives and experiences of each of the participating teams.

Indeed, the qualification of North Korea highlights how absolutely different life can be for people taking part in exactly the same event. Contrast the reality of life of, say, a North Korean defender with the puffed up somewhat ridiculous extremes of some European and South American footballers also taking part. It’s the parallel universe syndrome: how can that be? We are here, and so are they, but perception through participation is staggeringly different?

Putting that taking part in an event into the context of life back home is even more challenging in a repressed society if sport provides only a fleeting glimpse of equality and that level playing field– it is but a mirage, a temporary reprieve from the oppression and injustice to which participants must then return.

The communications revolution, as we have seen this week in various parts of the world, gives dictators fewer places to hide. This is an age of opinion, update and messaging. And it is all of our responsibilities to believe that sharing and openness might ease the path to freedom; that our perception and experience of life need not be so different even at the same event.

Who is to say what is right? Who can define what real freedom is? All we know is that human beings crave the opportunity to be free to believe that they have the ability to make choices.

Having faith in any such ability means believing sometimes in that which is not tangible: St Augustine of Hippo said that faith is to believe what you do not yet see:” but if you have such faith and persist – he goes on – one day you will see what you believe.