Selfish ― and Foolish

North's Obduracy on Soccer Match Is Self-Contradictory

Global villagers watching the New York Philharmonic's landmark concert in Pyongyang Tuesday might have thought North Korea has changed a lot. Well, not really.

At a meeting between the two Koreas' football officials in Gaeseong the same day, North Korea didn't budge an inch from its refusal to raise South Korea's flag and play its national anthem at a World Cup soccer qualification match in Pyongyang next month. The North's nonsensical dualism is unmistakable in this: Music is okay, but sports are not; Americans are welcome but South Koreans are not; Gaeseong (business) is permissible but Pyongyang (politics) is not.

North Korean officials said, ``We are one people. Why do we have to look like confronting each other?'' People compare international sports games to battles without gunfire, but are these northerners confusing metaphor with reality? Respecting visitors' national flags and hymns is the rule of FIFA ― no more, no less ― as long as the two teams are registered as separate entities with soccer's world governing body. This should be true even of the four different football teams of the United Kingdom ― England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Island.

The North Koreans cited there is no precedent of letting South Korea's flag fly and its national anthem ring out in their territory. But precedents are for making, as promises are for keeping. These same northerners did nothing to keep their South Korean counterparts from hoisting the North Korean flag and playing its national anthem at least four times in the South recently. Were the Koreans two different peoples confronting each other, then?

Pyongyang's expediency and lack of reciprocity makes it all the more difficult to understand why it is reluctant to field a single Korean team at the 2008 Summer Olympics. At the second inter-Korean summit in October, Kim Jong-il brushed aside a unified team, citing technical problems. It may sound reasonable, as South Korean players are superior to North Koreans in most ball games. Was Kim, however, worried about South Korea's performances in the Beijing Games? Former East and West Germany took part in Olympics as a single team not to win more medals but to show they were one.

Kim just doesn't want to recognize the South as an equal entity and let Koreans from both sides mingle with each other on a massive scale, let alone on his own ground.

If Pyongyang does not change its mind, the North Korean team will suffer a forfeited game unless the match is held in a third country.

We are less concerned about how a third-country match would affect the final result than how all this fuss appears to the rest of the world. Koreas' reunification, like a soccer match, should be made in ways and rules acceptable to international society. And if Koreans cannot solve a dispute over a sports game by themselves having to resort to others, how will they handle the unification issue?