This article is more than 6 months old

This article is more than 6 months old

Seoul is hoping to “change the fate of the Korean peninsula” with the launch of a bid to jointly host the 2032 Olympic Games with North Korea.

Representatives from both Koreas are expected to submit their plans to co-host the event at a meeting of the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Friday. The South Korean Olympic Committee chose Seoul, a previous Olympic host, over the southern port city of Busan on Monday.

The decision to involve North Korea in the bid reflects warmer diplomatic ties between the neighbours, a year after North Korea sent athletes, supporters and officials to the Winter Olympics in the South Korean alpine town of Pyeongchang.

South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, who favours engagement with the regime in Pyongyang, has also suggested the two countries bid to co-host the 2030 World Cup. The countries also plan to send combined teams to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

'They'll think I'm a traitor': North Korean defector makes Winter Paralympics debut Read more

North Korea has yet to announce which city will join Seoul to bid for the 2032 Games, but experts say Pyongyang would be the obvious choice given its relatively advanced infrastructure.

Officials described a jointly-hosted Olympics as an unprecedented opportunity for sports diplomacy to bring stability to the Korean peninsula.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un (L) shakes hands with South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in (R) at the Military Demarcation Line that divides their countries ahead of a summit in April 2018. Photograph: Korea Summit Press Pool/AFP/Getty Images

“Seoul will cooperate with the national government so that the 2032 summer Olympics become something more than a sports festival – an opportunity to change the fate of the Korean peninsula,” Seoul’s mayor, Park Won-soon, said in a statement.

The feasibility of an inter-Korean Olympics would depend on the fate of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes – the subject of talks in Hanoi at the end of the month between the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and Donald Trump.

Sanctions that would make cross-border cooperation on Olympic infrastructure practically impossible are expected to remain in place until Pyongyang demonstrates a willingness to dismantle its nuclear programme.

Nevertheless, serious discussion of a North Korean role in hosting the Games would have been unthinkable just two years ago, when the regime invited widespread condemnation after a volley of missile launches and its sixth nuclear test.

North Korea boycotted the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 summer Olympics, which were both held in Seoul. Bilateral ties deteriorated dramatically ahead of the Seoul Games, after the North bombed a South Korean airliner in November 1987, killing all 115 people on board.</s>North and South Korea are planning to launch a joint bid to host the 2032 summer Olympics together, the reports.

The Koreas are expected to present their plans to co-host the Games at the International Olympic City in Lausanne, Switzerland, this Friday. Representatives from the two countries will be in attendance.

The South Korean Olympic Committee chose Seoul, which hosted the Olympics in 1988, for the bid. North Korea has not announced which of its cities would join Seoul, but experts say it is likely to be Pyongyang.

North Korea’s participation in sporting events has in the past been hindered by the country’s relationship with the South. In 1986, the country boycotted the Asian Games, and two years later, the summer Olympics. Both were held in South Korea.

But South Korean President Moon Jae-In has expressed interest in engagement with Pyongyang since assuming office in 2017. Last year, he invited North Korean athletes, supporters and officials to the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, the two countries’ delegations marching under one flag.

The launch of a joint bid represents a further warming of ties between the Koreas. Officials say a jointly-hosted Olympics is an opportunity for sports diplomacy to bring stability to the Korean peninsula, but its feasibility is dependent on North Korea’s denuclearization plans, which will be discussed during upcoming talks between Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump in Hanoi.</s>Seoul edges out its rival Busan as South Korea's chosen city to host the 2032 Summer Olympics

SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea has picked its capital Seoul for its bid for the 2032 Summer Olympics, which it aims to jointly host with North Korea.

The Koreas will officially inform the International Olympic Committee of their decision to bid at an event in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Friday, February 15.

North Korea is expected to announce its candidate city later this week – the likely choice is its capital Pyongyang – before or during the IOC meeting, Seoul officials told AFP.

The decision to pursue a joint bid – as well as to jointly participate in the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games –was made following a series of inter-Korean talks last year, as cross-border reconciliation gathered pace.

In a meeting held by the country's Olympic committee on Monday, February 11, Seoul edged out its rival, the southern port city of Busan.

Seoul mayor Park Won-soon said he would ensure the bid serves as an opportunity to "change the fate of the Korean peninsula".

"If the 1988 Seoul Olympics was 'reconciliation Olympics' amid the cold war between East and West and the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics was a touchstone of peace, the 2032 Olympics will be promoted to become the last stop to establish the peace".

The last time Seoul hosted the summer Olympics, in 1988, Pyongyang boycotted the Games.

But in recent months the Koreas have turned to sports diplomacy to ease tensions.

During the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics last year, North Korea sent leader Kim Jong Un's sister, Kim Yo Jong, to express the reclusive regime's interest in an inter-Korean summit.

The unified Korean women's ice hockey team was also a symbol of unity in Pyeongchang, despite losing all their games and finishing last.

Kim Jong Un went on to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in three times in the wake of the Games and held a landmark summit with US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June.

However, the joint bid poses some difficulties. North Korea is subject to economic sanctions and these are unlikely to be lifted by the UN Security Council unless Pyongyang takes firmer steps toward denuclearization. – Rappler.com</s>SEOUL/BERLIN (Reuters) - If North and South Korea succeed in their long-shot bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympics, any athletic feats at the Games may be overshadowed by the political achievements needed to make it happen.

Buoyed by the role the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics played in easing tensions last year, South Korean and North Korean officials are due to meet on Friday with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Switzerland to discuss what would be the first ever bid by two countries.

To make Olympic history, experts say the bid would need to overcome international sanctions against North Korea, decades of mistrust between Seoul and Pyongyang, and wide political and economic differences between two countries still officially at war.

The Switzerland meeting comes ahead of a second summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump in Vietnam, which will be key to the future of reclusive North Korea’s relations with the world.

Since the Olympic bid was announced after a summit between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang in September, South Korean officials have been pushing forward with plans despite the obstacles. On Monday Seoul was named as the city that would make the South Korean bid.

In a statement, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said officials would soon seek to establish a line of communication with Pyongyang and “make all-out efforts” to co-host with North Korea and make the 2032 Olympics the “last stop to establish the peace”.

On Tuesday, the North’s state news agency, KCNA, said an Olympic committee delegation led by minister of physical culture and sports Kim Il Guk had left for Switzerland, but did not mention the joint bid.

For its part, the IOC said in a statement it “welcomes very much” the two Koreas’ intention to jointly host the 2032 games, as “sport could once more make a contribution to peace on the Korean Peninsula and the world”.

“From a political perspective it would be huge,” said one senior IOC member who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive process. “Because we can say that the IOC brought peace in that area a year ago during the Games in Pyeongchang and it is a huge achievement for the IOC and President Thomas Bach.”

“We have not really spoken about it yet,” another member said. “Any discussions today are more an exercise in political marketing than real details of such Games.”

Last year’s Games in Pyeongchang may have left warm feelings in Seoul and Pyongyang, but the two Koreas share an older, darker Olympic history.

After Seoul was selected to host the 1988 Summer Olympics, North Korea proposed that it be allowed to co-host the Games.

Those talks went nowhere and just months before the Olympics opened, North Korean agents bombed a South Korean airliner, killing 115 people. The one surviving agent said the attack was aimed at disrupting the Games.

Later, North Korea pursued its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, earning the ire of South Korea and the international community, which imposed stifling sanctions on Pyongyang.

North Korea also faces international sanctions over human rights abuses, including prison camps and repressive control over much of the population.

“At this very moment it is difficult to imagine it without some huge political changes,” one senior IOC member told Reuters, comparing the idea to East and West Germany trying to co-host the Olympics at the height of the Cold War. “Is it possible or realistic to have Games in two countries with such different political, economic and infrastructure systems?”

Advocates see the Olympics as precisely the vehicle to bridge many of the gaps between the two Koreas.

“The fact that North Korea is pursuing hosting an Olympic games is a statement of their intent to denuclearize, to become part of the international community, and to open their doors,” said chairman of South Korea’s parliamentary sports committee An Min-suk.

A joint bid could be welcomed under the IOC’s Agenda 2020 and New Norm reforms of recent years, which aim to reduce the size of the Games and the burden on the host city or country.

Among a long list of potential bidders mentioned for the 2032 Games are Mumbai, Shanghai, Melbourne, Johannesburg and the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

South Korea has made a positive impression both times it hosted the Olympics, the second IOC member said.

“The level of organization is fantastic,” the member said. “It means they have the skills for such events.”

The North Koreans, meanwhile, have long made athletics a major part of their international outreach, and have poured significant amounts of their limited resources into building sports infrastructure as part of Kim Jong Un’s drive to become a “sports power”.

For example, they tout Pyongyang’s May Day stadium as one of the largest in the world, and it already sports Olympic rings and a cauldron for an Olympic flame.

This was not lost on international visitors who attended the opening of the “Mass Games” performances there in September.

“This looks like an audition for an Olympics opening ceremony,” Gianni Merlo, the head of the International Sports Press Association told Reuters at the event.

Other countries have pitched multi-city Olympics, including an Italian bid that is one of the finalists of the 2026 Winter Games.

But North Korea will pose more challenges.

Current sanctions against North Korea bar or limit a whole spectrum of activities including financial transactions, oil imports, and joint ventures.

During the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, North Korean athletes could not be gifted the Galaxy Note 8 smartphones that sponsor Samsung Electronics gave to all athletes, due to sanctions.

“A North-South Korea joint Olympic hosting will fit the Olympic spirit to a T - promoting peace, reducing war and building relationships,” said Kim Yeon-chul, Director of Korea Institute for National Unification.

“But in order for it to happen, everything has to go together - resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue, the U.S.-North Korea relations, and the acceptance of the international community.”</s>SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea has chosen its capital, Seoul, for its bid for the 2032 Summer Olympics, which it hopes to jointly host with rival North Korea as a peace gesture. South…

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea has chosen its capital, Seoul, for its bid for the 2032 Summer Olympics, which it hopes to jointly host with rival North Korea as a peace gesture.

South Korea’s Olympic committee announced the decision after a meeting Monday in which Seoul received 34 of 49 votes, edging out the southern port city of Busan.

The Koreas are expected to officially inform the International Olympic Committee of their intent to co-host the 2032 Olympics on Friday during a meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland. While North Korea has yet to formally announce its candidate city for the Olympics, its capital, Pyongyang, is seen as the obvious choice because it’s much more developed than other North Korean cities.

While Monday’s decision by the South Korean Olympic committee needs approval from the country’s sports and finance ministries, that is seen as a formality since the government has described the 2032 Games as a crucial opportunity to stabilize relations with North Korea.

Following a meeting of their leaders in September, the rival Koreas agreed to pursue a joint bid for the 2032 Olympics and also send combined teams to the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games, among other steps to promote reconciliation.

“Seoul will cooperate with the national government so that the 2032 Summer Olympics become something more than a sports festival — an opportunity to change the fate of the Korean Peninsula,” Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said in a statement.

Currently it would be extremely difficult to host the Olympics in North Korea because of heavy U.S.-led sanctions against the North which are unlikely to be removed until it takes firmer steps toward relinquishing its nuclear weapons. There continue to be doubts whether North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is willing to deal away an arsenal he may see as his strongest guarantee of survival.

There is also declining public support among South Koreans for hosting large sports events due to worries over huge costs.

Following a provocative series of nuclear and missile tests in 2017, Kim met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in three times last year and also held a historic summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in June in Singapore. But the summits failed to produce much substance regarding how and when North Korea would denuclearize, and negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang seemed to be reaching a stalemate before they agreed to a second Trump-Kim meeting on Feb. 27-28 in Hanoi, Vietnam.

For some South Koreans, it’s mind-boggling that the Koreas are even talking about jointly hosting the Olympics. North Korea boycotted the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Summer Olympics, both held in Seoul, and relations dramatically worsened ahead of the Seoul Olympics with the North’s bombing of a South Korean passenger jet that killed all 115 aboard in November 1987.

The Koreas have often used sports to facilitate diplomacy. North Korea sent hundreds of people to the Winter Olympics in South Korea’s Pyeongchang in February last year, including Kim’s sister, who conveyed his desire for an inter-Korean summit following tensions over North Korea’s weapons tests.

Copyright © 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.</s>SEOUL: South Korea has picked its capital Seoul for its bid for the 2032 summer Olympics, which it aims to jointly host with North Korea.

The Koreas will officially inform the International Olympic Committee of their decision to bid at an event in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Friday.North Korea is expected to announce its candidate city later this week — the likely choice is its capital Pyongyang — before or during the IOC meeting, Seoul officials told AFP.

The decision to pursue a joint bid — as well as to jointly participate in the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games — was made following a series of inter-Korean talks last year, as cross-border reconciliation gathered pace.

In a meeting held by the country’s Olympic committee on Monday, Seoul edged out its rival, the southern port city of Busan.Seoul mayor Park Won-soon said he would ensure the bid serves as an opportunity to “change the fate of the Korean peninsula”.</s>In its new year’s letter, one of the key accomplishments the IOC touted was improved relationships on the Korean peninsula, all because in 2018 the North and South Korean delegations marched in the opening ceremonies at the Winter Games together. “With these powerful symbols and gestures in PyeongChang, we have seen how the Olympic Games can open the way to dialogue, how the Olympic values can open the way to a more peaceful future,” Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, wrote last month.



The climate-change denying head of the International Ski Federation also pointed to the sports’ ability to break the ice, diplomatically speaking. “Sport can also be a door opener. Perhaps we contributed to the opening of North Korea with the unified team in Pyeongchang,” Gian- Franco Kasper said in an interview where he also spoke about his preference for working with dictatorships so he wouldn’t have to be bothered by environmentalists.

It seems that IOC’s and Kasper’s dreams are coming true. Today, the Koreas announced that they will bid to host the Summer Olympics together in 2032, with Seoul hosting again on the South Korean side; the North host city is yet to be determined though it’s probably the capital, Pyongyang, since it’s the only city with sufficiently advanced infrastructure to pull it off.

If the IOC does select this joint bid for the 2032 Olympics, it would dovetail nicely with its already well-documented affinity for working with dictatorships with gross human rights violation.

This bid could prove irresistible to the IOC: The positive PR they’d get from “uniting” the two countries would do a lot to improve the organization’s increasingly poor image, and it doesn’t hurt that one of the bidding countries isn’t a democracy where citizens get to do annoying things like publicly register disapproval. This would fit perfectly with the IOC’s grandiose vision of its role in the world—it’s not merely an international cartel of global one percenters that hosts a city-ruining sports festival every two years; it also promotes world peace!

But how would this even work? As noted in the Guardian, a cross-border Games would be a huge challenge to pull off due to the fact that the North is subject to international sanctions because of its refusal to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. In order to host the Olympics, there would have to be some weakening or elimination of those sanctions.

The Olympics is good at symbolism, which is what the 2018 Olympics brought us—North and South playing on the same hockey team, the two Koreas marching into the opening ceremonies under a shared banner. But to pull off a joint North-South Olympic bid, the international community would have to go way beyond symbolism and photo ops. The IOC would have to do the thing that it claims to abhor: get very political.</s>more than just a goodwill gesture, South Korea's insistence that the DPRK be involved in its possible hosting of an Olympic Games is demonstrative of a pan-Korean confidence in the peace process

While few people are thinking about the 2032 Olympic Games, possible host cities are already preparing to tender their bids to host the event. As South Korea has hosted two Olympic Games (Summer of 1988 and Winter of 2018), Seoul will tender a bid to host its second summer Games in the year 2032. However, the story does not end there.During the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang and the Asia Games that same year held in Jakarta and Palembang, Korea sent a unified team which marched under the politically neutral flag of the entire Korean peninsula.Even if Korea does not end up hosting the Games in 2032,. For all intents and purposes, the key elements of the current peace process, namely de-nuclearisation, will likely be completed by 2032 whilst if current trends continue, relations between Pyongyang and Seoul will continue to expand.Therefore,as well as a sense of optimism regarding the future of a shared Korean destiny.As this announcement comes a fortnight prior to Donald Trump's next summit with Kim Jong-un, to be held in Hanoi,The timing of the Olympic announcement is therefore further indicative of how vital a role the South Korean government has played throughout a peace process which at times has unfortunately reminded the world of occasional suspicions that still exist between Washington and Pyongyang, in spite of the apparently warm relationship between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump.While Kim Jong-un was the first to extend an olive branch of peace to the South on New Years Day 2018,along side his fellow Korean leader. Moon's rise to power was not an easy one. It has been revealed that in 2012, the far-right Park Geun-hye colluded with the domestic intelligence agencies to rig the Presidential election in her favour. Yet Park's gross corruption resulted in the largest ever peaceful anti-government demonstrations in Korean history.Park was eventually impeached and imprisoned which led to a special election in 2017 which saw the rise of Moon to the Blue House. While Park once wickedly conspired to assassinate the leader of the DPRK, Moon inspired Kim Jong-un to think about building a better and brighter future on a collective and fraternal basis. As Moon ended his predecessor's policy of hostility towards fellow Koreans, Kim responded in kind and the result has been nothing short of breathtaking.Throughout the peace process,While the US and DPRK are almost certainly in the midst of finalising arrangements for the forthcoming Hanoi summit with the Vietnamese authorities, South Korea has helped to assure the wider world that from the Korean perspective, the peace process will not be allowed to fail.By looking ahead to a possible joint Olympic Games in 2032, this commitment is showing signs of medium and by extrapolation, long term endurance.
North and South Korea announce they will launch a joint bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympics.