North Korea will compete in four different events at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea, according to the top organizer.
North Korea will compete in four different events at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea, according to the top organizer.
North Korean athletes will compete in pair figure skating, alpine skiing, cross-country skiing and women’s ice hockey, Lee Hee-beom, the head of the organizing committee for this year’s Olympics, revealed Thursday, Yonhap News Agency reported .
Figure skaters Ryom Take Ok and Kim Ju Sik are said to be quite impressive.
North Korea is expected to send a delegation of more than 500 members to the Winter Olympics. Possibly hoping to steal the show, North Korea will send its finest athletes, hundreds of cheerleaders, a massive orchestra, cultural performers, reporters, and state officials to South Korea.
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Carrying a unified banner, the two Koreas will march in together during the opening ceremony, a first in over a decade for the two countries still divided by war. Some South Korean people have expressed disgust with the liberal government’s decision to pursue unification with North Korea.
Prior to the start of the Games, Olympic athletes from North and South Korea are expected to train together at the North’s Masikryong Ski Resort, which “was built with money/resources not used for the North Korean people,” Anthony Ruggiero, senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, argued on Twitter. “This is a bad look for the Moon government.” Other observers note that the North is using this as an opportunity to show off with South Korean support.
The women’s ice hockey team is also a point of contention .
The North and South have agreed to field a unified Korean women’s hockey team, but while government officials are pleased, players, coaches, and citizens are strongly opposed to the idea. The politics of the Olympics, which the South Korean government is heralding as a “peace Olympics” has many — conservatives in particular — riled up.
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