Korean Peninsula Focus: Messi and Ronaldo on North Korean Phones... A 'North Korean Version of Sports Toto'

[Anchor]

Let us discuss more about North Korea with reporter Kim Ayeong.

Reporter Kim, there are reports that signs of a lottery event related to the North and Central America World Cup have been detected in North Korea. What is this about?

[Reporter]

I have brought some photos that were recently posted one after another on the social media accounts of foreigners who are staying in or have visited Pyongyang.

This is the photo.

It is a poster announcing a sports lottery related to the 2026 World Cup.

The ticket price is listed as 50,000 North Korean won, and the first-place prize is 500 million won.

When converted using the dollar exchange rate, it comes out to approximately 1,200 won in our currency per ticket, and the prize money is about 12 million won.

I asked one of the foreigners who posted the photo, and they said they could not purchase it because they were a foreigner.

Interestingly, it states that not only North Korean residents but also institutions and organizations can purchase them.

Experts explain that the North Korean authorities are utilizing sports lotteries as a measure to absorb idle funds from individuals or institutions.

[Kim Young-hee / Director of the North Korea Development Institute: The purpose of this lottery is entirely for raising funds. It is about taking money from the pockets of individuals and the surplus funds of institutions. Trading companies, in particular, have a lot of money. It is to bring that surplus money into the state.]

The announcement states that the prize money will be paid through the electronic payment service Samhung Electronic Wallet.

This is interpreted as an intention to encourage the use of electronic wallets and bring the flow of funds into the authorities' management system.

[Anchor]

So, does this mean North Korea has something like South Korea's Sports Toto?

[Reporter]

There are several other instances where the North Korean authorities are combining the sports sector with the gambling industry.

I examined the Samtaesong 8, a North Korean smartphone known to have been released around 2023.

You can see that there is a separate category for sports lotteries within the Samhung Electronic Wallet app.

Payments can be made in both North Korean won and foreign currency.

I was also able to confirm explanations related to participation in the 2022 Qatar World Cup in the notice posts.

This suggests that it was also being conducted at that time.

This time, I have brought a screen from another mobile phone model.

You can see quite a lot of soccer-related images in the app.

Messi's Qatar World Cup journey, the Juventus team on their way to victory—these are all contents that pique interest regarding match results.

In other words, it is presumed that while North Korea strictly blocks the influx of outside information, it is actively utilizing world-class sports events as a revenue channel to gather funds for the central government.

(Reported by Shin Jin-soo | Video edited by Choi Jin-hwa | Footage courtesy of Xiaohongshu, Daily NK)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.