InterviewActivist bets on sports to reopen door between Seoul, Pyongyang

Kim Kyung-sung, head of the South-North Sports Exchange Association / Courtesy of Kim Kyung-sung

North Korean footballers will play in the South for the first time in years on Wednesday evening, when Naegohyang Women's FC faces Suwon FC Women in a match that offers a rare glimpse of inter-Korean sports engagement.

For Kim Kyung-sung, a veteran civic activist who has spent more than two decades using sports to help build bridges between the two Koreas by promoting South-North sports exchanges, the occasion was encouraging — but he warns that the way Seoul is handling it could jeopardize more than the match.

Kim said Seoul must drop what he calls the "inter-Korean frame" and treat North Korea strictly as an international sports counterpart if it wants to keep the door to dialogue open.

“North Korea has already declared the South and the North to be ‘two hostile states,’” Kim said during an interview with The Korea Times. “From their point of view, there is effectively no inter-Korean exchange anymore and if Seoul keeps using that framework, Pyongyang is likely to bristle.”

Kim said sports remains one of the few areas where Pyongyang shows willingness to follow international norms, citing orders in the past by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un calling for compliance with global standards in athletics. That, he argued, creates a narrow but viable pathway for engagement that is insulated from political tensions.

Under Kim Jong-un, the North has worked to become a sports powerhouse, using international competitions to showcase the regime, requiring its athletes and officials to meet global standards even as political relations with Seoul have deteriorated, he noted.

Players from North Korea’s Naegohyang Women’s Football Club arrive at Incheon International Airport, Sunday. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

“North Korea is planning to host the 2028 Asian Table Tennis Championships in Pyongyang, and to succeed, they need to demonstrate they can follow international norms in sports,” Kim said. “That’s why they’re participating in events like this — not because of inter-Korean reconciliation.”

Formerly part of the insurance industry, Kim has built an unusual career on long-term ties with North Korean sports authorities. After opening a football center in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province, in 2002 and running a sports facility in the Chinese city of Kunming, where he deepened his contacts with North Korean authorities, he went on to establish the Seoul-based Inter-Korea Sports Exchange Association and has since focused on promoting youth football exchanges.

The Inter-Korea Sports Exchange Association helped organize the Ari Sports Cup, an under-15 youth football tournament that rotated between South Korea, North Korea and China.

Kim said the Ari Sports Cup has shown how sports diplomacy can work even when political channels are shut.

“I think the government in Seoul should be using proven platforms like the Ari Sports Cup to approach North Korea through sports diplomacy,” he said. “But instead, people keep talking about support projects for the North, about reopening the Gaeseong Industrial Complex or Mount Geumgang tourism, even though Pyongyang declared the two Koreas to be hostile states. It just doesn’t fit the reality anymore.”

Kim’s immediate focus is on reviving the Ari Sports Cup in the North Korean coastal resort city of Wonsan later this year, based on an agreement he reached with North Korean authorities in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province, in 2018, the last tournament before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kim said his group has already established working-level contacts with North Korean authorities and will move quickly to put together a slate of South Korean teams after the June 3 local elections.

Asked whether he is confident the tournament will go as planned, he said he is very positive.

If the tournament is held successfully, Kim said the next step should be reaching an agreement with Pyongyang on how South Korea can support the 2028 Asian Table Tennis Championships in the North Korean capital and help pave the way for North Korean athletes to compete at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

“In the end, getting a North Korean team to the LA Olympics is our last big goal,” Kim said. “If that happens, I think sports could again create conditions for U.S.-North Korea dialogue, just like we saw around the PyeongChang Olympics.”