Like others with a stock in Han’s success, Passetti played down the importance of Han’s heritage.

“He is a really good kid who behaves and carries out a life like all young athletes entering the professional sports world, with friends away from the field and profiles on social media,” Passetti said in an email. “Nationality has never been a criterion that would determine the signing or not of a player.”

But some wonder if it should be.

The Skeptics

In May 2016, two members of the Italian Parliament’s Chamber of Deputies, Michele Nicoletti and Lia Quartapelle, initiated a formal request that the Italian government investigate the contract and the status of Choe Song-hyok, a North Korean product of I.S.M. Academy who had just signed with Fiorentina.

Their concerns, Nicoletti said in an interview, were twofold. First, they asked whether any transfer of money — at any point — had violated international sanctions banning payments to North Korea. Second, they wondered whether Choe’s human rights were being restricted in any way.

In 2014, a report commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council had unequivocally stated that a broad catalog of human rights was being egregiously violated by the North Korean government. Those abuses — including restrictions on personal liberties, strict state surveillance and the seizure of as much as 90 percent of an individual’s wages — often extended to an estimated 100,000 North Koreans working outside the country.

(That is why, in July, the United States’ secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said that any country hosting North Korean workers was “aiding and abetting a dangerous regime.”)

Experts say North Korea has sent more workers abroad to fulfill an urgent need back home for hard currency. But in this context, a star athlete offers something unique: a potential vessel of soft power, a rarity for the North Korean government. Remco Breuker, a professor of Korean Studies at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, said that if Han or another player were to achieve soccer stardom, “politically the payout would be huge” for North Korea.

The Italian government’s inquiry ultimately cleared the contract between Fiorentina and Choe after determining that his salary was being paid to a bank account in his name. The question of whether his personal freedoms were being violated was more complicated. The government can investigate only a specific complaint from a party to the relationship — like the player or his club — and since no one had made one, it could not pursue any action.