Highlights from the opening ceremony,
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— There were so many stairs, illuminated and glowing, and they were so steep. The opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Olympics was full of moments that could be remembered, framed, turned into front pages or Internet chum. You could pick the Tongan flagbearer, Pita Taufatofua, who for a second straight Olympics marched in shirtless and oiled and wearing flip-flops, in the toe-freezing cold. You could choose the Russians marching in under both the Olympic flag, and a cloud of unhappiness, draped in a negotiated grey.
You could choose the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Kim Yo Jong, shaking hands with the president of South Korea, Moon Jae-In, in the VIP box. You could choose American vice-president Mike Pence sitting a few seats away, preparing to make his own clumsy political statement.
But I will remember those stairs, the walk that had preceded it, the two women’s hockey players, and the climb. The ceremony had already passed through so many symbols of Korea, its history, its people. Every Olympic opening ceremony is aspirational; it is what you want to tell your country, which may never pay more attention to a single moment, and it is what you want to sing to the world.
And after everything two women’s hockey players, Park Jong-ah of South Korea and North Korean player Jong Su Hyon, stood together holding one flame. The Olympic torch was at the top of the stadium, up a ramp that seemed built for a snowboarding daredevil; it would be lit by iconic South Korean figure skater Kim Yuna, but it needed to get there. So the stairs materialized out of the ramp, and they glowed in the cold, and the two players began to climb.
In the time it took, you could have traversed the rest of the night in your mind. It was an intimate little stadium, seating 35,000 who were often hidden by the LED lights behind each seat, and the program was centred around children exploring a magical and idyllic world, with mystical guardians.
It represented nature, history, the South Korean rise following the Korean War. Before the athletes marched, janggu drums pounded away, and turned into the Korean flag, which is a Pepsi-coloured representation of yin and yang; of forces, in balance.
At times it veered into the Platonic ideal of an opening: A parody-ready version of John Lennon’s Imagine, a heavy dose of the dove as the bird of peace, a happy face, children. But it travelled from the world’s secondoldest map of the constellations to the futuristic sight of 1,218 light-bearing drones forming the Olympic rings and the image of a snowboarder in the air.
And the athletes marched in all the colours of the world, and Gangnam Style and Korean pop played, and Korea came last. Just Korea. They marched under the unification flag for the 10th time at a Games, including in Sydney in 2000 and Athens in 2004, so it wasn’t something that would change the world, or even their world.
In the VIP box, Pence refused to stand when the Koreas marched in; for someone who not long ago marched out of a NFL game because players refused to stand during an anthem, it was a breathtaking lack, or disregard, of self-awareness.
But the symbolism of this opening ceremony was impossible to miss. So much of the show’s message of peace was crafted before it was known North Korea would attend the Games, and then the opportunity arose to incorporate something deeper that could be hoped for. When Korea marched, they all dressed alike and waved the same flag, and you couldn’t tell who was North or South Korean any more than you could pick the Francophones from the Anglophones in Canada’s delegation.
They were just people, athletes, marching under one flag. Korea is the world’s only divided country: The roots and pain run deep. CNN reported Kim Yo Jong would be inviting the Korean president to visit Pyongyang, the North Korean capital whose similarity in name with this Olympic city caused Pye- ongchang to add the E in the middle of the word, and to capitalize the second C. These moments of symbolic rapprochement, like everything about these Games, seems unlikely to overturn, or even significantly alter, some 60 or 70 years of history.
But symbolism can matter, and there were those stairs. Park was the South Korean team captain, and 21. Jong is the best of North Korea’s players; she is 21, too.
They turned and looked up and held the torch together and climbed those stairs in unison: the same speed, the same endurance, the same focus and strength. If one faltered, either could fall. There were so many stairs, but they churned upwards, relying on one another, together. They reached the top, and the flame was lit.
That was the part I will remember, more than any of the rest. An opening ceremony is the song you want to sing yourself and sing to the world. It is aspirational. Two women born from the same part of the world, who play and presumably love the same sport, who grew up in altogether different worlds. They took hold of something worth doing and they climbed together, and they didn’t stop until it was done.