N Koreans land in South for Olympics
TEN North Korean skiers and skaters arrived in the South yesterday to take part in the Pyeongchang Winter Games, setting the stage for a “peace Olympics” after a year of high tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
Eight days before the opening ceremony, the athletes were among a delegation that landed in Gangneung, on South Korea’s east coast, after a rare direct flight between the two halves of the divided peninsula – for which a special exemption had to be sought from US sanctions.
In black fur hats, they made their way through the terminal without saying a word to a pursuing pack of reporters and boarded buses that took them to the athletes’ village.
Well-wishers at the airport held up banners depicting reunification flags – a blue Korean peninsula on a white background – with one proclaiming: “We are one”.
In the past year tensions reached fever pitch as Pyongyang carried out a series of weapons tests but the Games have triggered a sudden apparent rapprochement between the two Koreas.
For months, the North ignored repeated entreaties from Seoul for it to take part in a “peace Olympics”, letting deadlines for registration slip by. But in his New Year speech Kim finally expressed a willingness to send a delegation to Pyeongchang, setting a flurry of talks and visits in motion.
The two Koreas in January held their first high-level talks for two years at Panmunjom, the truce village in the Demilitarised Zone that splits the peninsula.
Pyongyang agreed to send athletes, cheerleaders, officials and an art troupe to the South, and both sides decided to march together under the unification flag at the opening ceremony, and form a joint women’s ice hockey team.
Yesterday’s arrivals – three cross-country skiers, three alpine skiers, two short-track speed skaters and two figure skaters – will compete for the North.
Fragile agreements
They followed a dozen North Korean female ice hockey players who arrived last week and have been training with their Southern counterparts for what will be the first unified team in 27 years.
It has been accorded its own three-letter Olympic code: COR.
But the joint team has not met universal acclaim in the South, with critics saying that Seoul has made too many concessions to Pyongyang to secure its participation.
At the same time, some say the North is seeking to gain advantage from its participation, and reports say it will mark the anniversary of the founding of its regular military with a major military parade a day before the opening ceremony.
Earlier this week, Pyongyang unilaterally called off a joint cultural event slated for Sunday at the North’s scenic Mount Kumgang, underscor- ing the fragility of the agreements.
“Pyongyang must stop acting unpredictably and fulfil agreements sincerely,” the Seoul-based Korea Herald said in an editorial yesterday. “One cannot erase the impression that the South is trying hard not to pique the North.”
And there are doubts about how long the warmth will last after the Games. Seoul and Washington agreed to delay the giant annual Foal Eagle and Key Resolve joint military exercises, which always infuriate Pyongyang, but only until the end of the Paralympics in March.