It was five years ago that South Korean female basketball forward Kang Lee-seul teamed up with three North Korean players on a unified team that grabbed the silver medal at the Asian Games in Jakarta.

Things have changed a great deal over time. Not only have the Koreas not formed a joint team this time -- such is the volatility of inter-Korean relations -- they faced each other as foes in the group stage of the 19th Asian Games in China on Friday night. And to hear Kang tell it, North Korean players have been ignoring their opponents from south of the border at every turn.

The game in Hangzhou didn't exactly live up to the hype, as South Korea handily won 81-62. Kang, one of three South Koreans who were on the joint team, drained a team-high four treys as part of her 16 points.

Kang, who missed some open looks early in the game, admitted she was a bit nervous about facing North Korea.

"I think I tried to do too much early on," Kang said. "I wanted to play well in this game and I probably got too much behind some of the shots. I was able to find my balance in the second half."

North Korea brought back two players from the 2018 joint team: Ro Suk-yong and Kim Hye-yon. North Korea's head coach here, Jong Song-sim, was an assistant on the 2018 squad.

Kang said she had tried to strike up conversations with them and other North Korean players, to no avail.

"I've run into them on the street (inside the athletes' village) and called out their names, but they never once looked in my direction," Kang said. "The coach never even made eye contact with me."

After the pregame warmup, South Korean players ran back to their lockers past the North Korean bench, where Jong was standing with her staff. They didn't acknowledge each other.

"She turned her eyes away from us when she saw us coming in her direction," Kang said. "So I figured she didn't really want to talk to us. So I didn't say anything to her, either."

During their pregame meeting, Kang said she and her teammates decided they would help North Korean players off the floor if they fell.

"We just didn't have that many situations where they were on the floor and needed our help to get up," Kang said. "And I felt like they were trying to distance themselves from us on purpose, and I felt a little hurt."

After the game, the players from the two Koreas didn't acknowledge each other, though they each took a bow toward the other bench. Other games in the tournament saw players line up in center court to high-five each other before they headed back to the lockers.

"A couple of those players were once our teammates, and for them to avoid eye contact and high-fives at the end ... I wasn't too happy with that," Kang added.

Park Ji-hyun, another South Korean member of the 2018 team, said it felt "a little strange" to face North Korea as an opponent five years after the unified team won the monumental medal.

"I knew I had to have a different mindset for this game," Park said. "With the game being played on Chuseok, we wanted to put on a good show for our fans back home. I feel great that we were able to deliver this victory."

Source: Yonhap News Agency