North and South Korea agreed Wednesday to march together under a “unified Korea” flag into next month’s winter Olympics in the south — an unexpected development that contrasts heightened international tensions over the North’s ongoing nuclear and ballistic missile provocations.
The historic announcement, reported by the South’s Yonhap News Agency, was being watched cautiously from Washington and also triggered sharp pushback from many in Seoul, where South Koreans are divided on whether to share the Olympic spotlight with the rogue government in the North.
“South Korea must not allow itself to become a propaganda tool for the North Korean regime,” warned an editorial published ahead of Wednesday’s announcement by Chosun Ilbo, a major newspaper in Seoul known for its generally conservative posture.
The newspaper cautioned on its website that the South’s decision to welcome a delegation of some 500 athletes and officials from the north “threatens to become a logistical nightmare.”
“Would N. Korean Olympic participation violate sanctions?” asked one lead headline.
With that as a backdrop, Yonhap reported that the South and North had also agreed Wednesday to field a joint women’s ice hockey team for the games and that the North will send a 230-member cheering squad, along with a 30-member taekwondo demonstration team to the South.
Citing a joint statement issued after talks between the two sides, the news agency reported that the North’s delegation will use a western land route, marking the opening of the cross-border road for the first time since February 2016, when a joint industrial complex in the North Korean border city of Kaesong was shut down.
North and South Korea are divided by a highly fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and have technically remained at conflict with each other since the 1953 armistice that froze the Korean War. The United States has roughly 30,000 military personnel position in the South along the DMZ.
Officials from North and South held their first direct talks in two years last week — after which Pyongyang announced it would send a delegation to the Winter Olympics that begin Feb. 9 in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
The sudden flurry of sports diplomacy contrasts tensions that have risen on the Korean peninsula in recent years amid a growing number of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests by the North, as well as increasingly threatening rhetoric from Pyongyang toward the United States.
The Trump has administration responded cautiously to the sudden sports diplomacy on the Korean peninsula.
President Trump last week indicated fresh openness to the prospect of eventual U.S. talks with North Korea. But Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson is in Canada this week co-hosting meeting of diplomats show international solidarity against Pyongyang’s ongoing weapons tests, which Washington and its allies say have flagrantly violated of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Yonhap, meanwhile, has noted that North and South Korea fielded joint teams at the 1991 World Table Tennis Championships and the 1991 FIFA World Youth Championship, although they have never had a unified team in any sport at multi-sport competitions like the Olympics or the Asian Games.
Victor Cha, a senior Korea analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, noted in blog post last week that the two Koreas have marched together three times in the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games: 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics; 2004 Athens Summer Olympics; and 2006 Turin Winter Olympics.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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