By Chung Min-uck
Seoul’s campaign strategy to connect with North Korea four years ago was partly responsible for its failure to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, a Korea expert in the United States said in a recent Internet posting.
“I believe this had the unintended consequence of backfiring because it tried to play too much politics with sport, which the IOC rejected,” Victor Cha, Korea chair at the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), wrote on his institution’s website.
The 50-year-old scholar claimed that Seoul made a mistake of excessively using sport as a tool to solve political problems and emphasizing how the Winter Games would promote inter-Korean relations.
Back in 2007, the administration gave a presentation which focused on how the Olympics could help promote peace and reconciliation between the two Koreas and even sought a letter of support from the North Korean delegation for the 2014 bid.
The Korea expert stressed that, in contrast, the key to PyeongChang’s winning the bid of 2018 Winter Olympics was due to the separation of the link between sport and politics.
He states that the presentation made for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) this time put emphasis on the expansion of winter sports to Asia, winning over IOC members.
PyeongChang, located in Gangwon Province which borders North Korea, bid to hold Winter Olympics three consecutive times, eventually winning the right to host the 2018 Winter Olympics last Thursday.
He also anticipated that North Korea is likely to keep the news away from their people or show a negative response to South Korea’s hosting.
Meanwhile, the Korean political scene has been showing some action in bringing up North Korean issues along with the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
The opposition Democratic Party insisted that the premise for a successful Winter Games is peace and the unification of the two Koreas, during a meeting held at the Alpensia Resort in Gangwon Province last Thursday,
The ruling and opposition parties also agreed to seek measures to form a united team consisting of North and South Korea in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games during the meeting where both floor leaders gathered to discuss follow-up measures to PyeongChang’s winning bid, Friday.