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OLYMPICS BRING NORTH KOREA INTO SOUTH KOREA

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Sports, and indeed the Olympics may have scored one major political point as indication emerged that North Korea may send athletes to South Korea to feature in Winter Olympics which begin in PyeongChan next month.

South Korea on Tuesday announced that North Korea will send its athletes to the Games holding approximately 70 kilometres from the demilitarized zone between North Korea and South Korea.

On account of the location, US had last month indicated that its athletes may not feature in the Games. The tension between North Korea and the US is almost getting to boiling point owing to recent series of rocket launch by North Korea.

But the North Korea and South Korea are currently holding talks which have made the South Korea to announce that their Northern counterparts will send athletes to the Winter Olympics. According to The Washington Post, there was no immediate confirmation from the northern side.

North Korea did not send athletes to Seoul in 1988 when the capital city of South Korea hosted the Summer Olympics. But if the North Korea features in the Winter Olympics, www.sportsvillagesquare.com recalls that it will be second time in decades that both Koreas will find common peace on the field of play.

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Both countries which even boycott sports fixtures by international sports federations surprisingly agreed to send a united Korea team to the 1991 FIFA World Youth Championship (now u-20 World Cup) in Portugal.

At the moment, talks are ongoing but the tentative agreement of both countries constitutes a rare moment of consensus between Kim Jong Un’s regime, its estranged southern neighbour and the outside world.

Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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