Joint North and South Korea Olympic bid faces long odds
Diplomatic gold
SEOUL/BERLIN, Feb 12, (RTRS): If North and South Korea succeed in their long-shot bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympics, any athletic feats at the Games may be overshadowed by the political achievements needed to make it happen.
Buoyed by the role the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics played in easing tensions last year, South Korean and North Korean officials are due to meet on Friday with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Switzerland to discuss what would be the first ever bid by two countries.
To make Olympic history, experts say the bid would need to overcome international sanctions against North Korea, decades of mistrust between Seoul and Pyongyang, and wide political and economic differences between two countries still officially at war.
The Switzerland meeting comes ahead of a second summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump in Vietnam, which will be key to the future of reclusive North Korea’s relations with the world. sensitive process. “Because we can say that the IOC brought peace in that area a year ago during the Games in Pyeongchang and it is a huge achievement for the IOC and President Thomas Bach.”
But privately, IOC members also expressed scepticism.
“We have not really spoken about it yet,” another member said. “Any discussions today are more an exercise in political marketing than real details of such Games.”
Last year’s Games in Pyeongchang may have left warm feelings in Seoul and Pyongyang, but the two Koreas share an older, darker Olympic history.
After Seoul was selected to host the 1988 Summer Olympics, North Korea proposed that it be allowed to co-host the Games.
Those talks went nowhere and just months before the Olympics opened, North Korean agents bombed a South Korean airliner, killing 115 people. The one surviving agent said the attack was aimed at disrupting the Games.
Later, North Korea pursued its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, earning the ire of South Korea and the international community, which imposed stifling sanctions on Pyongyang.
North Korea also faces international sanctions over human rights abuses, including prison camps and repressive control over much of the population.
“At this very moment it is difficult to imagine it without some huge political changes,” one senior IOC member told Reuters, comparing the idea to East and West Germany trying to cohost the Olympics at the height of the Cold War. “Is it possible or realistic to have Games in two countries with such different political, economic and infrastructure systems?”
Advocates see the Olympics as precisely the vehicle to bridge many of the gaps between the two Koreas.
“The fact that North Korea is pursuing hosting an Olympic games is a statement of their intent to denuclearize, to become part of the international community, and to open their doors,” said chairman of South Korea’s parliamentary sports committee An Minsuk.
Bach