Sports diplomacy | North Korea to send delegation to Olympics in South

South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon (right) and head of North Korean delegation Ri Son Gwon (left) arrive to hold their meeting at the Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone in Paju, South Korea

North Korea agreed yesterday to send a delegation to next month’s Winter Olympics in South Korea, Seoul officials said, as the bitter rivals sat for rare talks at the border to discuss how to cooperate in the Olympics and improve their long-strained ties.

The Koreas’ first talks in two years were arranged after North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un recently made an abrupt push for improved ties with South Korea after a year of elevated tensions with the outside world over his expanding nuclear and missile programs. Critics say Kim may be trying to divide Seoul and Washington in a bid to weaken international pressure and sanctions on the North.

During the talks, the North Korean delegation said it would send an Olympic delegation, which includes officials, athletes, cheerleaders, journalists and others, South Korea’s Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung told reporters, according to media footage from the border village of Panmunjom, the venue for the talks.

The South Korean delegation, for its part, proposed North Korea send a big delegation and conduct a joint march during the Feb. 9-25 Game’s opening and closing ceremonies, Chun, one of the five South Korean negotiators, said.

He said South Korea also suggested resuming temporary reunions of families separated by war and offering military talks designed to reduce animosities in frontline areas. South Korea also stressed the need to achieve denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, Chun said.

North Korea responded by saying the two Koreas must try to promote peace and reconciliation through dialogue, he said.

The two sides were to continue their negotiations later yesterday at Panmunjom, the only place on the tense border where North and South Korean soldiers are just feet away from each other. A North Korean soldier late last year defected to the South across Panmunjom amid a hail of bullets fired by his comrades. He was hit five times but survived.

The meeting began with an amicable atmosphere in the morning, with chief North Korean delegate Ri Son Gwon saying he hopes the talks would give “a New Year’s first gift — precious results [of the talks] to the Korean nation.” Ri’s South Korean counterpart, Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, said he also hopes they would come up with a “good gift” for people in both Koreas.

The overall prospect for the negotiations was still unclear. The two Koreas have a long history of ending key talks without any agreement and failing to follow through with rapprochement accords.

An agreement on the North’s Olympic participation had been widely expected before the talks began, but the Koreas remain sharply at odds over how to improve their overall ties.

North Korea is expected to demand rewards in return for South Korea’s offer for family reunions and military talks, like Seoul halting propaganda broadcasts and scaling back or halting military drills with the U.S., observers say.

Suspension of the military drills would be unacceptable for Seoul because that would seriously undermine the alliance with its chief ally the United States, which wants to put more pressures on Pyongyang. The North views the drills as a rehearsal for a northward invasion.

President Donald Trump on Saturday expressed hope for some progress from the talks and said he was open to talking with Kim himself. But U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley later said the U.S. administration isn’t changing its conditions regarding talks with North Korea, saying Kim would first need to stop weapons testing for a “significant amount of time.”

In his New Year’s Day address, Kim said there is an urgent need to improve inter-Korean ties and that he is willing to send a delegation to the Pyeongchang Games. He urged Seoul to halt the military drills with the U.S. and said he has a “nuclear button” to launch missiles at any target in the United States. Hyung-Jin Kim, Seoul, AP

The buildup and easing of tensions

Jan. 1, 2017: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says in a New Year’s address that preparations for launching an intercontinental ballistic missile have “reached the final stage.”

Jan. 2, 2017: Donald Trump, then the U.S. president-elect, tweets, “North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won’t happen!”

March 6, 2017: North Korea fires four ballistic missiles, and later says it was simulating nuclear strikes on U.S. military bases in Japan.

April 12, 2017: Trump says in a televised interview that the U.S. is sending “an armada” of vessels to the Korean Peninsula, after the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group is ordered to head there from Singapore. The move fans fears that Trump is weighing military action.

April 15, 2017: North Korea marks the birth anniversary of founder Kim Il Sung with a massive military parade. Analysts say previously unseen rocket canisters and launcher trucks point to the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and launch systems.

June 23, 2017: North Korea’s taekwondo demonstration team arrives in South Korea for its first performance in the rival country in 10 years.

July 4, 2017: North Korea conducts its first flight test of an ICBM, the Hwasong-14. Kim says the United States would be displeased by the North’s “package of gifts” delivered on America’s Independence Day.

July 28, 2017: North Korea fires another Hwasong-14. Experts say its range could reach into the U.S. mainland, including cities such as Chicago.

Aug. 9, 2017: North Korea announces a plan to launch a salvo of missiles toward the U.S. territory of Guam, a major military hub in the Pacific. It never does.

Aug. 29, 2017: North Korea fires an intermediate-range Hwasong-12 that flies over Japan before plunging into the northern Pacific Ocean.

Sept. 3, 2017: North Korea carries out its sixth and most powerful nuclear test to date, saying it was a hydrogen bomb designed for use on ICBMs.

Nov. 29, 2017: North Korea’s third test of an ICBM demonstrates a potential range that could reach Washington, D.C.

Jan. 1, 2018: Kim says in his New Year’s address that he has a nuclear button on his desk, but also calls for improved relations with the South and says his country is willing to discuss sending a delegation to February’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Jan. 5, 2018: South Korea says North Korea has agreed to hold talks.

Jan. 6, 2018: Trump, expressing hope for some progress from the talks, says he is also open to talking with Kim. But his U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, says the next day that the U.S. administration isn’t changing its conditions regarding talks, saying Kim would first need to stop weapons testing for a significant amount of time.

Jan. 9, 2018: At a meeting in the border village of Panmunjom, North Korea agrees to send a delegation including athletes to the Olympics.

China says it welcomes Korea talks in historic ‘no-one’ land

China said it welcomes moves by North and South Korea to improve relations after the sides held rare high-profile talks and called on the international community to lend its backing to such efforts. Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters that Beijing was “pleased to see this high-level talk between the two sides.”

Lu said that “China welcomes and supports the positive moves taken by the two sides to improve relations, and we hope the talk will make a good start for the two sides to further improve ties, promote reconciliation and cooperation and alleviate tensions on the peninsula.”

China is North Korea’s only major ally and has come under heavy pressure to use its leverage to steer Pyongyang back to negotiations on ending its nuclear programs.

While Beijing argues its influence is limited, it has signed on to increasingly harsh United Nations sanctions against Kim Jong Un’s regime, including bans on key exports of textiles, seafood and other products and sharp limits on supplies of oil and petroleum products.

The two Koreas’ rare high-profile talks took place at the jointly controlled area inside the world’s most heavily fortified border — the same place where North Korean soldiers recently sprayed bullets at a comrade who was making a daring dash for freedom.

The defecting soldier was hit five times, but he survived and is now recovering in South Korea. The dramatic video of his defection, released by the American-led U.N. command, showed again why the area, called Panmunjom, is known as one of the scariest places on Earth.

Yesterday, Panmunjom captured international headlines again when a group of high-level North Korean officials walked across concrete slabs that make up a military demarcation line for their first formal talks with South Korea in more than two years.

U.S. presidents and other top officials have often traveled to Panmunjom and other areas of the DMZ at times of heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula. They have peered through binoculars across the border and vowed to boost the U.S. military alliance with South Korea.

In 1993, then-President Bill Clinton visited Panmunjom when the North Korean nuclear crisis first flared. In 2002, President George W. Bush visited the DMZ a few weeks after he labeled North Korea part of an “axis of evil.”

In 2012, ahead of a planned North Korean long-
range rocket launch, President Barack Obama visited a frontline U.S. military camp just south of the DMZ and told American troops they are protectors of “freedom’s frontier.” Obama’s trip came days after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited Panmunjom. MDT/AP