Korean Olympic sports diplomacy a game of two halves

When ice hockey players from North and South Korea skated together on to the Olympic rink in matching white kits last year, it was seen as a symbol of the rapid diplomatic progress catalysed by the Winter Games.

With Pyongyang subject to multiple international sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, sport is one of the few spheres where real co-operation is possible between the two countries.

However, analysts say sporting diplomacy on the divided peninsula will go nowhere without tangible advances on underlying issues surrounding the North's atomic arsenal.

Games organisers proclaimed the 2018 event in Pyeongchang a "Peace Olympics" as the two Koreas fielded a joint women's ice hockey squad, their first-ever unified Olympic team.

The last 12 months have seen a series of joint Korean sides follow in their tracks, from judo to basketball.

Results have been mixed.

The men's handball team lost all but one of its matches at the world championships in January, but the women's dragon boat squad won Asian Games gold in the 500m last year, and the women's table tennis players reached the world championship semi-finals.

However, each new unified team has been met with less and less fanfare than the one before as familiarity breeds public disinterest.

And off-field progress on the North's denuclearisation has been even more limited than the unified teams' victories.

"The thing with a stunt is that it receives a lot of attention at first but its originality quickly fades," said Go Myong-hyun, an analyst at the Asan Institute of Policy Studies.

"Sports diplomacy won't be sustainable unless it expands to other exchanges," he added.

- Rapid-fire diplomacy -
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- Losing resonance -
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