Seoul: North Korean skiers and skaters have arrived in the South to take part in the Pyeongchang Winter Games, setting the stage for a “peace Olympics” after a year of high tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.
Eight days before the opening ceremony, 10 North Korean skiers and skaters flew in on a chartered Asiana Airlines plane, in a rare direct flight between the two halves of the divided peninsula — for which a special exemption had to be sought from US sanctions.
The three cross-country skiers, three alpine skiers, two short-track speed skaters and two figure skaters accompanied a South Korean delegation who held joint ski training at the North’s Masikryong ski resort — a pet project of leader Kim Jong-un — in the latest in a flurry of cross-border trips in the run-up to the Games.
The Pyeongchang Winter Olympics are being held in a hitherto little-known part of the South, but have triggered a sudden apparent rapprochement between the two Koreas.
In the past year tensions reached fever pitch as Pyongyang carried out a series of weapons tests — including intercontinental ballistic missiles that brought the US mainland into range, and its most powerful nuclear blast to date — while Kim and US President Donald Trump traded personal insults and threats of war.
For months, the North ignored repeated entreaties from Seoul for it to take part in a “peace Olympics”, letting deadlines for registration slip by.
But in his New Year speech Kim finally expressed a willingness to send a delegation to Pyeongchang, triggering a rapid series of events.
The two Koreas in January held their first high-level talks for two years at Panmunjom, the truce village in the Demilitarised Zone that splits the peninsula.
Pyongyang agreed to send athletes, cheerleaders, officials and an art troupe to the South, and both sides decided to march together under a unification flag at the opening ceremony and form a joint women’s ice hockey team.
A dozen North Korean female ice hockey players arrived last week and have been training with their southern counterparts for what will be the first unified team in 27 years.
It has been accorded its own three-letter Olympic code, COR.
But the joint team has not met universal acclaim in the South, with critics saying that Seoul has made too many concessions to Pyongyang to secure its participation, and has effectively denied some of its own players the chance to compete on the Olympic stage.
At the same time, some say the North is seeking to gain advantage from its participation, and reports say it will mark the anniversary of the founding of its regular military with a major military parade a day before the opening ceremony.
Earlier this week, Pyongyang unilaterally called off a joint cultural event slated for Sunday at the North’s scenic Mount Kumgang, underscoring the fragility of the agreements.
“Pyongyang must stop acting unpredictably and fulfil agreements sincerely,” the Seoul-based Korea Herald said in an editorial Thursday. “One cannot erase the impression that the South is trying hard not to pique the North.”
And there are doubts about how long the warmth will last after the Games. Seoul and Washington agreed to delay the giant annual Foal Eagle and Key Resolve joint military exercises, which always infuriate Pyongyang, but only until the end of the Paralympics in March.
