Olympic officials discussing unified Korea hockey team
SOUTH Korea has proposed that North Korea join it in fielding a unified women’s hockey team at theWinter Olympics next month, in what would be a first for the games and a potentially dramatic emblem of the recent turn toward rapprochement on the Korean Peninsula.
“That’s a topic under discussion at the IOC,” Chang Ung, North Korea’s representative to the International Olympic Committee, said at Beijing’s international airport on Saturday.
Chang, who was on his way back to Pyongyang, the North’s capital, after visiting the headquarters of the Olympic governing body in Switzerland, would not comment on whether North Korea supported the idea. But there would seem to be little reason for the North to oppose it, given its leader Kim Jong-un’s sudden outreach to the South this month.
South Korean officials floated the idea last year, but few took it seriously before January 1, when Kim – after a year of high tension over his nuclear program – abruptly expressed interest in sending a delegation to the Olympics, which will be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
The Koreas agreed on Tuesday that the North would participate in the games and that the two sides would resume military-tomilitary talks about reducing tensions along their border.
The International Olympic Committee did not respond to a request for comment about the hockey team proposal.
A unified team of any kind at the Olympics would be a milestone for the Koreas, which have been bitter rivals in international sports as well as in diplomacy and armed conflict, but which also have a history of trying to use sports as an avenue for reconciliation.
North and South Korea have only twice formed a joint sports team, both times in 1991, when their athletes competed together in an international tabletennis championship and a youth football tournament. Past negotiations aimed at sending a joint team to the Olympics have all failed.
President Moon Jae-in of South Korea proposed in June that the two Koreas form a unified team for the Pyeongchang Games and that the countries’ athletes march together in the opening and closing ceremonies, which they have done before. Moon’s sports minister, Do Jong-hwan, later suggested they could form a joint women’s hockey team.
Those proposals were raised Tuesday when delegations from both Koreas met for talks at the border village of Panmunjom, though the joint statement released at the end of the negotiations did not mention them. South Korean officials said they would continue to discuss the proposals with the North Koreans as well as the International Olympic Committee.
Follow-up sessions at Panmunjom are expected to be held today, when both Koreas agreed to hold working-level talks on their border and to settle details on the North’s plan to send an art troupe to the Pyeongchang Olympics.
South Korean officials said, meanwhile, that the International Olympic Committee was expected to bring together the national Olympic committees of both Koreas, as well as the international hockey federation and the Pyeongchang organising committee, to discuss the possibility of a unified wom- en’s hockey team and other issues arising from the North’s decision to join the games.
So far, the only North Korean athletes to qualify for the Pyeongchang Games are a pairs figure-skating team. North Korea missed an October 31 deadline to accept invitations from South Korea and the International Olympic Committee to join the games. But the international body has said it remains flexible and is willing to consider wildcard entries for North Korean athletes.