We've already noted how new South Korean President Moon Jae-in is keen on appeasing the North Koreans. A couple of recent items add to the concern.
First off, it's being suggested that the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang could be shared with the North:
Proposed collaboration between North and South Korea at the 2018 Winter Olympics has been welcomed by the International Olympic Committee.
According to reports, South Korea sports minister Do Jong-hwan said North Korea could host some skiing events.
He also said the countries may enter a combined ice hockey team.
"We are happy to discuss his ideas. The Olympic movement is always about building bridges, never about erecting walls," said an IOC spokesperson.
"We are looking at the comments of the new minister of sport, culture and tourism with great interest."...
n comments reported by the Korea Herald, Do suggested the North and South could enter one women's ice hockey team, helping to make Pyeongchang a "peace Olympics".
He said he would discuss co-hosting at the Masikryong ski resort with Jang Woong, North Korea's delegate to the IOC.
The Masikryong ski resort is one of Kim Jong-un's vanity projects. It was built using commandeered army units, and stocked with foreign equipment that almost certainly got there in breach of international sanctions. There are stories that it's maintained by child work gangs. It is, of course, beyond the reach of all but the highest-ranking officials:
In short, it's dangerously naive to think this would be anything other than a propaganda coup for Pyongyang, and a kick in the teeth for the wretched North Koreans suffering under the world's most egregious violator of human rights. There have been calls urging the IOC not to "repeat the mistake of the 1936 Berlin Games" by allowing North Korea to co-host.
And then this. President Moon in an interview with CBS last week:
So I believe what Kim Jong Un would want the most is to have a security guarantee for his regime. So there is a possibility that Kim Jong Un continues to make the bluff with his nuclear weapons programs. But deep inside he is actually yearning or wanting dialogue. But in the end the only way to find out is to have a dialogue with North Korea.
That's no bluff with the nuclear weapons. And to believe that, deep inside, Kin Jong-un yearns for dialogue suggests a dangerous degree of delusion on Moon's part.
This week Moon will arrive in Washington for his first meeting with Trump. It promises to be something of a dialogue of the deaf; which is to say, a fiasco.
Update: amusingly it's the North Koreans who have snubbed the South over the Olympics.
It was supposed to be the opening gesture in a new chapter of co-operation between two of the world’s most deadly enemies. But North Korea has rejected a proposal by South Korea’s liberal president, Moon Jae-in, for a joint hosting of next year’s Winter Olympic Games.
The offer, by a president who has committed himself to engaging the Pyongyang regime, was all but dismissed by one of the North’s most senior sporting officials. The rebuff is a disappointing start to President Moon’s efforts to warm up relations after ten years of confrontation and sanctions under two conservative South Korean presidents....
The ideas were rejected by Chang Ung, North Korea’s single delegate to the International Olympic Committee. “It’s a bit late,” Mr Chang said. “When we fielded a joint team at the 1991 World Table Tennis Championships, there were 22 rounds of talks and they took five months. That is the reality that we’re faced with.”
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