Opening ceremony:
North Korea and South Korea sit side by side Friday as the 2018 Winter Olympics begin.
In an extraordinary show of unexpected unity in PyeongChang, North Korea and South Korea sat side by side Friday night under exploding f ireworks that represented peace, not destruction, as the 2018 Winter Olympics opened on a Korean Peninsula riven by generations of anger, suspicion and bloodshed.
The sister of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, shook hands with South Korean President Moon Jaein — and appeared genuinely pleased — while they watched an elaborate show of light, sound and human performance. Minutes later came a moment stunning in its optics and its implications: the United States, represented by Vice President Mike Pence, sitting a row in front of Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, and the North’s nominal head of state, all watching the Games begin — officials from two nations that many worry have been on the brink of nuclear conflict.
Not long after, North Korean and South Korean athletes entered Olympic Stadium together, waving flags showing a unified Korea — the longtime dream, in theory at least, of many Koreans both North and South. It was the rivals’ first joint Olympic march since 2007. International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach then handed the podium to Moon, who declared the Games officially open.
The opening ceremony’s signature moment delivered another flash of unity and deft political stage managing, too. Two athletes from the joint Korean women’s hockey team climbed stairs to the caldron with the Olympic torch. At the last moment, though, they handed the flame to former Olympic champion figure skater Yuna Kim, arguably South Korea’s most famous person. She lit the caldron as the home crowd roared.
Moon, in a news release, said Korean athletes from North and South will “work together for victory.” Also, Bach lauded the joint march of the two Korean nations as a “powerful message.”
“We are all touched by this wonderful gesture. We all join and support you in your message of peace,” Bach said.
After years of frustration, billions of dollars and a nagging national debate about the Olympics’ worth, the opening ceremony took place before a world watching the moment not only for its athletic significance and global spectacle, but for clues about what the peninsula’s political future could hold.
There is a palpable excitement in this isolated, rugged mountain town called PyeongChang as one of the poorest, coldest and most disgruntled parts of an otherwise prosperous South Korea kicks off two weeks of winter sports, spectacle and, from the looks of things, some inter-Korean reconciliation.
After a chaotic year of nuclear war threats and nuclear and missile tests from North Korea, the opening ceremony proved to be an evening of striking visual moments.