Hope for future

At the start of the Pyeongchang Games, Kim Jong Un sent his younger sister to attend the Opening Ceremony, where athletes from the North and South marched together behind a white unification flag that bore the paleblue silhouette of the Korean Peninsula.

Kim Yo Jong then met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and, on behalf of her brother, invited him to a summit.

It remains to be seen if the countries will hold their first toplevel talks in a decade. For all their reticence to speak politically, the North Korean athletes seem to be pushing the idea.

“I am very hopeful the two countries will unite as one in the future,” Kim Ryon Hyang said.

If the notion of the Olympics as a gateway to permanent peace on the peninsula has been met with skepticism in South Korea and other parts of the world, it is probably because the nations have a long history of tense relations and not much meaningful communication.

Which leads back to a story Watt tells about Kijong-dong.

In the 1980s, South Korean officials erected a 330-foot flagpole along that stretch of the DMZ, in a farming community on their side, he said. They flew a large national flag that outdid the one in Kijongdong, which at the time stood about 164 feet high.

Within days, the North Koreans extended their pole to 560 feet.