Teamwork on ice
Hockey team, with North and South athletes, bridges cultural divide
Skaters, hockey players from North and South Korea show unity.
GANGNEUNG, South Korea — A lot can be contained in a single selfie. The possibilities for peace between two entire nations, even.
A selfie taken by smiling North and South Korean skaters and posted on Instagram illustrates yet another moment of reconciliation between the divided nations, whose decades-long animosities could easily erupt again after the Pyeongchang Olympics.
The South Korean pair of Kam Alex Kang Chan and Kim Kyu-eun shared the same ice with North Korea’s Kim Ju Sik and Ryom Tae Ok for the first time. Before training earlier this week, Kam and Kim 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-year-old 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 Tuesday. “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 medalists 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 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.”
On Thursday, in another unusual spectacle, North Korea’s national anthem was played and its flag was hoisted alongside an Olympic flag during a boisterous welcoming ceremony for athletes from the North. South Korea has strict security laws that normally ban the playing of the North’s anthem and the raising of its flag .
A group of South Korean B-boys, or break dancers, twisted their bodies and flipped relentlessly after walking into the center of a group of North Korean athletes. A North Korean band played the Korean folk tune “Arirang.” North Korean athletes hummed to themselves before starting to dance. South Korean dancers joined them, triggering a barrage of camera flashes.
“I feel so good,” North Korean figure skating coach Kim Hyon Son said after the ceremony. “I want to see both North and South Korean people being pleased.”
The feel-good sparks will peak during the opening ceremony today, when athletes of the Koreas will march together under a single “unification flag” to the tune of “Arirang” instead of their respective anthems. It will be the first such joint march since 2007.
It’s unclear what other Olympic moments involving the two countries could make news, particularly because the hockey team isn’t expected to win a medal.
“Quite strangely, no medal, no issue,” said Jung Moon-hyun, a sports science professor at Chungnam National University in South Korea. “Whether North Korea does some action that pours cold water on the Olympic (reconciliation mood) is something to think about.”
Flag beef
It was a feel-good story for a few hours: Luge veteran Erin Hamlin gets the chance to enter her last Olympics carrying the U.S. flag into the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Games, winning that distinction after a vote by some of her fellow athletes. And then Shani Davis tweeted. With that, the entire process was called into controversy. The tweet posted to Davis’ account said the process by which Hamlin won was executed “dishonorably,” and included a reference to Black History Month — raising the question of whether the speedskater was suggesting that race played a role in the decision.
Davis is black, Hamlin is white.
“We feel strongly toward Shani and they felt strongly for Erin,” U.S. speedskater Joey Mantia said. “That’s just that.”
Hamlin and Davis were among eight nominees for the flagbearer role, and athletes from each of the eight winter sports federations — bobsled and skeleton, ski and snowboarding, figure skating, curling, biathlon, hockey, speedskating and luge — represented those nominees in a balloting that took place Wednesday night.
Eventually, the final vote was deadlocked at 4-4. Hamlin won a coin toss, the predetermined method of picking a winner if all else failed in the athlete-led process. The U.S. Olympic Committee confirmed the tie, and that voters knew if the tie couldn’t be broken by them the coin toss would have to occur.
USA Luge declined comment on the tweet. Calls placed to Davis’ phone rang unanswered.
Hours before the tweet was posted, Hamlin was beaming about the opportunity. The four-time Olympian told the story about how her parents, Ron and Eileen Hamlin, always wrestle with the decision about whether to spend the money for high-priced tickets to the opening ceremony — and in the end, always go to see their daughter march into the stadium with her U.S. teammates.
“I think they’re going to be really glad that they made that decision,” Hamlin said. “They’re really pumped. I’m sure my brothers will be. We’ve grown up watching the Olympics and we’re always like, W` ho’s going to be carrying the flag?’ And to actually be that person is insane.”