Discontent has grown in South Korea in recent days over plans to include North Korea in high-profile roles during next month’s Winter Olympics.
International Olympics officials may have blessed North Korea’s role in the upcoming Winter Games, but not everyone in host nation South Korea supports Pyongyang coming to Pyeongchang.
Discontent has grown in South Korea in recent days over plans to include North Korea in high-profile roles during next month’s Games — complaints that prompted protesters on Monday to burn a North Korean flag and an image of the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, in public.
“We oppose!” the group of a few hundred people chanted Monday outside Seoul’s central train station. “We oppose!”
The protest is a vocal example of what appears to be a growing backlash in the South, prompting President Moon Jae-in to urge public support for the Olympics deal and its promise of decreased tensions on the peninsula.
The president, a former special forces soldier for South Korea whose parents fled North Korea during the war, urged his nation to support the “miraculously earned” chance for cooperation between the two countries.
“Such dialogue came dramatically while the possibility of war again loomed,” he said Monday. “But the current condition is so fragile that no one can be optimistic about how long the dialogue will last.”
Moon is a progressive who came to office seeking better relations with the North. But he has walked a fine line in recent weeks, seeking a deal with the North while also maintaining a tough denuclearization stance in solidarity with the United States, a key ally.
