North Korea’s okay with sending athletes to South Korea Olympics Blog
January 19, 2018
On January 9th, South Korea will be holding the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, North Korea has agreed to come forth and send some of the countries officials and athletes. It had been announced on Tuesday, it was the first high-level conversations between the countries in over two years.
The countries also complied with each other and decided to hold military talks, this led to other talk as North Korea made the idea of sending a large group including of a high-level delegation, a performing arts group, athletes, cheerleading teams, media and others – to the Games, said South Korean Deputy Unification Minister Chun Hae-Sung.
Then the South raised the question of reuniting families that were broken up or separated due to the Korean War in 1950-1953 and of possible ways to ease military tension, Chun added. South Korea and the U.S. announced that they were not supplying but suspending military exercises during the period of the Games. With the Games being held in around a month, for the participation of North Korean athletes also requires agreements from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Geneva because North Korea missed the specific holding for registration.
President Trump on Saturday showed some form of hope for the progress of the talks and said that he was willing to talk with Kim himself. But UN Ambassador Nikki Haley later said the U.S. administration isn’t changing its conditions with the talks with North Korea, saying Kim would first need to quit weapon testing for a long amount of time.
Kim stated in his New Year’s Day address, that he has an urgent need to improve the inter-Korean ties and that he is willing to send a delegation to the Pyeongchang Games, as he pleaded with Seoul to stop their military drills with the U.S. and said he has a nuclear button to launch missiles at any target in the United States.
The Trump administration worked together last week and agreed to delay springtime military drills with South Korea until after the Games. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis insisted the delay was a practical necessity to accommodate the Olympics, not a political gesture. Trump and Kim traded bellicose warlike gestures, and even some insults last year as the North Korean’s conducted it’s sixth and most powerful nuclear testing and three tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles.