Sports diplomacy stuttering

When ice-hockey players from North and South Korea skated together on to the Olympic rink in matching white kits in 2018, it was seen as a symbol of the rapid diplomatic progress catalysed by the Winter Games.

However, analysts say sporting diplomacy on the divided peninsula will go nowhere without tangible advances on underlying issues surrounding the North’s atomic arsenal.

“The thing with a stunt is that it receives a lot of attention at first but its originality quickly fades,” Go Myong-hyun, an analyst at the Asan Institute of Policy Studies, said.