by Hwang Sunghee
Agence France-Presse
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korean skiers and skaters were due to arrive in the South Thursday 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 were to fly 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 will accompany 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 held their first high-level talks for two years at Panmunjom, the truce village in the Demilitarized 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.
Foal Eagle
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 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.
Doping scandal
The Pyeongchang Games have suffered none of the controversies over infrastructure delays that have marred previous Olympics, but have struggled with issues of their own.
Until it agreed to take part, the security threat from the North raised fears for athlete safety among some countries, and ticket sales were initially slow.
And hanging over the competition is the vast Russian doping scandal.
The IOC banned Russia from Pyeongchang after the McLaren report, which documented a vast Moscow-backed scheme to artificially enhance its athletes’ performances in previous Games.
In December, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said clean Russian competitors would be allowed to take part in South Korea under a neutral flag as “Olympic Athletes from Russia”.
Those who want to do so are being forced to pass a unique set of anti-doping tests.
At first 500 were thought to be potentially eligible, before the number was cut to 389. And Russian Olympics officials said last week that only 169 had been approved.
© Agence France-Presse
