How Olympics facilitated Korean peace talks
When the leaders of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea meet on Friday, it will be only the third such summit since the end of the Korean War (1950-53). Only a few months ago political tensions were escalating rapidly, raising fears of military confrontation on the Korean Peninsula. It was this dramatic crisis situation of missile launches, nuclear tests and bellicose rhetoric that the world and the 2018 Olympic Winter Games were facing in the autumn of 2017.
To understand the easing of the tensions, we need to consider the role of the Olympic Games.
It was the power of sports that provided the opening for the DPRK and the ROK to consider dialogue rather than confrontation. The historic moment of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, the ROK, was when the athletes from the DPRK and the ROK marched together as one team at the Opening Ceremony, behind one flag, the Korean Unification Flag.
