Kim Jong-un says North Korea to take part in next two Olympics
Kim Jong-un will send North Korean teams to the 2020 and 2022 Olympics, the Games president said yesterday after a rare meeting with the leader.
Thomas Bach said the International Olympics Committee will propose a joint march and other shared activities between the North and South Korean teams at the 2020 Tokyo Games.
At last month’s Winter Olympics in South Korea, competitors from the two countries marched together at the opening ceremony and fielded a joint women’s ice hockey team.
The Winter Games began a rapprochement that will lead to talks between Mr Kim and the South’s President Moon Jae-in this month, and a US summit with President Donald Trump has been planned for next month.
Mr Bach said after landing in Beijing that his talks with Mr Kim on Friday had been “very open and fruitful”.
“They announced that they will definitely participate in the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, as well at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022” and all of the Youth Olympic Games, he said.
North Korea’s official KCNA news agency said Mr Kim thanked Mr Bach for helping to bring about a thawing of tension on the Korean Peninsula.
Mr Bach arrived in the country on Thursday and his visit followed an invitation from Pyongyang in January.
The regime rarely hosts foreign dignitaries but recent weeks have seen much diplomacy. Mr Kim made his first foreign trip as leader to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and invite him to Pyongyang.
Mr Kim told Mr Bach that the Olympics had “opened a new chapter of concord between the North and the South”, KCNA said.
“He said that the once frozen north-south relations greeted a dramatic thawing season with the Olympics as a momentum and it was totally attributable to the efforts of the IOC, which offered an opportunity and paved a path for it,” it said.
Mr Bach said: “The IOC will make a proposal for a potential joint march, for potential other joint activities for Tokyo and maybe also for Beijing, at the appropriate time.”
The men also held discussions about the development of sport in the North and attended a women’s football match. North and South Korea plan to hold a summit on April 27.
President Trump is then due to meet Mr Kim before the end of May for talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.
Mr Bach has hailed the reconciliatory mood, saying previously that the Olympic spirit “brought the two sides together” and the two neighbours sent a “powerful message of peace” to the world.