While the rest of the world was being swept along by World Cup fever, Stalinist North Korea had completely ignored the World Cup.

The state-run media made no mention of the tournament to be co-hosted by its arch-rivals South Korea and Japan.

So it came as somewhat of a surprise when North Korea's state television broadcast the opening match between France and Senegal - even though it was a day late.

It is the first time North Koreans have had the chance to see a sporting event in the South, as the two countries are technically still at war.

The move caused a few raised eyebrows with one South Korean government official describing it as "highly unusual".

Silence

In the build-up to the tournament, the North Korean authorities made no public mention of the World Cup.

The Arirang festival is the masterpiece of the 21st century

Pyongyang TV

The country's media focused instead on Arirang - a major arts festival, involving thousands of gymnasts, dancers and musicians.

Pyongyang TV described the two month-long festival as "the masterpiece of the 21st Century".

As the World Cup got under way in South Korea and Japan, North Korean radio reported the continued success of Arirang and claimed that foreigners and Koreans living abroad were flocking to the capital Pyongyang to see the performance.

Foreign tourists were invited to the Arirang festival

On the day when the eyes of the world were focused on the lavish opening ceremony in neighbouring Seoul, North Korean TV news, however, reported a Russian military delegation's visit to Pyongyang.

No mention was made of the $7.3 (�5m)-spectacle which was taking place across the demilitarised zone, dividing the two Koreas.

North-South ties

But it seems that the cheers from Seoul did reach Pyongyang after all.

Edited highlights of the match were broadcast on the North Korean territorial channel which can be received only inside the country.

The televising is seen as a display of the confidence that North Korea can show the games in Seoul without having to worry about any major internal problems

Yonhap news agency

The South Korean news agency Yonhap said during the match North Koreans were able to see pictures of a "prosperous South", including billboards advertising sports equipment, cars and the internet - items not readily available in the impoverished North.

One Yonhap commentator believes that broadcasting the game represents a sign of improving North-South relations.

North Korea, he maintains, by televising the match displayed a confidence that "it can show the games held in Seoul to its people without having to worry about any major internal problems".

US blasted

But a report by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, the day after the World Cup opener suggests that, in fact, very little has changed.

The agency attacks the US "imperialist aggressors" for spying on the country's front-line and coastal areas in the build up to the World Cup.

And, in a, by now familiar rhetoric, it said the United States "committed over 180 cases of air espionage against North Korea in May by massively mobilising strategic and tactical reconnaissance planes of different missions".

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.