This year’s games in South Korea’s PyeongChang will be the first to feature athletes from the South and North on a unified Olympic team.
North Korea’s diplomatic olive branches ahead of the Winter Olympics shouldn’t be mistaken for the end of Kim Jong Un’s missile and nuclear tests, according to a former U. S. ambassador and a top analyst.
PyeongChang 2018 will be the first Olympic Games to feature athletes from the South and North on a unified team — even though the neighbors are technically still at war.
North Korean leader Kim is sending a 550-member delegation, including athletes and cheerleaders, following rare face-to-face talks between the rivals.
“There’ll be a positive feeling that… we’ve somehow turned the corner and are heading to a solution,” said Chris Hill, the former ambassador to South Korea, referring to the recent Olympic cooperation.
But, he added, “I don’t think by any means North Korea is prepared to denuclearize at this point.”
North Korea ramped up its missile and nuclear program last year, testing its first three intercontinental ballistic missiles and most powerful nuclear weapon to date.
This was met with international sanctions as well as a flurry of insults between President Donald Trump and North Korean state media.
The Olympics appear to have acted as a peg on which to hang a certain degree of cooperation between the two Koreas that has not been seen in years.
As well as the face-to-face meetings and joint participation in the games, the South also agreed to pause the joint military exercises it holds each year with the U. S.
“I think what North Korea is trying to achieve with this opening of dialogue with the South is as if to say, ‘Look we have nuclear weapons, we’re not going to get rid of nuclear weapons, but we are prepared to be very good neighbor,'” said Hill, who is currently chief adviser to the chancellor for global engagement at the University of Denver. “It’s an effort to present a sense of normalcy to their country, the fact that they are somehow, in their view, a member of the international community in good standing.
