North Tokyo Olympics absent, will the planned’again Pyeongchang’ bubble?

South and North Korean athletes jointly entered the opening ceremony of the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics. It was 11 years after the 2007 Changchun Winter Asian Games that the South and North Korean squads entered jointly at the opening ceremony of the international competition. The Moon Jae-in administration drew a blueprint for the South and North to join the joint team and form a single team at the Tokyo Olympics in July, but the plan was canceled due to North Korea’s declaration of absence from the Olympics. [연합뉴스]

It became difficult to expect’again Pyeongchang’. North Korea announced its intention to absent from the Tokyo Olympics in July During the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, the South and North Korean athletes jointly entered the opening ceremony and formed a single team. President Moon Jae-in’s plan to reactivate the peace process on the Korean peninsula by taking the Tokyo Olympics as an opportunity to create a mood of reconciliation between the two Koreas was also disrupted.

The official reason for absence from North Korea is’protection of players’. North Korea, which closed the border to the border as part of the COVID-19 quarantine measures, seems to have felt a burden to send players abroad. On the 6th, North Korea delivered the news of the Olympic Committee meeting held in Pyongyang on the 25th of last month on the website of Chosun Sports run by the Ministry of Sports. “The North Korean Olympic Committee decided not to participate in the Olympics in order to protect athletes from the global health crisis caused by a viral virus infection at the general meeting.”Said.

North Korea’s statement on this day was like a’reason for non-participation’ for practical reasons that did not contain any political message. The decision to absent was also introduced in one line at the end after all the contents of the other general meeting were introduced.

Unlike South Korea, which attempted to actively utilize the Tokyo Olympics diplomatically, North Korea had no intention of giving the Olympics more than international sports competitions. Previously, President Moon said at the National Security Council (NSC) plenary meeting in January. “I will use the Tokyo Olympics as an opportunity to improve Korea-Japan relations and advance peace in Northeast Asia”And, in the last verse 3 and 1, through a commemorative remark “The Tokyo Olympics can be an opportunity for dialogue between Korea-Japan, South-North Korea, North Korea-Japan, and North Korea-US”And gave meaning.

The atmosphere of reconciliation between the two Koreas, created on the occasion of the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, led to a historical event in which the leaders of the two Koreas met at Panmunjeom following the inter-Korean summit. The photo shows Donald Trump (right) talking with President Moon Jae-in at the Panmunjom meeting in June 2019, then US President and North Korean State Council Chairman Kim Jong-eul. [연합뉴스]

The reason that the ROK government planned to make the Tokyo Olympics the second Pyeongchang Olympics was because it believed that North Korea would also engage in dialogue if conditions were established. The inclusion of’sports exchange’ in the five major inter-Korean cooperation projects announced by President Moon through his New Year’s address in January was also interpreted as a proposal for cooperation with the Tokyo Olympics in mind. With the PyeongChang Olympic Games in 2018, as North Korea came to the dialogue table in earnest, the South-North and North Korea-US summits were held one after another, so the expectations of the government at the Tokyo Olympics were very different.

However, after the PyeongChang Olympics, the internal and external environment facing North Korea has changed rapidly. It is true that the North Korean-U.S. summit in February 2019 ended with a’Hanoi no deal’, and the fundamental disagreement over the North Korean nuclear issue was intact. .

In addition, unlike the Trump administration, the Biden administration is refraining from an event-driven, top-down approach to North Korea in which the leaders first meet and see. This is why the Biden administration did not show much interest in the plan to turn the Tokyo Olympics into’again Pyeongchang’, unlike the PyeongChang Olympics when the US and South Korea communicated under the water and made a dialogue gesture toward North Korea through measures such as postponing joint training.

In response, some analyzes say that North Korea decided to absent because it decided that it wasn’t really beneficial to take part in the Tokyo Olympics, although it was put forward as a reason to protect the athletes. Shin Beom-cheol, director of the Center for Foreign Affairs and Security at the Economic and Social Research Institute, said, “It seems that North Korea has decided that it is difficult to hold events such as high-level talks with the United States on the occasion of the Tokyo Olympics, given the biden administration’s stance and direction of North Korea policy.” “North Korea’s decision to absent from the Tokyo Olympics is a declarative meaning that they will not be active first for dialogue or cooperation with South Korea or the United States.“He said.

North Korea’s absence from the Tokyo Olympics is likely to act as a variable not only in inter-Korean relations but also in Korea-Japan relations. The background of the Moon Jae-in administration’s commitment to improving relations between Korea and Japan from the end of last year was the pressure from the Biden administration to restore the inter-Korean relations improvement initiative using the Tokyo Olympics and the ROK-US-Japan alliance. However, with North Korea’s declaration of absence, it has become difficult to use the Tokyo Olympics as an opportunity to improve inter-Korean relations, and as a result, even the drivers for improving Korea-Japan relations have declined. Officially, the government will continue to seek to improve relations, but the Moon Jae-in administration may lose a large part of its willingness to improve relations between Korea and Japan as the events that were anticipated were destroyed in a situation where emotional goals were accumulated due to the continued conflict in the past with Japan. There are voices of concern that there is.

However, the government has not let go of expectations until the end, based on the fact that North Korea’s method of announcing the absence of the Olympics is unusual. In general, North Korea used the labor newspaper or external propaganda media to inform the outside of its internal decisions, but this time it posted a related position on the website of the Ministry of Sports. It is an atmosphere that the North Korean government has not officially announced it but that the posting of the related content on the website operated by the Ministry of Sports along with the explanation that it is a decision made by the Olympic Committee has left room for reversal. Foreign Ministry spokesman Choi Young-sam said at a regular briefing on the 6th, “The government is closely monitoring the situation in relation to North Korea’s decision process and reporting format.” We look forward to this participation.”

Reporter Jeong Jin-woo [email protected]