Women of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) beat the U.S. soccer team 1-0 on Sept. 18 in Cali, Colombia, and won the opportunity to play Japan in the final game of women’s FIFA U-20 (under 20 years of age) world soccer championship tournament in Bogotá, Colombia.

In a sport that often features draws, as well as overtime and penalty shootouts in knockout games, the DPRK women won all their matches in regulation time.

The women’s resounding victories, their smiling faces, their strong bodies, their exuberance and excitement show not only their own personal resilience and victory but that of their country and its revolutionary leadership.

Since the founding of the DPRK in 1948, it has been under near total blockade and harsh sanctions by Japan, the United States and its allies.

Japan, with the blessing of the U.S. and the West, ruled all of Korea as a colony from 1910 until its liberation in 1945 by the armies of the still-governing Korean Workers’ Party and the Red Army of the Soviet Union.

During the U.S. war on Korea, 1950-53, Korea was bombed from one end to the other. People by the hundreds of thousands were indiscriminately killed either by bombs or starvation. In the north, every structure of more than two stories was leveled — imagine the devastation and genocide in present-day Gaza on a country-wide scale.