Could US-N. Korea talks be Olympic dividend?

By Andrew Hammond

As the Winter Olympic Games closed Sunday, it has been revealed that the event may deliver another unexpected geopolitical dividend. That is, North Korea has now indicated it is willing to start direct talks with the United States, potentially building on the recent mini-rapprochement between the two Koreas in recent weeks.

The announcement follows a meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and head of the North Korean delegation, Kim Yong-chol, vice chairman of the ruling Workers Party's Central Committee.

In response, the White House said that "a brighter path is available for North Korea if it chooses denuclearization. We will see if Pyongyang's message today, that it is willing to hold talks, represents the first steps along the path to denuclearization."

Should the Olympics ultimately help contribute to a sustained thaw in relations between North Korea and the United States in coming months, which remains highly uncertain, it would prove a surprise very few anticipated even a few weeks ago.

Only in December, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley had painted a bleaker scenario after months of rising tension on the peninsula, and highlighting that security challenges from North Korea meant that it was even an "open question" whether U.S. athletes would be able to compete at the Games because of the problem "of how we protect U.S. citizens in the area".

The shifting stance since then has seen an unexpected warming between Pyongyang and Seoul which began with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's New Year message that the Olympics would be a "good opportunity to show the unity of the people."

He also spoke of potentially melting "frozen North-South relations," and since then the two nations have reopened a diplomatic hotline, and the Trump team has also consented to suspend joint military drills previously scheduled to coincide with the Olympics.

Pyongyang sent athletes and cheerleaders to the Games in PyeongChang after the nation's first high-level, bilateral talks with Seoul in two years. The latter has at least temporarily lifted sanctions to allow the former to attend the Olympics.

These changing situations underline that while hosting such major sporting contests often still commands significant national prestige, they have considerable unpredictability with several such recent events having been plagued by political and wider risks and controversies.

Take the example of the most recent Summer Olympics in Brazil in 2016.

When Rio won in 2009 the right to host the Games, the national economy was booming and the country was enjoying significantly enhanced international prestige as a leading emerging market within the so-called BRICS group of nations.

By 2016, however, Brazil was mired in political crisis surrounding the impeachment of President Dilma Roussef, and the worst recession in decades which forced significant spending cuts to the Olympic budget.

This difficult backdrop for hosting the Olympics was worsened when more than 100 prominent doctors and professors wrote an open letter to the World Health Organization asking for the Games to be postponed or moved from Brazil "in the name of public health." This was in light of the widening Zika outbreak which became the worst health crisis facing Brazil since at least 1918, according to the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a leading health research institution based in Rio.

Whether the 2018 Winter Games will, in coming years, ultimately command a more positive narrative and stronger legacy than Rio in 2016 is still not 100 percent certain. In part, this is because while ties between South and North Korea are at least temporarily warmer, tensions between Pyongyang and Washington remain high, and U.S. President Donald Trump announced a new wave of sanctions only a few days ago.

Recent weeks has also seen the spectacle of Trump remarking that the size of his "nuclear button" is bigger and more powerful than Kim's in North Korea. The latter had earlier made the unwise boast, following recent missile and nuclear tests that "the entire mainland of the U.S. is within the range of our nuclear weapons and the nuclear button is always on the desk of my office."

With the U.S. homeland looking increasingly vulnerable, and the possibility of further North Korean missile and nuclear tests in 2018, Trump and some key allies in the region, including Japan, are looking at potential options to intensify international pressure on Pyongyang which may lead to new spikes in tensions.

Aside from the possibility of military force, scenarios include further sanctions, and the possibility of a naval blockade to enforce existing sanctions ― including interdicting ships suspected of selling North Korea weapons abroad, one of the regime's key sources of income.

This backdrop underlines the fragility of the unexpected window of opportunity that has opened up. Securing a significant and sustained de-escalation in tensions on the peninsula will not be easy, even with a previously unanticipated Olympic dividend.

Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics. Contact him at andrew.hammond.james@gmail.com.