The two Koreas met on the soccer field at Olympic Stadium today before more than 80,000 South Koreans, who cheered for both teams and roared approval for unification. South Korea's national team won 1-0, but the score was insignificant beside the diplomatic coup in having two enemy nations share a playing field for only the second time since World War II. The first time was two weeks ago in North Korea, when the northern team beat the south 2-1. Today's crowd was the largest to see a South Korean sports event since the 1988 Olympic Games. At the end of the game, spectators rose for a standing ovation as the athletes jogged around the stadium holding hands and waving. The teams exchanged shirts and waved them in the air. ``Our wish is unification,'' blared a unification song over the loudspeakers. The game, called North-South Unification Soccer, is the high point of a five-day visit by a 78-member North Korean sports delegation, the first from the Communist north to visit the south since the 1945 division of the peninsula. South Korean soccer players visited the north earlier this month. That visit was only the second civilian exchange between the countries in more than four decades. The soccer delegation returns to North Korea on Friday after rounds of sightseeing, dinners and talks on future sports exchanges. South Korean Sports Minister Chung Dong Sung and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Yu Sun, agreed in principle to form a joint single team for the 1992 Olympic Games and other international sports events at talks in Pyongyang. They said further discussions would be held in Seoul. About 5,000 plainclothes police were positioned inside and outside the stadium. Spectators were searched twice and passed through metal detectors to get to their seats. Scalpers were asking $140 for tickets, 10 times the highest face value price. The teams of the rival Koreas entered the stadium side by side, holding hands and waving to thunderous applause. ``This is not purely sports festival,'' Kim said before the match began. ``It should lead to a unification festival.'' ``I hope this soccer match will be a spring board for national unification,'' Chung. Thousands roared in approval and waved colorful pompons. Spectators had been asked not to bring national flags, decorative placards or other paraphernalia which would be identified only with South Korea. A drum and bugle corps played and a gigantic electric signboard flashed the pictures of the ministers. The North Korean team threw half a dozen soccer balls signed with their signatures into the grandstand and screaming spectators raced to retrieve them. During the game, the South Korean crowd cheered wildly for plays by both teams. Radical students, who had said they would root for the North Korean visitors, were not visible. News reports said tickets were sold on an individual basis apparently to avoid large radical or dissident groups sitting together. The sports exchange comes at a time when South Korea and North Korea are seeking to find ways to ease tensions and work together for unification. The prime ministers of both Koreas met for the second time last week in Pyongyang, the north's capital, and have agreed to meet again in Seoul in December. A South Korean musicians' delegation returns Wednesday from a 10-day visit to the north. The Korean peninsula was divided into the Communist North and capitalist South in 1945 at the end of the World War II. The two nations fought a war in the early 1950s and a peace treaty was never signed. The border between the Koreas remains tightly sealed and is one of the most heavily fortified demarcations in the world with more than 1.5 million troops on either side.
