International Olympic Committee meets on N Korea participation in Winter Games
- by Thibaud Popelin
- in Monde
- — Jan 21, 2018
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said on January 19 that almost 400 Russian athletes have been deemed eligible to potentially compete under a neutral flag in next month's Winter Olympics in the South Korean city of Pyeongchang.
With that as a backdrop, Yonhap reported that the South and North had also agreed Wednesday to field a joint women's ice hockey team for the games and that the North will send a 230-member cheering squad, along with a 30-member taekwondo demonstration team to the South.
North Korea will also send 24 officials and 21 media representatives.
"Today marks the milestone on a long journey", said International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach in a prepared declaration.
The unified team will compete as Korea and be represented by the Korean unification flag.
"Such an agreement would have seemed impossible only a few weeks ago", he added.
South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon said that the countries could hopefully reschedule a visit soon.
The sudden flurry of sports diplomacy contrasts tensions that have risen on the Korean peninsula in recent years amid a growing number of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests by the North, as well as increasingly threatening rhetoric from Pyongyang toward the United States.
"The Olympic Games show us what the world could look like, if we were all guided by the Olympic spirit of respect and understanding", Bach said.
After his statement, Bach posed with National Olympic Committee leaders Il Guk Kim from the DPRK and Kee Heung Lee of the South Korean NOC, PyeongChang 2018 President Hee Beom Lee, Winter Olympic Federations President Gian-Franco Kasper and PyeongChang 2018 Coordination Commission chair Gunilla Lindberg.
In the interests of fairness, only 22 players will be entitled to play in each match, in line with the other teams, it said. Three North Koreans will compete in the cross-country skiing and another three in the Alpine skiing slalom and giant slalom events.
They were therefore handed one quota place while two male North Korean competitors were given places in the short track speed skating.
Murray, the daughter of former National Hockey League head coach Andy Murray, said she hoped she wouldn't be pressured into playing North Korean players because she wanted all her starters, whether from the South or the North, to earn their playing time.
In an interview with Russia's state-run TASS news agency published Saturday, Morgulov said the main focus of any meetings would be on bilateral issues.
When Do was asked if North Korea had given any guarantees not to use the Olympics for political reasons, the translator intervened to say "I don't think we can take that question".
