usnews.com - For many Western ears, Pyongyang and Pyeongchang sound very similar. Both are names of cities on the divided Korean peninsula. But the former is North Korea's capital and show city, and the latter is the host town of the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea's Gangwon Province. It is located just 80km south of the heavily fortified border between the two countries.
Some observers may think that this choice of location was ill considered. But it allowed South Korea to claim in its application to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2011 that the event would also contribute to an improvement of inter-Korean relations.
As the games approach, this is becoming more of a reality. On Jan. 17, the two Koreas agreed to march under one flag, and to field a joint women's ice hockey team. And on Jan. 20, representatives from both countries met at the International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, to discuss and agree the details of North Korea's participation in the Winter Olympics.
The focus of the Lausanne meeting was on Olympic protocol. The unified team at the opening ceremony on Feb. 9 will be called Korea, marching with the Korean Unification Flag, carried by an athlete from each country. The team's anthem will be the Korean folk song Arirang. Under a "wild card" system, North Korean athletes will compete in figure skating, skiing and the joint ice hockey team.
Until the final days of 2017, this looked extremely unlikely as the governments of both Korean states had not talked to each other for over two years.
Foreign policy – and sports diplomacy is part of that domain – usually happens behind closed doors, as do the processes behind it. Detailed knowledge of North Korea and the country's internal, political dynamics is also rather limited. This is the most secretive and least understood country in the world, and as a result, some issues have been overlooked or misrepresented regarding the upcoming Olympics detente. ContinueReading
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