Koreas stickhandle uneasy truce on ice
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— There was ping-pong diplomacy which opened American relations with China.
There was rugby diplomacy when President Nelson Mandela used his country’s hosting of the World Cup to reconcile a majority Black nation with a sport that had been played almost exclusively by white athletes in South Africa.
“Sport has the power to change the world,” said former amateur boxer Mandela, before a team suddenly embraced by the Black population defeated New Zealand in the 1994 championship final.
So why not hockey diplomacy, with North and South Korea sending a combined women’s team to the Olympics, coached by a Canadian?
And why not figure skating diplomacy, with a pairs team — trained in Canada — the only athletes from north of the 38th parallel who have qualified for these Games on merit?
It isn’t exactly a Korean Spring. But it’s the first time in Olympic history that a country has hosted a team from a nation with which it is technically at war (the North boycotted the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, and even blew up a South Korean passenger plane in an attempt to sow discord ahead of those Games). The two Koreas will march into Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium behind one unifying flag depicting the Korean Peninsula.
Furious negotiations brought North and South to agreement, at beyond the 11th hour, after it had appeared an impossibility, despite Seoul long trying to promote these Games as a “Peace Olympics.” North Korean third generational leader Kim Jong Un opened that door in a sport-conciliatory New Year’s Day speech, wishing his neighbours success with the Games. That fragile rapprochement signal was seized upon by South Korean counterpart President Moon Jae-in, who campaigned in the last national election on a platform of reconciliation.
The concord, agreed to in principle during rare talks between the two countries at the truce village of Panmunjom — where the 1953 armistice that “paused” the Korean War was signed — was formalized by the International Olympic Committee on Jan. 20, a diplomatic breakthrough resulting from the first high-level inter-Korea talks since 2015. The countries also agreed to re-establish a military hotline that had been suspended two years previous.
“The Olympic Games are always about building bridges,” said IOC president Thomas Bach. “They never erect walls. The Olympic spirit is about respect, dialogue and understanding. The Olympic Winter Games Pyeongchang 2018 are hopefully opening the door to a brighter future on the Korean Peninsula, and inviting the world to join in a celebration of hope.” Blah-blah-and-blah. Or, as diplomacy is sometimes described: the art of going in two different directions at once.
The IOC announced that exceptional accommodations — including wild cards and disregarding deadlines — had been made, permitting North Korea to send 22 athletes who will compete in five disciplines across three sports: hockey, skating and alpine skiing. Accompanying them are two dozen coaches and numerous journalists, doubtless many of the latter actually “minders” to make sure nobody in the delegation says anything embarrassing to Pyongyang or, heaven forbid, attempts to defect.
All will receive strict guidelines on how to behave, with the athletes generally forbidden from associating with foreigners.
“Ideological training is mandatory before going abroad for competitions,” former national athlete and defector Lee Ji Young told a South Korean newspaper. “During this stage they weed out any individuals with ideological deficiencies or who they suspect may cause a problem abroad.”
Whether the delegation crosses overland, actually traversing the DMZ, remains undisclosed. There are international restrictions against flights from North Korea and UN Security Council sanctions invoked in response to Pyongyang’s ballistic and nuclear testing.
North Korea’s athletes have said they want to stay in the Olympic Village. A proposal from the governor of Gangwon Province would see North Korean dignitaries accommodated on a cruise ship docked near the village. This would allow an exception to sanctions preventing North Korean ships from dropping anchor in South Korean ports. A special SWAT team will be deployed to guard places where the North Koreans plan to stay, compete and visit, according to the National Police Agency.
The accompanying entourage is much larger than the delegation however. Along for the ride is a taekwondo demonstration team, 140person orchestra and 230-member cheering squad — directed to rahrah for both North and South competitors — all part of North Korea’s broader “charm offensive” and focusing on cultural engagement. Choreographed cheerleading, in particular, is a niche North Korean specialty.
This auxiliary cultural squad is led by pop star Hyon Song-wol, rumoured ex-lover of lead Kim Jong- un — and army colonel — who fronts a girl band called Moranbong, dubbed the North Korean “Spice Girls,” who will perform at various venues during the Games — perhaps to show the world what North Korea wants, what they really, really want. Their hits include such songs as “Make Others Envy Us,” and “Let’s Support Our Supreme Commander with Arms.” Not quite ear candy.
Hyon dropped south for an intensely media-covered look-see a couple of weeks ago, scouting performance locations for her band, greeted at the train station by a small group of protesters burning the North Korean flag and pictures of Kim Jong Un, a demonstration she studiously ignored while waving at the TV cameras.
Not everybody is happy about North Korea’s participation, resenting what they see as a propaganda coup for Kim. There’s also that small matter of Pyongyang ratcheting up its nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile testing last year.
But the Swiss-educated leader is known to be a sports fan, known to have had school textbooks revised to say that he began shooting a gun at age 3, was off-road driving before his eighth birthday and had twice beaten master sailors in ship races, according to the Institute for National Security Strategy, a South Korean think tank. And the North has spent big money building sports arenas and other facilities, including a luxury resort near the seaside city of Wonsan — including hotels, an aquarium and golf course. Vacationing at the Masikryong resort costs about $100 (U.S.) a day, in a country where the average monthly income is $30 to $40.
South Korea’s alpine team accepted an invitation to train at the resort with North Korea’s three Gamesbound slalom skiers and two crosscountry athletes.
North Korea hadn’t sent a delegation to the Winter Games since 1992. But it has participated under a uni- fied flag with South Korea at international sports events eight times in the past, twice fielding joint teams. They marched at opening ceremonies together at the Sydney Olympics.
Not virgin territory, then. But the world is a very different place now than it was in 2000, with Pyongyang increasingly isolated and subjected to international sanctions for weapons program.
North Korea has been competing at the Winter Games since 1964 and the Summer Games since 1972. It has won 56 medals in total — 16 of them gold and all of them at the Summer Olympics. It joined the Soviet-led boycott of the ’84 Olympics in Los Angeles and then stayed away from the ’88 edition in Seoul.
It’s not expected to win anything in Pyeongchang. But pairs figure skaters Ryom Tae-ok and Kim Ju Sik — 18 and 25 respectively — who qualified by their results on the Grand Prix circuit, stand a sturdy chance of placing in the top 12.
The team spent eight weeks last summer training in Montreal with Canadian coach Bruno Marcotte. Their programs — “A Day in the Life” by the Beatles for the short, Quebec singer Ginette Reno’s “Je ne suis qu’un chanson” for the long — were choreographed by Bruno’s sister Julie.
“I saw them a couple of years ago at Four Continents,” recalls Bruno Marcotte, who coaches the Canadian tandem of Meagan Duhamel (to whom he’s married) and Eric Radford, the 2015 and 2016 world champions. “They were . . . OK. Last year at the Asian Games I saw them again and there was a huge improvement. I approached them, just to congratulate them, just to say how much I was impressed. Then at worlds last year in Helsinki, they formally approached me to see if it would be possible to come to Montreal, train with Eric and Meagan and get pro- grams done by my sister.”
They have a North Korean fulltime coach who clearly learned his craft from Russia. That shows, says Marcotte, in the team’s skating style.
“I think there’s a bigger skating tradition in North Korea than we think. For the shows, we’ve seen they have a lot of really good skaters and really good training facilities.’’
In Montreal, the pair avoided media — an official/interpreter handled all requests — and seemed occasionally overwhelmed by their surroundings, arriving with money but no credit cards, and Marcotte’s colleagues arranging for hotel bookings, then finding them a condo at which to stay and driving the skaters to the rink every day.
“They’re so appreciative of the opportunity that was given to them,” Marcotte told the Star. “They were like sponges. I’d give them exercise, then the next day they’d show me how much they were ready to take it to the next level. It was a delight to work with them.” Politics was never discussed. “All I know is that they seem to really love their country. That’s what they said.”
Most symbolic of North-South sports détente is the women’s integrated hockey team, coached by Sarah Murray, a dual CanadianAmerican citizen and daughter of former NHL coach Andy Murray. She was hired to lead the South Korean program in 2014.
While the undertaking has been widely applauded, many South Koreans are unhappy that the presence of the North Korean players will cost some of their players the opportunity of a lifetime. Some 40,000 signed an online petition urging the IOC to reverse the scheme.
Under the plan devised, 12 players from the North will join the South’s 23-player squad. At least three North Korean players must be included on the match-day squad of 22. “It’s hard because the players have earned their spots,” Murray said last month. “They think they deserve to go to the Olympics. The players said in June not to make them a political statement and that they just want to play. I agreed with them.”
A North Korean coach has been added to her staff.
But this is the diplomatic crucible upon which the South Korean team has been planted, Murray in the unenviable position of having to leave at least four of the players she’s coached over the last four years off the game-to-game roster, inserting three North Koreans out of 12 provided after training them only for a few weeks.
South Korea has never qualified for the Olympic hockey tournament since women’s hockey was added to the menu in 1998. As host nation, it got an automatic entry despite being ranked No. 22 globally in an eightteam competition. North Korea is currently ranked No. 25.
President Moon turned a deaf ear to criticism.
“If we unify our team with the North’s, it won’t necessarily improve our team’s strength very much,” he said during a January visit to the squad’s training rink, before the joint effort was confirmed. “It will even require extra efforts to build up teamwork with the North Korean players.
“But if the two Koreas unify their teams and play a great match together, that itself will be long remembered as a historic moment.”
Combo-Korea’s first match is Feb. 10 against Sweden.