that all is well between the North and the South on the Korean peninsula. The Korean contingent will march in the Opening Day parade under a single flag. Women’s ice hockey will be represented by a team composed of athletes from both sides. All told, several hundred Northern athletes and officials will take part in the PyeongChang Games. There will be no missiles in the waters near Guam, no bombs, no insults directed at Donald Trump.

Representatives of the two Koreas will meet and talk about the future, about cooperation, détente. They will smile for the photographers while heartily shaking hands.

The North signed an accord with the South, December 12, 1991, announcing a sunny and fraternal future. The North’s first ballistic missile test took place in May 1993.

The North’sleader, Kim Jong-il, and the South’s president, Kim Dae-jung, met in June 2000, the era of the “sunshine policy.” North and South teams paraded together at the opening of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, the 2004 Athens Games, and the 2006 Winter Games in Turin. That last was the year of the first North Korean nuclear test.

A year and a half later, it was the turn of South Korea’s new president, Roe Moo Young, to travel to Pyongyang. Following a few lyrical phrases, however, the weather returned to normal — chilly.

Relations between North Korea and the rest of the world, and in particular with the United States and South Korea, are variable. Periods of calm and attentiveness follow eruptions of tension and confrontation, rendering more humanly convincing the