You’ll be happy to know that the two Koreas will be fielding a unified team for the 2006 Asian Games and 2008 Beijing Olympics.
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You’ll be happy to know that the two Koreas will be fielding a unified team for the 2006 Asian Games and 2008 Beijing Olympics.
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18 Comments
I’ll believe it when I see it…well, maybe not during the 2006 games, but the Olympics. Only X number of athletes can compete per team/event. What’s South Korea going to do…pull some kids who’ve been training their entire life off the squad to make room for the North Koreans - or the other way around? But stranger things have happened, so who knows…
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The North Koreans merely grabbed at this opportunity to have another instrument with which to blackmail their southern “brethren”. From now on, every time Seoul steps out of line, the North will threaten to withdraw from this deal….mark my words.
What bothers me is the legitimacy under the IOC rules or constitution of allowing two separate sovereign states to compete as one team, How about Australa and New Zealand for instance, deciding to field a combined team….because they happen to be ‘blood brothers’? (or former fellow convicts:)
The Marmot doesn’t know anything about North Korea.
Have you seen this?
I think it explains everything!
Sorry if it’s been posted before. If not, it deserves its own post.
What?€™s South Korea going to do?€?pull some kids who?€™ve been training their entire life off the squad to make room for the North Koreans
Yup, that’s what will happen. This will definitely weaken the Korean team. But Juche is more important than sports.
Beijing? I’m boycotting that game. I’m not even going to watch on TV. Let them suck on the parasites that they supposedly and conveniently found in ‘Korean made’ kimchi and pepper paste.
Sickboy, I commend you for your Glorious and Magnificent commentary.
Maybe I’ve missed someting crucial here but, in reference to gerbil’s post, what blackmail power would this give the DPRK ? Nukes, or threatening to tell the UN about back-door aid (a particularly prickish move if I may say) makes for good blackmail - but why should the ROK care if they decide to compete in the 2010 olympics alone ?
It’d be kinda like the fat (or in this case dangerously undernourished) schoolyard bully threatening to punch himself in the head if he doesn’t get your lunch money.
I’m of the opinion that ‘reunification’ (if that’s not too cliche to say these days) will be achieved through cultural interaction and the eventual enlightenment of the common man. As insignificant as the 2 Koreas competing as one nation in the olympics seems (and may indeed be) it is a step to a broader base of understanding and I for one think it’s a good idea, even if only so a few DPRK athletes can meet some of these ‘foreign devils’ (making an assumption as to how we’re dialogued in northern propaganda) and realise we don’t actually eat babies … well Aussies don’t anyway.
peace
2008?
Korea will have a different president and different team running the country. People will have different perception about NKs as well.
It was novel experience to form a NK-SK combined team for the first time before. Not any more. As Nomad wrote, it just mean less SK atheletes can compete in the world stage.
Things will be totally different in 2008. Korea will be so much pro-American, unbeliebably pro-democracy and solid anti-Communist and incredibly anti-NK.
The combined team is just another promise which neither side will keep.
This is a far easier promise to make than to carry out. Presumably, North Koreans will have to qualify in some (bi?)national games competing against better trained and fed South Koreans. As in all endeavors, expect North Korean cheating and brinkmanship. If none or few Norkers qualify, North Korea will demand spaces on the team for political reasons. It will get ugly.
This’ll be an actual unified team, instead of the two countries’ players merely marching into the stadium together during the opening ceremonies?
That’s all very well and good, but the older I get, the harder it is for me to see the point of such an exercise. The two countries are clearly miles apart in so many ways (despite lip service, economic projects, etc.). It’s just such a ridiculous superficiality to field a single team…and I find it increasingly distressing as I get older that South Korea would wish to coooperate so openly with a country that has so many human rights problems and that still has the vast bulk of its soldiers and armaments arrayed against the south. Is this gesture really going to help rapprochement between the two countries (which is presumably the rationalization for it)? I sincerely doubt it.
Even some of the pre-unification projects some southerners hold so dearlike real rail and road connections, rather than the connections that have been built to simply service what have essentially become South Korean outposts (Kaesng and Kmgangsan)have not materialized, despite pledges to build them way back in 2000.
Actually, considering the North’s tendency to pledge action and then let the idea die in endless talks (and I’m not even talking about big issues like the 6-party talks: small things like the transportation connections mentioned above), I’ll have to echo Nomad in saying I’ll believe it when I see it.
unified korean team in 2008? who cares…
If it actually pan out that would be awsome. But even if it does not, I forsee good things to come. I like to see this as a “win-win” situation.
First of all, there is going to be donor fatigue when DPRK will inevitable demand more madness concessions. But more importantly, if there is a “real” olympic team, then there will be more contacts between the actual South/North team members. Chances are likely that South will dominate the North, and this will lead to some resentment. Also, we have to assume that South will give “concessions” in the form of giving more berths to unworthy Northern athletes. This will lead to some further resentment.
But let’s say that KJI being the person who he is says, demands that if United States does not send over all the gold in Fort Knox, then the deal is off. This sort of thing probably affects athlete training and further lead to awful outcome.
So in 2008, the effect is that Korea’s “gold count ranking” which has been awfully important for political reasons since God knows when, will shrink. If the left had political power due to world cup, then the olympics will be their undoing.
At some point you also have to wonder, how will KJI decide to censure this sort of event when he even voluntarily aired SK world cup performance? hmm.
I’m feeling mighty naively optimistic today.
So basically you’re saying that a combined team will lead to a reduced gold count (less than, let’s say, the sum of the two coutries’ teams when competing independently of each other), leading to reduced self-perception of international prestige, thereby discrediting Sunshine Policy?
Presumably, North Koreans will have to qualify in some (bi?)national games
Nononono. This is not the World Cup, where some countries are left out. The Olympics are open to all countries. You don’t have to qualify ?€“ or rather the only criterion is being a country. So NK does qualify. And an offer to participate to the Olympics as a “reunification team” would met the hearts of the lefties and peace-lovers out there, and it would breeze through any committee in charge of deciding who can play.
Then again, a binational team would prolly help NK participate, as they might not have enough athletes anyway…
hojuin,
most SK politicians are very scared of being seen as “anti-unification”, so when the north wants something, they will just threaten to pull out of the combined team, and SK will give them whatever they want.
Your analogy to a school yard bully doesn’t fit, as the relationship is more like NK as a spoilt brat, and SK the parent that gives them whatever they want.
I agree that unification will come by enlightenment, but this needs to occur in the north, and as long as the nk leaders are in power they will do whatever they can to stop this as freedom of information will spell the death of their regime.
rowan
I can (and do) definately agree on that point but I wouldn’t necessarily suggest competing as a ‘unified team’ in the games, or not discouraging the DPRK to pull out of such a team willl be considered as negatively as say, refusing to donate more rice (as an extreme example).
I think it would not be hard for the Korean spin-doctors (even if they are not the world’s best) to appeal to the average Korean fervour as regards winning things (golf and fencing are two prime ‘why all the excitement?’ examples to mine). I am therefore of the opinion that, with the right angle, the party could create a ‘votes for medals’ scheme (to speak a little cynically), and make Northern non-participation into the best thing since sliced bread (because honestly I cannot see the North contributing many - dare I say any? competitive athletes).
While I like your analogy better then my own I don’t necessarily attirbute all ROK help/concessions ‘northwise’ as mere capitulations to the machinations of the Kim regime, I think the southern administration is not that free of guile in matters of peninsular relations.
When I spoke of enlightenment I was referring mostly to the DPRK (while I believe the ROK has it’s own state/social sponsored opinions we cannot compare the southern propoganda machine with the north’s).
For the record I completely agree freedom of information in the north will be the death of the regime there - it’s just a matter of time and I think almost everybody knows it (providing nobody lets fatboy fly in the meantime).
peace
“I agree that unification will come by enlightenment, but this needs to occur in the north, and as long as the nk leaders are in power they will do whatever they can to stop this as freedom of information will spell the death of their regime.”
Exactly. When certain Koreans publicly pine for unification and accuse foreign interests of preventing it, they wilfully ignore the one party that genuinely doesn’t want it: North Korea. The North has all the interest in the world in paying lip service to the idea of unification, and all the interest in the world in preventing it from actually happening (unless it’s on northern terms, ensuring the preservation of the existing power structure).
These are the sort of people they are. Who would want to play in the same team as these bloodsuckers? They will expect the South to foot the bill for their whole nation’s sport as well plus costs of going to the Olympics
(From Chosun Ilbo editorial this week)
North Korea at a meeting of the Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation Committee on Friday asked the South to provide it with raw materials for 60 million pairs of shoes, 2 million formal suits (30,000 tons) and 200 million bars of soap (20,000 tons). That is enough to wash and dress the North?€™s entire population of 23 million. In return, Pyongyang proposes to let us mine its underground resources and take minerals — not much of a deal, since Seoul has to supply all the mining and transport equipment.
So it really is a demand for aid, and a preposterous and potentially bottomless one. The rice and fertilizer the South supplied this year alone are worth over W1.4 trillion (US$1.4 billion), and like the rice, once you start giving the clothes and shoes, you have to keep giving them year after year. Having handed the responsibility of feeding its people to the South, North Korea now also wants us to clothe them, and if anything is to come of the nuclear arms negotiations, we have to supply their electricity. Maybe next time they will ask us to build their houses.