North Korea suffered an epic 7-0 drubbing by Portugal in Monday's World Cup action, guaranteeing the team's early exit from the tournament. But that doesn't change the fact that the outlaw state "should have been excluded" from the start, says Eve Fairbanks in Newsweek. Just as the worldwide 80s-era "sports boycott" of apartheid South Africa did wonders to "heighten outside awareness of the evils of [the] regime," so too would a World Cup ban on North Korea. Instead, FIFA — and South Africa — allowed the "inhumane" dictatorship of Kim Jong-il in, possibly helping to gain unwarranted "respect and understanding" from the rest of the world. Here, an excerpt:
"I have to admit that the more goals the Portuguese scored, the worse I felt.... I was rooting for North Korea... [W]hen I looked at those hapless North Korean players giving up goal after goal, I wondered how safe their friends and families would be.
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