Pyeongchang 2018: Why is Kim Jong schmoozing the Olympic World?
One month ago, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un and the USA’s Donald Trump were in a pissing contest that casually threatened nuclear war and the subsequent destruction of humankind.
Enter the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics on 9 February and suddenly North Korea’s fearless leader is figuratively skating around with a rose between his lips.
A seemingly unified Korean Olympic team, the arrival of sister Kim Yo-Jong in the South, a contingent of adoring North Korean cheerleaders, and the subsequent reopening of communication channels between the North and South has got the world swiping right (for non-Tinder users, read: it’s captured our interest).
So what’s with the schmoozing?
Some argue that this peace parade is all part of generating internal propaganda to help support the Kim Jong regime back home, others suggest it’s an attempt to divert our attention away from suspected human rights abuses, and then some simply see it as Kim Jong trying to make more friends in the international community; ease the crippling trade embargoes etc.
Many US news outlets tell us to be suspicious of the ‘new-year-new-me’ Kim Jong (see CNBC’s ‘North Korea has embraced the Olympics but don’t expect any political optimism to last’) but fail to put forth a convincing article for ‘why’.
Perhaps we should be suspicious instead of the bias behind the US papers themselves. It’s no secret that the two countries don’t get along (see US Vice President Pence play high-school politics by skipping Olympics dinner in snub to North Korean officials).
In contrast, UK press have painted a more positive picture, pointing to the light at the end of the tunnel with the potential reuniting of families across borders (see the Telegraph’s ‘How the winter Olympics is offering a glimmer of hope for families separated by the 38th parallel’).
The bottom line is, a more friendly North Korea and the reopening of communication channels can hardly be seen as a bad thing. We’re unlikely to forget the allegations of human rights abuses and past Kim Jong threats of destruction but when the alternative is potential Nuclear War, you take the little wins where you can get them.
Peace and progress has to start somewhere and there’s been a long history of that ‘somewhere’ being the Olympic Games. The ‘Olympic Truce’ Convention dates back to Ancient Greece and mandates that athletes from any country should be able to travel safely to and participate in Olympics Games during times of conflict. Ever since the North and South started marching together in the 2000 summer Olympics, both the summer and winter games have been the closest we’ve gotten to peaceful collaboration between the two countries.
Sport enables cross-nation collaboration by providing a common activity to participate in and an outlet to momentarily forgot all grievances as you focus on completing an immediate challenge at hand (like scoring a point).
As Robert Huish, Associate Professor in International Development Studies at Dalhousie University highlights, sporting diplomacy is used time and time again as an effective engagement tool, citing examples from the closing of the gap between the Soviets and the West in the 1972 Canada/Soviet Union Summit Series, to the 1991 Pan-American games that re-introduced Cuba to the world and the symbolic post-Apartheid 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa.
So what can we take from the 2018 Pyeongchang Peace Olympics? Well, I for one welcome the new-year-new-me Kim-Jong. Sure, we can remain critical of the likely abuses that still occur in North Korea but anything that opens communication channels, and winds back the doomsday clock and the threat of another world war, should be embraced with open arms.
