North Korea
Images of defiance and unity as Games open
Kim delivers message to Washington as athletes put differences behind them
They are two images of North Korea being beamed to the world as the Winter Olympics opened next door in South Korea.
In Pyongyang, leader Kim Jong Un presided over a military parade which, while not as large as other displays of power, suggested North Korea is not dropping its guard despite sending a team including athletes and officials to the Pyeongchang Games.
Meanwhile, in South Korea, a selfie taken by a couple of smiling skaters and posted on Instagram illustrated yet another moment of reconciliation between the divided nations, whose decades-long animosities could easily erupt again after the Olympics.
A South Korean pair and an North Korean pair shared the ice for the first time this week. Before training earlier this week, South Korean Kam Alex Kang Chan and North Korea’s Kim Ju Sik used the same locker room and put on skates early so they had spare time together.
Then Kam, 22, proposed taking a selfie together. He called the 25-yearold Kim “hyeong”, a Korean term used to refer to an elder brother or friend.
“I said something like ‘Hey, Ju Sik hyeong, let’s take a photo together’,” Kam said after training. “I posted that photo for fun . . . and to mark the Olympics.” The photo recalls a famous 2016 selfie taken by two North and South Korean gymnasts at the Rio Olympics — something that IOC President Thomas Bach described as a “great gesture”. Similar amicable interactions are visible among the North and South Korean female hockey players, who have formed the rivals’ first joint Olympic team.
The team of 12 North Koreans and
23 South Koreans was composed last month as the Koreas agreed upon a package of reconciliation steps following a year of heightened nuclear tensions that triggered fears of war on the Korean Peninsula.
Many experts have raised worries about teamwork, and a survey showed a majority of South Korean opposed the joint team. Why? They thought it would deprive South Korean athletes of playing time.
At the height of their Cold War rivalry, sports were often an alternate battlefield between the Koreas. North Korean medallists often ignored South Korean competitors who extended their hands for handshakes at podiums. North Korea also boycotted the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Olympics, both held in Seoul.
Since the Cold War, though, the countries have sometimes used sports as a way to thaw relations.
That was certainly at play on Monday when four North and South Korean hockey players who didn’t take part in the session took a selfie and laughed together. Also grabbing attention: earlier photos of birthday parties thrown for two North Korean players, and a dictionary aimed at overcoming a linguistic divide.
“Hockey really does bring people together,” said the team’s Canadian coach, Sarah Murray. “On our team, they are just players. You know . . . there is no North Korean or South Korean. They are all wearing the same jersey. We are all on the same team.”
Pyongyang’s military parade on Thursday had been anticipated for weeks.
North Korea announced last month that it would hold a big event to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of its military.
But instead of broadcasting the event live, North Korean television aired an edited version later in the day, giving it a somewhat lower profile than expected. The parade was also shorter and featured fewer missiles than the previous one, which was held in April last year and unveiled five new kinds of missiles.
This time, Kim fine-tuned his more fiery rhetoric toward Washington.
Addressing tens of thousands of troops and civilians assembled on the square below him, Kim said the parade marks North Korea’s emergence as a “global military power” despite facing the “worst sanctions”.
He called for his military to maintain a high level of combat readiness against the United States and its followers to keep them from infringing upon “the republic’s sacred dignity and autonomy even by 0.001 millimetres”.
He made no mention of the Olympics in the parts of his speech that were broadcast. It was unclear whether the North showed the entirety of his speech during the recorded coverage of the parade.
The tone was in line with Kim’s bigger strategy of late.
He has been making a major diplomatic push toward South Korea since he announced a last-minute proposal to send the delegation of athletes, officials and entertainers to the Pyeongchang Games during his annual New Year’s address.
The moves have been generally welcomed in the South.
Even as the missiles were rolling by his viewing stand, South Korean officials announced that Kim’s younger sister, who is part of the delegation, will have a luncheon with South Korean President Moon Jae In. That in itself is a major breakthrough for the Koreas. Kim Yo Jong is one of Kim Jong Un’s closest confidants and is the first member of the Kim family to visit the South. AP