Joint Korean paddlers team wins early matches at worlds

TABLE tennis players from the DPRK and South Korea played alongside each other at an international tournament yesterday, winning their matchups in the latest installment of Korean sporting diplomacy.

The sport has long had an unusual impact in foreign affairs, most notably in the “ping pong diplomacy” of the 1970s between China and the United States.

At the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February, the two Koreas marched together behind a unification flag at the Games’ opening ceremony and formed a unified women’s ice hockey team, while the host’s President Moon Jae-in seized the opportunity to broker talks between Pyongyang and Washington.

Three months later, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and South Korea’s women table tennis players combined into a united team rather than play each other in the world team championships quarterfinal, although they went on to lose their semifinal and had to settle for bronze.

Now, after a historic summit in Singapore last month between DPRK leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump, 16 DPRK players are taking part in the ITTF Korea Open tournament in Daejeon.

Four, including the DPRK’s 2016 Olympic women’s singles bronze medallist Kim Song I, were to join a Southern counterpart in the doubles, with the first two mixed pairs taking to the table yesterday.

It was an anti-climactic evening for one pairing, who progressed automatically after a Mongolian forfeit. The other duo triumphed in a closefought 3-2 victory over their Spanish opponents.

The first time table tennis players from the two neighbors formed a joint team was for the world championships back in 1991, during an earlier period of rapprochement on the peninsula, when they shocked China to win the women’s team gold.

“Table tennis has had a long history as a driver of peace, and we are happy to open a new chapter of table tennis diplomacy to promote peace on the Korean Peninsula,” said Thomas Weikert, the head of the International Table Tennis Federation.

During periods of warmer ties the two Koreas have regularly sought to use sports as a symbol of reconciliation.

“Sports is the easiest and least controversial link the two Koreas can share, and there is little political burden in sports-related cooperation,” said Lee Chang-seop, professor of physical education at Chungnam National University.