Joint inter-Korean Olympic squads in limbo: officials

Posted on : 2008-04-09 09:17 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST

The two Koreas appear stalled in their efforts to field joint athletic and cheering squads for the Beijing Olympics amid a recent freeze in their relations, sporting officials said Tuesday.

South and North Korea agreed in principle during their second-ever summit in Pyongyang last year to seek a joint team of athletes ahead of the Summer Olympics set to begin in August this year.

The sides, which remain technically at war, also agreed in February to send a 600-strong joint Olympic cheering squad by a cross-border railway, which was recently reconnected as part of their reconciliation efforts.

"I have tried to bring up the issue with North Korean officials, but have been unable to initiate discussion at all," said Kim Jung-gil, South Korea's chief sporting official, while attending an international meeting of Olympic committees in Beijing.

The deadlock comes as the relations between the two Koreas -- which fought the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a fragile truce rather a peace settlement -- are rapidly eroding.

Over the past few weeks, Pyongyang has harshly criticized Seoul's new conservative President Lee Myung-bak by name, test-fired a barrage of short-range missiles and expelled South Korean officials from a Seoul-financed joint industrial park in its border city of Kaesong.

The moves came after Lee, who swept the December election by promising a tougher stance on North Korea, repeatedly vowed to tie inter-Korean cooperation to human rights in North Korea.

Tensions also soared when his new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs indicated last month that South Korea could conduct a pre-emptive surgical air strike on the North's nuclear weapons facilities.

With the Games only four months away, South Korean officials in Beijing called on their North Korean counterparts to come to the table over the squad issue, but they have already been snubbed twice, they said.

Jang Ung, a ranking North Korean official who is also a member of the International Olympic Committee, told Yonhap News Agency that such a discussion "would be difficult to hold." He did not elaborate.

The head of Pyongyang's Olympic commission, Pak Hak-son, also shunned journalists and declined to speak on inter-Korean issues.

"Since North Korea has yet to notify us of any decision to cancel the agreements, we're still trying to keep contact and will continue to do so," Kim, the head of the South Korean Olympic committee, said.

"But it does not look easy, considering current inter-Korean relations and the time" that remains before the Olympics, he added.

According to the February agreement, the two Koreas are to send two 300-member cheering contingents, including support staff, during the Aug. 8-24 Games.

Each of the two contingents would be made of 150 people from each side, according to the South Korean Unification Ministry, and would travel on a railway that runs across the heavily armed inter-Korean border and reaches China's railway network.

Hailed as a symbol of inter-Korean reconciliation under the two past liberal governments, the railway was reconnected in May last year for the first time in 56 years. It was severed in the outbreak of the fratricidal Korean War.

Talk of forming a joint Olympic team began four years ago, but has never reached a substantial level. The two Koreas held their first summit in Pyongyang in 2000, leading to the development of the joint industrial complex in Kaesong.

BEIJING, April 8 (Yonhap)

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