NORTH KOREA Pyongyang returns to the Olympics, but in a different climate than in 2018

The non-participation in the Tokyo 2020 Games led to the exclusion of the Olympics from the Beijing 2022 Winter Games. In PyeongChang, athletes from North and South Korea marched and played together to the point that there was speculation about the signing of a peace treaty. Today, relations with Seoul are once again hostile.

Paris () – North Korea will also be present at the Paris Olympic Games which start today, after years of absence due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent suspension by the International Olympic Committee (which obliges all national Olympic committees to participate in the Games) which remained in force until the end of 2022, thus excluding athletes from the North Korean regime from participating in the Beijing Winter Olympics.

This year Pyongyang has sent 12 female athletes and four male athletes They will compete in eight disciplines (gymnastics, athletics, boxing, swimming, diving, judo, table tennis and wrestling), and will be accompanied by Sports Minister Kim Il Guk.

The 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang seem like a distant memory: on that occasion, athletes from the two Koreas competed not only together: ice hockey players competed as a single team, even though they didn’t know each other and had never played together before.

North Korea’s participation was only confirmed at the last minute. Even the choice of the venue, in the north of South Korea, close to the demarcation line that divides the peninsula in two, had taken on a strong symbolic meaning. Overall, the event had raised a certain hope for peace between the two countries, technically still at war because they had never signed a treaty, but only an armistice at the end of the conflict in 1953. On that occasion, the sister of dictator Kim Jong Un, Kim Yo Jong, traveled to South Korea to attend the event. The two countries had even tried to present a joint bid for the 2032 Games.

It was a very different atmosphere from that of 1988, when the North boycotted the Seoul Olympics, but also very different from that prevailing today, when calls for the suspension of international conflicts during the competition period went unheeded.

According to Korean business analystsonce the window of dialogue that had been opened in 2018-19 had closed, Pyongyang returned to its international isolation. Participation in Paris 2024 could mean a timid opening to the outside world. Or, as others claiman opportunity for Russia and North Korea to increase cyberattacks in an attempt to raise funds for the regime.

The presence of a North Korean delegation had also caused controversy at the Asian Games in September-October last year, when Wada, the world anti-doping agency, asked the Asian Olympic Committee to pay $500,000 for allowing North Korea to use its flag. The ban had been imposed because, with its borders closed during the Covid-19 pandemic, Pyongyang had prevented all anti-doping control procedures (a situation that has yet to be resolved). It generates some discontent among athletes from other foreign nations).

But unlike Russia, whose athletes have been competing under the flag of the national Olympic association for years, North Korea attaches enormous importance to the flag, which according to the national narrative was designed by Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung. “It is therefore a symbol directly linked to the founder of the country and the entire mythology of the state,” explains Fyodor Tertiskiy, a researcher at Kookmin University in Seoul.