[사설] No participation in the North Korean Olympics… The government should face changes in the situation on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea yesterday announced that it would not participate in the Tokyo Olympics held in July due to the coronavirus outbreak. At the North Korea Olympic Committee’s general meeting held on the 25th of last month, it was decided not to attend the Olympics to protect athletes from the global health crisis. It is the first time in 33 years since the 1988 Seoul Olympics that North Korea has been absent from the Summer Olympics.

North Korea’s absence from the Olympics is virtually a severance with the outside world. When the Corona 19 epidemic, North Korea blocked all passages by land, sea, and air even under UN sanctions against North Korea, and also stopped trade with its allies, China and Russia. The head of the Children’s Nutrition Management Research Institute under the Ministry of Health of North Korea said in a speech yesterday that a report on the expert panel of the UN Security Council’s Sanctions Committee on North Korea’s children’s nutrition was fabricated. “I do.” It implied that the international community could refuse humanitarian aid. Even from this, it is difficult to even determine where North Korea will go in the future.

It is usually not a serious problem for the Korean government. The government, which was contemplating the’role’ between North Korea and the United States ahead of the decision of Joe Biden’s administration’s policy toward North Korea during this month, has met a giant reef. Just as the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics made contact with North Korea and the United States as an opportunity, the government tried to use the Tokyo Olympics as an opportunity to advance the peace process on the Korean Peninsula. President Moon Jae-in said in a commemorative address for the March 1st, that the Tokyo Olympics “may be an opportunity for dialogue between Korea and Japan, between South and North Korea, between North Korea and Japan, and between North Korea and the United States.” In the wake of the Tokyo Olympics, North Korea, the United States, and Japan all participated, and in a multilateral framework, they were deceived to open the door for North Korean nuclear negotiations. However, with North Korea’s announcement of the absence of the Tokyo Olympics, President Moon’s “Tokyo initiative” was abandoned.

Above all, it is important to accurately see through the changes in the situation on the Korean Peninsula. I would like to ask the Korean government what measures have been taken in preparation for the current situation. In the meantime, North Korean Labor Party Vice President Kim Yeo-jeong directly aimed at President Moon and accused him of being an “American parrot,” but he only noticed that he would be against North Korea’s misery, and did not just “talk to the country”. Now it has to be different. It is imperative to closely watch the trend of changes in North Korea’s foreign policy, which is difficult to see ahead, and hurry to formulate detailed countermeasures to diplomacy. Correcting the trajectory of North Korea policy should be taken as the first step.

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