Can Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang warm up frosty relations between North and South Korea?
The South wants next February’s Games to bring the countries together, but there’s plenty of obstacles in the way – not least the lack of decent athletes from the North
Tears and hugs after North and South Korean women won the 1991 team table tennis world championships. A standing ovation when athletes from the two Koreas marched together to open the 2000 Sydney Olympics. A selfie taken by a South Korean gymnast with her North Korean opponent that went viral at last year’s Rio de Janeiro Games.
Seven months ahead of the Pyeongchang Olympics, South Korea’s new liberal president Moon Jae-in hopes the first Winter Games on Korean soil could produce more of these feel-good sparks of seeming reconciliation and pave the way for deep engagement to ease the rivals’ 72-year stand-off.
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach has expressed his support for Moon’s overture while North Korea recently allowed its taekwondo demonstration team to perform in the South, the Koreas’ first sports exchanges since Moon’s May inauguration.
But there is also plenty of scepticism about Moon’s efforts because of a serious escalation in North Korean nuclear and missile arsenals – North Korea on July 4 test-fired its first intercontinental ballistic missile – and a weak North Korean winter sports programme that sent only two athletes to the 2010 Vancouver Games and none to the 2014 Sochi Games.
North Korea’s only IOC member, Chang Ung, said that cooperation on the Pyeongchang Games could prove hard considering the shortage of time and difficult politics.
What follows is an examination of South Korea’s attempt to make North Korea a key part of the Olympics set for February 9-25.