DALLAS (WBAP/KLIF News) — On the eve of opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics there is quiet hope for a slight thaw in frigid relations between the two Koreas.
In 1988 Summer Games organizers in Seoul, South Korea, invited the communist government of the North to send a team of competitors. The North made conditional demands including renaming the games the Pyongyang-Seoul Summer Olympics, with the opening ceremony in Pyongyang. South Korea said no and the North refused to relent or attend.
Things are different now as South Korea prepares to host the Winter Games. North Korean athletes will not only attend, they will march and compete alongside their long-estranged cousins from the South in opening ceremonies to be televised on NBC Friday morning at 5:00 a.m. Dallas time.
The New York Times says nobody expects reunification to come from these games but that both sides have learned to view sporting events as a chance to defuse tensions if only for a couple of weeks at a time.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is sending his sister to PyeongChang where she will attend the ceremonies and have lunch with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
It’s a start.
Hear coverage of the PyeongChang Winter Games daily on 820 WBAP..