North Korea's Undeserved Olympic Glory
Editor’s Note: Read all of The Atlantic’s Winter Olympics coverage.
After a year of fire-and-fury threatening and nuclear-button measuring, of Little-Rocket-Man and mentally-deranged-dotard name-calling, of apocalyptic warnings about another war on the Korean peninsula, it was heartening to witness. There they were, the South and North Korean Olympic teams marching together in sparkling white jackets behind a flag symbolizing Korean unity, as the soulful notes of the Korean folk song “Arirang” played and top South and North Korean officials warmly greeted each other in the stands, during an Opening Ceremony in Pyeongchang extolling peace.
It felt wonderful. But it also felt … wrong.
South Korea is hosting its first Winter Olympics and only its second Olympics ever. There are few experiences as special as walking in last at the Opening Ceremony of an Olympics your country is hosting, when you have worked so hard to be there and yourIt is so rare in an athlete’s life that you get to even compete in an Olympic Games. It’s even rarer to compete in an Olympics in your home country,” the American freestyle skier Tracy Evans . On Friday, South Korean athletes and coaches concluded the Parade of Nations bearing a flag that isn’t theirs, even if it represents a dream that is. They shared that exceedingly rare moment with athletes and coaches from North Korea, which did nothing to organize the event, missed the registration deadline for sending a delegation, and boasts only who qualified for the competition on merit. (The International Olympic Committee, which along with the South Korean government trying to convince North Korea to come to the Games, made exceptions so that the North could compete.)
