Aided by a large vocal home support, Uzbekistan had started strongly but were dealt a blow on the half hour when Sardo Rakhmanov was shown a straight red card for a high challenge.

That visibly knocked the hosts out of their stride and though they still enjoyed large periods of domination, DPR Korea began to look more and more likely to score as the game wore on.

And so it proved with 15 minutes remaining as half-time substitute Ri Kwang-il fired home before Jo Kwang put the game beyond Uzbekistan shortly before full time.

“All the members of this team are very proud of adding to the dignity of the country with this win,” said Ri.

“My team were superior to the Uzbekistan team in every way. I am sure that we will be invincible if we can develop our own principle of play more concretely in the future. Then we can beat anyone.”

The victory completes a fine year for North Korean football after the under-19 side had secured the AFC U-19 Championship in China last month.

The senior national team also competed at the FIFA World Cup in the summer and Ri believes the country’s football is only going to continue getting stronger.

“My future plan is that we will not rest on today’s achievement, we will now make higher goals for our football development,” he added.

“Our next aim is a good result in the FIFA U-17 World Cup. We would like to heighten the development of Korean football.”

Uzbekistan coach Aleksey Evstafeev admitted Rakhmanov’s sending off made things difficult for the tournament hosts but conceded the better side won on the day.

Over 30,000 fans turned up in the hope of cheering their side to victory but in the end it was not to be.

“I would like to say thank you to our supporters today. I am fully satisfied with the team and how we played today. We did everything we could,” said Evstafeev.

“Of course it is a pity we lost at the final hurdle but I congratulate DPR Korea.

“They were better than us. I said before they are tactically and physically a very strong team and it is very hard to play against them. They started very defensively but after the red card they started to push more and more.”