North Korea televised two World Cup matches over the weekend in rare nationwide broadcasts of scenes from outside the reclusive communist state, a South Korean government official said yesterday.

The delayed broadcast on the North's national Chosun Central Television showed advertising billboards and the stadiums' names but concealed the official World Cup logo, said the official in the South's Unification Ministry.

Friday's opening match of the tournament between France and Senegal in Seoul, which finished 1-0 to the African side, and Saturday's 1-1 draw between Ireland and Cameroon in co-host Japan's Niigata were both televised, the official told Reuters.

It was not immediately clear how North Korea obtained the footage or whether it would be showing other World Cup matches.

"(The transmission) was done without official permission... We have discussed this with Kirch (the World Cup rights holders) and there are no rights holders in North Korea," FIFA communications director Keith Cooper said yesterday.

"They (Kirch) are aware that the match was shown on a delay basis, and they are trying to find out how the tape was delivered," he told a news conference in Seoul.

The two Koreas remain technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armed truce rather than a peace treaty.

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