Share this article with Google Plus

Athletes from North and South Korea will march together under a ‘unification’ flag after the bitterly divided countries agreed to form their first joint Olympic team.

Seoul’s unification ministry said the Koreas reached the agreement over the games in the South next month, during talks on Wednesday at the border village of Panmunjom.

Athletes from the two Koreas will march together under a ‘unification flag’ depicting the whole peninsula during the opening ceremony.

The two countries have remained divided since the Korean War of 1950, when North Korea was backed by communist states, and South Korea by the West.

The two countries will field a single women’s ice hockey team.

The measures require approval by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The South Korean ministry said the two Koreas will consult with the IOC this weekend. </s> North and South Korea marched together at the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, but a dispute over the unified flag drove them apart at the opening ceremony for the Paralympics on Friday.

The two nations decided to forgo the symbol of unity because of a tiny island chain that would have amounted to little more than a dot on the flag.

The show of division came on the same day that President Donald Trump announced that he agreed to meet face-to-face with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The two leaders have shared a strained relationship prior to the agreement, involving threats over nuclear capabilities and insults.

North Korea asked that the Dokdo Islands, which Japan now claims and calls Takeshima, be included on the flag, according to BBC. The unified flag, which was seen at the Winter Olympics, showed the Korean peninsula in blue against a white background. South Korea said putting the islands on the flag would violate the International Paralympics Committee’s recommendation not to politicize sports events.

North Korean officials said they do “not accept the fact that Dokdo cannot be marked due to political issues held in Korea,” Reuters reported.

The two Korean nations agreed to “respect each other’s stance and march separately” following the flag disagreement, BBC reported.

Despite the rift, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported that the North Koreans were cheered when they entered the arena at the Paralympics opening ceremony on Friday. </s> Seoul (CNN) North and South Korean athletes will march together at the Winter Olympics opening ceremony under a unified flag, the South said Wednesday, in a diplomatic breakthrough following days of talks between the two countries.

The nations have also agreed to form a joint North and South Korean women's ice hockey team for the Games in Pyeongchang, which begin early next month, South Korea's unification ministry said.

The unification ministry announced a range of joint activities between the countries for the Games, following talks Wednesday at the demilitarized zone (DMZ).

North and South Korean skiers will train together at a resort in North Korea before the Olympics start, and performers from the two countries will also hold a joint cultural event at Mount Kumgang.

North Korea will also send around 230 supporters to cheer on its athletes. A smaller delegation of North Korean athletes and supporters will attend the Paralympics, the ministry said.

The Korean Unification Flag features a blue silhouette of the peninsula and outlying islands. The two countries have marched under the flag before, in rare shows of unity, first at the 1991 World Table Tennis Championships, and at a number of sporting events since. It was most recently used at the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy

The International Olympics Committee (IOC) would need to approve the countries' agreements, and those that affect competition, such as the joint hockey team, could be more complicated than the ceremonial proposals.

The committee said Wednesday it had received a number of "interesting proposals" that it would discuss with delegates from both countries in Switzerland on Saturday.

"We are sure that the two Korean delegations will present their ideas and proposals at the meeting on Saturday in Lausanne. This will then enable the IOC to carefully evaluate the consequences and the potential impact on the Olympic Games and the Olympic competitions," it said in a statement.

Diplomatic thaw

Wednesday's announcement is the latest breakthrough since talks began between the two Koreas earlier this month, after years of broken communications.

While the two sides have earned praise for ratcheting down military tensions in recent weeks, some of Seoul's allies voiced concern Wednesday that Pyongyang may be using the talks to buy time to pursue its weapons program.

The US military has moved more firepower to the region and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned of complacency at a Tuesday summit in Vancouver where the top diplomats from the United States, Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom were in town to discuss North Korea.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono called on the international community to be clear-eyed about North Korea's motivations for participating in the talks, which have been hailed by some as the most significant thaw in ties in years.

"I believe that North Korea wants to buy some time to continue their nuclear and missile programs," Kono said at the meeting. "It's not the time to ease pressure towards North Korea."

China denounced the Vancouver talks, and the United Nations Command, under whose framework they are being held, as demonstrating "Cold War mentality."

"(Such thinking) will only lead to split in the international community and harm the joint efforts that could properly solve the nuclear issue on Korea peninsula," Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Wednesday.

JUST WATCHED Talks keep N. Korean skaters' dream alive Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Talks keep N. Korean skaters' dream alive 02:41

Limited progress

It remains to be seen how much progress achieved before the Olympics will be retained after the games are over, or if tensions will again worsen.

John Park, director of the Korea Working Group at the Harvard Kennedy School, warned against viewing the talks as a major breakthrough.

"Both Koreas are primarily utilizing the talks for a limited objective -- arranging the participation of a North Korean delegation in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics," Park said.

South Korea's Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said the talks were a "significant step" but acknowledged the serious challenges ahead: "Despite these overtures to improve relations with the South, North Korea has yet to show any intention to fulfill its international obligations regarding denuclearization."

North Korea has remained adamant throughout this month's thaw in relations with South Korea that its nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles are here to stay.

Joint US-South Korea military drills -- which always infuriate Pyongyang and raise tensions on the peninsula -- have been suspended for the duration of the upcoming Olympics as a show of good faith, but they are likely resume following the competition. </s> North Korea and South Korea plan joint march, unified teams for Tokyo 2020

SALVATORE DI NOLFI/AFP/Getty Images IOC President Thomas Bach alongside the sports ministers of the North and South Korea at a meeting to discuss a bid to co-host the 2032 Summer Olympics in Lausanne, Switzerland -- Feb. 15 2019.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- North Korea and South Korea are interested in a joint march at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics as well as fielding some unified teams in different sports, the president of the International Olympic Committee said on Friday.

South and North Korean officials met with the IOC in Lausanne, buoyed by the role the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics played in easing tensions between the two countries.

The two nations had marched together at the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang for the first time since the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. They had also fielded a unified women's ice hockey team.

"Following the bilateral conversations we had yesterday, we are taking note that both are very much interested in having some joined actions in the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 with a joined march and some unified teams in different sports," IOC President Thomas Bach said at the start of the meeting.

Among the points of discussion at the Lausanne meeting was a potential 2032 Summer Olympics joint bid by North and South Korea, and Bach said both countries had expressed interest in proceeding.

"We think this is a great symbol of the Olympic spirit. It is a great symbol again of the unifying power of the Olympic Games," Bach said.

Relations between the nations greatly improved last year, with South Korean President Moon Jae-in meeting his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong Un at three different summits.

North Korea has for years pursued nuclear and missile programs in defiance of U.N. sanctions but the neighbours moved to thaw relations in 2018. </s> related media assets (image or videos) available. Click to see the gallery.

12 related media assets (image or videos) available. Click to see the gallery.

North Korea and South Korea are interested in a joint march at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics as well as fielding some unified teams in different sports, the president of the International Olympic Committee said on Friday.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland: North Korea and South Korea are interested in a joint march at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics as well as fielding some unified teams in different sports, the president of the International Olympic Committee said on Friday.

South and North Korean officials met with the IOC in Lausanne, buoyed by the role the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics played in easing tensions between the two countries.

The two nations had marched together at the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang for the first time since the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. They had also fielded a unified women's ice hockey team.

"Following the bilateral conversations we had yesterday, we are taking note that both are very much interested in having some joined actions in the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 with a joined march and some unified teams in different sports," IOC President Thomas Bach said at the start of the meeting.

Among the points of discussion at the Lausanne meeting was a potential 2032 Summer Olympics joint bid by North and South Korea, and Bach said both countries had expressed interest in proceeding.

"We think this is a great symbol of the Olympic spirit. It is a great symbol again of the unifying power of the Olympic Games," Bach said.

Relations between the nations greatly improved last year, with South Korean President Moon Jae-in meeting his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong Un at three different summits.

North Korea has for years pursued nuclear and missile programs in defiance of U.N. sanctions but the neighbours moved to thaw relations in 2018. </s> PYEONGCHANG, South Korea >> In an extraordinary show of unexpected unity, North and South Korea sat side by side Friday night under exploding fireworks that represented peace, not destruction, as the 2018 Winter Olympics opened on a Korean Peninsula riven by generations of anger, suspicion and bloodshed.

Because of time differences, the ceremony will be televised at 5 p.m. tonight on NBC.

The sister of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, shook hands with South Korean President Moon Jae-in — and appeared genuinely pleased — while they watched an elaborate show of light, sound and human performance. Minutes later came a moment stunning in its optics and its implications: the United States, represented by Vice President Mike Pence, sitting a row ahead of Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, and the North’s nominal head of state, all watching the games begin — officials from two nations that many worry have been on the brink of nuclear conflict.

Not long after, North and South Korean athletes entered Olympic Stadium together, waving flags showing a unified Korea — the long-time dream, in theory at least, of many Koreans both North and South. It was the rivals’ first joint Olympic march since 2007. International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach then handed the podium to Moon, who declared the Olympics officially open.

The ceremony’s signature moment delivered another flash of unity and deft political stage-managing, too. Two athletes from the joint Koreas women’s hockey team climbed stairs to the cauldron with the Olympic torch. At the last moment, though, they handed off the flame to former Olympic champion figure skater Yuna Kim, arguably South Korea’s most famous person. She actually lit the cauldron as the home crowd roared.

Moon, in a statement, said athletes from North and South will “work together for victory.” And Bach lauded the joint march of the two Koreas as a “powerful message.”

“We are all touched by this wonderful gesture. We all join and support you in your message of peace,” Bach said.

After years of frustration, billions of dollars and a nagging national debate about their worth, the opening ceremonies took place before a world watching the moment not only for its athletic significance and global spectacle, but for clues about what the peninsula’s political future could hold.

There is a palpable excitement in this isolated, rugged mountain town, as one of the poorest, coldest and most disgruntled parts of an otherwise prosperous South Korea kicks off two weeks of winter sports, spectacle and, from the looks of things, some inter-Korean reconciliation.

After a chaotic year of nuclear war threats and nuclear and missile tests from the North, the opening ceremony proved to be an evening of striking visual moments.

The significance of Pence and the North Koreans sitting in the same box was not immediately clear, though it seemed to run counter to the mission he was supposed to undertake. He’d been dispatched from Washington for the Olympics in part, he said, to make sure the world didn’t forget that North Korea was a misbehaving and dangerous neighbor in the community of nations.

What did seem clear was that, deliberately or not, the North Korean government had managed to edge its way onto center stage during the South’s biggest global moment in years.

A huge crowd gathered in the freezing Olympics Stadium as performances displayed the sweep of Korean history and culture. The march of athletes from the world’s many nations saw them girded against a frigid Korean night with temperatures that dipped below freezing and biting winds.

Members of a delegation from North Korea, part of an Olympics partnership between the two Korean rivals, watched from high in the stadium a performance called “The Land of Peace” and as past South Korean athletes paraded a large southern flag. The North Koreans, dressed in identical garb, cheered in careful coordination.

The North has sent nearly 500 people to the Pyeongchang Games including officials, athletes, artists and cheerleaders after the Koreas agreed to a series of conciliatory gestures to mark the games. More than 2,900 athletes from 92 countries will compete here, making it the biggest Winter Olympics to date.

Pyeongchang was not supposed to share the spotlight with Pyongyang. This was not supposed to be, as some in Seoul grumble, the “Pyongyang Games,” a play on the North Korean capital’s phonetic similarity to Pyeongchang.

After two failed Olympic bids that emphasized the high-sounding notion that the games could help make peace with North Korea, Pyeongchang finally sold its successful try in 2011 on the decidedly capitalistic goal of boosting winter sports tourism in Asia.

But North Korea has a habit of not letting itself be ignored when it comes to its southern rival.

Its agents blew up a South Korean airliner ahead of the 1988 Seoul Olympics in an attempt to dissuade visitors; then it boycotted its rival’s Olympic debut on the world stage. A few years later, the discovery of the huge progress Pyongyang had been surreptitiously making on its nuclear programs plunged the Korean Peninsula into crisis. It has only deepened over the years as the North closes in on the ability to field an arsenal of nukes that can hit U.S. cities.

And so, with a little help from a liberal South Korean president eager to engage Pyongyang, the 2018 Pyeongchang Games open.

They do so with as much focus on the North, which has zero real medal contenders, as the South, which in the three decades since its last Olympics has built a solid winter program as it went from economic backwater and military dictatorship to Asia’s fourth-biggest economy and a bulwark of liberal democracy.

Could Pyeongchang’s initial pitch — that it could contribute to peace on the Korean Peninsula — actually become reality? The opening ceremony offered at least some hints about that, and maybe more. What’s certain is that these Games, more so than any in recent memory, are about far more than sports.

Foster Klug is AP’s Seoul bureau chief and has covered the Koreas since 2005. Follow him on Twitter at @apklug. </s> LAUSANNE, Switzerland, Feb 15 (Reuters) - North Korea and South Korea are interested in a joint march at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics as well as fielding unified teams in different sports, the president of the International Olympic Committee said on Friday.

"Following the bilateral conversations we had yesterday, we are taking note that both are very much interested in having some joined actions in the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 with a joined march and some unified teams in different sports," Bach said at the start of a meeting between the IOC and North and South Korean officials in Lausanne. (Reporting by Karolos Grohmann Editing by Mark Heinrich) </s> LAUSANNE, Switzerland, Feb 15 (Reuters) - North Korea and South Korea are interested in a joint march at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics as well as fielding some unified teams in different sports, the president of the International Olympic Committee said on Friday.

South and North Korean officials met with the IOC in Lausanne, buoyed by the role the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics played in easing tensions between the two countries.

The two nations had marched together at the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang for the first time since the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. They had also fielded a unified women's ice hockey team.

"Following the bilateral conversations we had yesterday, we are taking note that both are very much interested in having some joined actions in the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 with a joined march and some unified teams in different sports," IOC President Thomas Bach said at the start of the meeting.

Among the points of discussion at the Lausanne meeting was a potential 2032 Summer Olympics joint bid by North and South Korea, and Bach said both countries had expressed interest in proceeding.

"We think this is a great symbol of the Olympic spirit. It is a great symbol again of the unifying power of the Olympic Games," Bach said.

Relations between the nations greatly improved last year, with South Korean President Moon Jae-in meeting his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong Un at three different summits.

North Korea has for years pursued nuclear and missile programs in defiance of U.N. sanctions but the neighbours moved to thaw relations in 2018. (Reporting by Karolos Grohmann Editing by Mark Heinrich and Toby Davis) </s> North Korea and South Korea will match together with their combined women’s ice hockey team under one flag at the 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony scheduled on February. The two Koreas have been in talks about the Olympics since earlier this year for the first time in over two years.

Seoul confirmed on Wednesday that North Korea will be aligning with South Korea for the Winter Olympics, which will be held in the South, Seoul. The agreement to walk under one flag appears to suggest that sport could help push for the ultimate diplomatic breakthrough following tensions over the North’s nuclear escalation.

They have combined forces at other international sports events in the past. But it would be the very first time North Korea and South Korea will fight as a unified team in the Olympics.

A joint press statement released by Seoul’s Unification Ministry has revealed that the North will be represented by a delegation of over 400. These include 230 cheerleaders, 140 artists and 30 Taekwondo players.

The statement added that the exact number of athletes will be hammered out after discussions with the IOC slated for later this week. North Korea’s delegation will start to arrive in South Korea on January 25.

But North Korea aligning with the South for the Winter Olympics is already causing some controversy. The majority or more than 70 percent of South Koreans oppose combining a team with North Korea.

This is according to a January 11 poll the office of the South’s National Assembly Speaker and television network SBS released. South Korean players were said to be “furious.”

North Korea’s participation in the upcoming Olympics seems to get some surprised. “Under the circumstances where inter-Korean (relations) are extremely strained, in fact just some 20 days ago we weren’t expecting North Korea would participate in the Olympics,” the South’s chief negotiator and vice unification minister Chun Hae-sung said, according to Huffington Post.

Chun said it would have a significant meaning if the two Koreas show reconciliation and unity, citing a joint march. He added that the North Korea will separately send a 150-strong delegation to the Paralympics.

Meanwhile, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said the world must not be naive about North Korea’s “charm offensive” over the upcoming Winter Olympics. Several nations meeting in Vancouver, Canada, agreed on Tuesday to consider tougher sanctions to press North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
The South Korean Ministry of Unification announces that both North Korea and South Korea will march together under the Korean Unification Flag during the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics.