Twenty-seven years later, the two Koreas will field another unified team, this time in women’s ice hockey at next month’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Amid the escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea’s very participation in the games was considered a major breakthrough. Both South and North Korea’s entire delegations will also enter the opening ceremony under the same flag, under the name “Korea.”
Domestic politics explains at least part of South Korea’s frostiness. South Korea’s conservatives, whose approval ratings have plummeted since the impeachment of their former president Park Geun Hye, have rediscovered their favorite accusation against the liberals: that they are soft on North Korea. Na Gyeong Won, a legislator and member of the conservative opposition, has called the upcoming games the “Pyongyang Olympics,” a derisive label that conservative newspapers—including Dong-A Ilbo, which wrote so glowingly of the unified ping pong team in 1991—have gleefully echoed. That South Korea’s conservatives are trying to denigrate the first Winter Olympics in their country in an effort to score political points is an extraordinary display of cynical partisanship. Their efforts are also more than a little hypocritical. As recently as December 2014, South Korea’s conservative party was urging the government to consider splitting hosting duties with North Korea.
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