NKorea judged winner of ‘diplomatic gold’

No daylight on North: Pence

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea, Feb 11, (Agencies): North Korea has emerged as the early favourite to grab one of the Winter Olympics’ most important medals: the diplomatic gold.

That is the assessment of a former South Korean government minister and political experts who say the North has used the Games to drive a wedge between South Korea and its US ally and to potentially ease pressure on its sanctions-crippled state.

In barely a month since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un surprised the world and said his nation was ready to join the Games, South Korean President Moon Jae-in has delayed military exercises, feted Kim’s sister at the Pyeongchang Olympics and given conditional consent to a bilateral summit in the North.

“North Korea clearly appears to be winning the gold,” said Kim Sung-han, who served as Korea’s vice foreign minister in 2012-2013 and who now teaches at Seoul’s Korea University.

“Its delegation and athletes are getting all the spotlight, and Kim Jong Un’s sister is showing elegant smiles before the South Korean public and the world. Even for a moment, it appears to be a normal state.”

US Vice President Mike Pence, who attended Friday’s opening ceremony along with the North Koreans, said “no daylight” existed between the United States, South Korea and Japan on the need to isolate North Korea.

He said the North was using the Games for crude propaganda.

But it was Pence who cast one of the loneliest figures at the event. He remained seated when the joint Korean team entered the stadium, in contrast to Moon who stood along with Kim Jong Un’s younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, to applaud.

The warm North-South body language not only fanned talk of a split between Seoul and Washington, it contrasted with a cold encounter between South Korea and Japan, an ally in US-led efforts to pressure North Korea to end its nuclear programme.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who looked uncomfortable at times during the opening ceremony, irritated his hosts by telling the South Korean leader that joint South Korea-US military drills should be promptly resumed after the Games.

To pave the way for the North’s participation at Pyeongchang, South Korea had delayed the annual exercises with US forces, which usually take place between February and March, until after the Olympics.

Drills

“Now is not the time to postpone US-South Korea military exercises. It is important to move forward with the drills as planned,” Abe said, according to South’s presidential Blue House. Moon replied that it was not appropriate for Abe to have raised the issue, which he described as an internal affair.

Japan does not participate in the military exercises, but it is within reach of North Korean missiles and relies heavily on US forces and their readiness to deal with that threat.

“This development could have been anticipated, but for Japan it’s a nightmare scenario,” said Takashi Kawakami, a professor of international politics at Takushoku University in Tokyo.

“North Korea is skilfully driving a wedge between the US, Japan and South Korea.”

A senior Japanese defence official said North Korea’s Games charm offensive could “simply be a way to gain time” until it completed its nuclear and ballistic missile development.

North Korea’s delegation sent to the Winter Olympics held “frank and candid” talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the North Korean news agency said on Sunday, but it made no mention of the North’s invitation to Moon to Pyongyang for a summit.

The delegation, the highest-ranking to visit the South and led by the younger sister of the North’s leader Kim Jong Un, concludes its visit on Sunday after charming and intriguing the South Korean public, but still faces deep scepticism over Pyongyang’s sincerity towards improving relations.

Any summit between the two still-officially warring Koreas would be a coup for Moon, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution to the standoff over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes.

In a rare honour for visiting foreign guests, Moon met Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, four times during the delegation’s three-day visit. Moon’s chief of staff held a farewell dinner for the delegation before the delegation attended a performance by a North Korean orchestra, the last item on their itinerary before heading home.

“I never thought I would visit (the South) so suddenly and believed much would be strange and different but I saw many things that were similar or the same,” said Kim Yo Jong in a toast during Sunday’s dinner, adding she hoped to meet the “friendly faces” before her later in Pyongyang.

South Korean activists burned the North’s flag Sunday near a theatre where Kim Jong Un’s sister and the South’s President were to watch a Northern musical display in the culmination of their Olympic rapprochement.

Some 140 members of Pyongyang’s Samjiyon Orchestra were to give a concert in Seoul as part of a cross-border deal in which the isolated, nuclear-armed North sent hundreds of athletes, cheerleaders and others to the Pyeongchang Winter Games in the South.