Keep your enemies close
Kim Yo-jong, sister of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, was seated behind US vice-president Mike Pence at the Winter Olympics opening ceremony yesterday
ON THE face of it, the Winter Olympics opening ceremony was dripping with the symbolism of peace. Just 50 miles from their militarised border, athletes from North and South Korea marched under a joint flag.
In the VIP box, Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president, waved proudly as, behind him, in a sombre black coat, Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, applauded the teams.
The two had just shared a historic handshake at the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Pyeongchang yesterday, where the opposing powers, locked in a nuclear stand-off, mingled briefly in the VIP box.
But beneath the outward celebrations, the international fault-lines underpinning the Olympic détente were beginning to show. Before the ceremony, Mike Pence, the US vice president, had skipped a dinner reception with the North Korean delegation.
The opening celebrations began with a spectacle of fireworks, dance, and a “snowman of peace” mascot.
A huge cheer greeted flagbearers Hwang Chung-gum, 22, a North Korean ice hockey player, and Won Yunjong, 32, a South Korean bobsleigh star, as they led the unified team of athletes.
Under the bright lights of the stadium, Mr Moon met Ms Kim for the first time. Ms Kim’s surprise attendance, announced just two days before the Games, is the first visit to the South of a member of the Kim family since the Korean War, and had raised hopes of a more lasting future breakthrough with Pyongyang over its nuclear and weapons programme.
By marching together the two Koreas “had sent a powerful message of peace to the world,” declared Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee.
However, seated only a few feet away from Ms Kim, Mr Pence, and Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, remained unconvinced about her brother’s recent conciliatory overtures. Seoul’s allies have warned that the North’s participation in the Olympics may be a ruse as international sanctions on its regime start to bite.
The opening ceremony was preceded by an awkward diplomatic moabe
The US vicepresident ‘exchanged greetings with those seated at the head table and left without sitting down’
ment when Mr Pence did not attend a dinner reception where he had been reportedly due to share a table with Mr Moon and the North’s ceremonial head of state, Kim Yong-nam, 90.
Seating plans shown on television revealed Mr Pence in the difficult position of sitting directly opposite Mr Kim, making eye contact difficult to avoid.
Instead, the vice president turned up late “exchanged greetings with those seated at the head table and left without sitting down,” said a spokesman for the South’s presidential palace. He did not shake hands with Mr Kim.
Mr Pence had told Seoul in advance that he would be dining with US athletes, “so his seat was not prepared accordingly,” the spokesman continued. But the South Korean press were unconvinced. Neither Mr Pence nor Mr took part in a group photo of the leaders at the reception.
The run-up to the vice president’s visit was marred by reports of a potential breach with South Korea over how to handle the North, with Mr Pence warning he would not allow Pyongyang to “hijack” the event with “propaganda”. In sharp contrast to the message of Olympic unity, Mr Pence’s own symbolic gestures were determined to put a reality check on Kim Jong-un’s charm offensive. Yesterday he met North Korea defectors and paid his respects at the Cheonan Memorial in Pyeongtaek, in honour of the 46 South Korean sailors killed in a 2010 torpedo attack blamed on the North.
The next football World Cup but one will be in a country where it’s too hot to play football (Qatar). The World Cup before that will be held in a country where it is too dangerous to watch football (Russia). It’s hard to say whether a Winter Olympics in a country where it is too cold to do winter sports is sillier than that, but Korea 2018 is about to find out.
The Games are a cause for concern because it has been too cold to snow, an excuse initially developed during the glory days of British Rail. There is talk of artificial snow being employed, with 250 snow guns installed at just one of the Games’ locations, so that our golden boys and girls can do their jumping and slaloming and shorttrack snowman-building without it looking like they are in a leisure centre outside Milton Keynes. Seems sensible.
No doubt at least some people this month will be caught for drugging and cheating; fake athletes, on fake snow: a fitting metaphor for an Olympic era in which the evidence of one’s own eyes cannot be trusted.
But first, hoopla. Friday’s opening ceremony was the standard mixture of adorable children searching for peace, harmony, and mobile phone reception as we followed five Korean moppets around the stadium and through some pre-recorded CGI tomfoolery. There was a giant puppet tiger, there was traditional drumming, there was a rendition of a John Lennon classic that made one speculate in horror: “Imagine there’s no mute button.”
As always, the television viewer was held in the tension of wanting the athletes to excel and inspire, and choking on his or her elevenses as Olympic suits talked about fair play and integrity.
It is said that Russia spent $50billion on the last games – most of it in Superdrug one imagines – and it certainly appeared that the Koreans had thrown serious money at this opening ceremony.
More than the niche and arcane minority sports – and let’s take this opportunity to wish the best of British to plucky Joanne from Shepton Mallet as she gears up for a creditable 47th place finish in the downhill terrified screaming – the true purpose of these global events has become the beak-wetting opportunities for blazered Mitteleuropeans and the ludicrous self-imposed logistical challenges.
Between too-cool-for-ski-school Korea, Qatar, Russia and Rio, it seems that Big Sport’s ambition for these global events is not so much providing a showcase for people to do extraordinary things, but making the actual hosting of them Herculean feats in their own right.
A winter Olympics where it is too cold, football where it is too hot, staging a celebration of fair play in a kleptocracy with state-sponsored doping: all of these make breaking the sound barrier on a tea-tray seem like a very distant bronze.